Local all-news cable channels were born partly because of CNN’s popularity. TV audiences have an appetite for a steady diet of news–and when nations aren’t turning plowshares into swords, viewers will consume what’s happening right in their own neighborhoods. Because local broadcast channels focus so heavily on crime and gore, if Hillary Clinton comes to town viewers will get only a 60-second sound bite. By contrast, when the First Lady visited Boston, New England Cable News covered the event at length–and live.
Although they’re already stacking up impressive awards, the all-news channels are still few and new: the oldest, News 12 Long Island, was started up by Cablevision in 1986–and the other five (chart) have sprung up since 1990. Only New York 1 News (started by Time Warner 15 months ago) and ChicagoLand TV News (launched by the Tribune Co. earlier this year) reach more than I million households, but the others are close behind–and half a dozen more channels are reportedly planned for San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas and other cities.
Executives at the cable news channels believe it will take about six years for them to turn a profit. New, roboticized cameras and other automation technology mean that fewer bodies have to get paychecks. And the young, nonunion reporters, anchors and producers are so eager for experience that they’ll work for a fraction of what local network affiliates pay. Reporters at ChicagoLand TV (CLTV)–which has been dubbed “Children Learning Television” by broadcast competitors–make $32,000, compared with $100,000 salaries for reporters at local network affiliates. (ChicagoLand shares a suburban newsroom with the Tribune and often interviews the print reporters as unpaid experts on major issues.)
The youthful staff become jacks and Jills of all trades. Five days a week, Nancy Loo, 29, zips around town for New York 1 News, interviewing with her handheld video camera. Then she hoists the 15-pound recorder onto a tripod and talks earnestly to it, taping herself. “I do a story every day,” says Loo. “I dream it up. I set it up. I produce it. I report it and I even edit it. I get to do everything.”
Like the famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cartoon in which the world beyond the city doesn’t much matter, the cable channels can focus intensely on local interests. When Dizzy Gillespie died, for example, New York I went live with the two hours of jazz played at his funeral. The “localness” is also a boon to small businesses, which can reach viewers at low cost. A 30-second spot on New England Cable News costs $250 to $500, compared with $3,000 at a Boston network affiliate.
Because they have the luxury of so much time, cable news channels can spend five or 10 minutes on a story about health, entertainment or municipal matters–and hours upon hours on breaking news, like last month’s hard-fought, down-to-the-wire New York City mayoral election. Paul Sagan, senior vice president of Time Warner Cable Programming, says his mandate for New York 1 was to “launch a credible local news service on television–not a tabloid. Put the journalism first and let the business part fall in after. Reinvent a television news.” While sports and weather remain staples, cable news does have a different spin. One night last week, when other channels in town led their 6 p.m. telecasts with a Brooklyn homicide, New York I devoted its first 10 minutes to a quiet, moving report on local observations of National AIDS Awareness Day. That fulfilled the most basic mission of the new channels: giving viewers something they can’t get anywhere else.
