Making News by Delivering It
Cablevision Keeps Its Customers Connected By Putting Community News In Spotlight
By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 9/23/2007 6:00:00 PM MT
The usually busy News 12 Bronx newsroom was particularly buzzing during an early Thursday morning in late August. A shooting had just occurred in the Northeast Bronx and network was preparing a live breaking news segment, scooping the New York area broadcast and cable networks with the first live pictures from the crime scene.
The scenario is typical for Cablevision’s seven local news operations — usually first on the scene with coverage of important events from fires and blizzards to mayoral debates and city council meetings within the communities they serve that are often ignored by the big three local broadcast network news organizations.
From its humble beginnings as a text-based news channel in Long Island in 1986, News 12 has become the standard in local news production by which all other cable operator-based local news operations are measured. Over its 21-year history, the now 500-employee franchise — with seven separate bureaus operating in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area — has won 94 New York Emmy Awards, hundreds of thousands of loyal viewers, and millions of dollars in ad sales revenue.
| News 12 By The Numbers | |
|---|---|
| News 12 Bureaus | Subscribers Served |
| SOURCE: Cablevision Systems |
|
| New Jersey | 1.8 million |
| Long Island | 800,000 |
| Connecticut | 220,000 |
| Bronx/Brooklyn | 720,000 |
| Hudson Valley | 140,000 |
| Westchester | 300,000 |
| Total | 3.1 million |
“Cablevision at its heart is a family-oriented, neighborhood-oriented company just by the nature of its business, and so it was in its genes to do this,” News 12 president Pat Dolan said. “Our subscribers know we’re at their school board meetings, we’re gong to be on your roads and telling you about your commute — it’s information about you and your community that you’re not going to get anywhere else.”
News 12 is the brainchild of Dolan’s father, Cablevision founder Charles Dolan, who believed that the operator could serve its subscribers better — and ward off potential competitors — by launching cable’s first 24-hour local news channel in Long Island, N.Y. That News 12 channel made its mark by providing live coverage of local political debates and offering weather and traffic updates.
From the start, Pat Dolan said Cablevision invested significantly in state-of-the art production facilities, cameras and news trucks in an effort to look as credible as the newscasts from the New York-area broadcast stations.
“We certainly haven’t made any compromises on the technology side,” said Pat Dolan, a former CNN producer who took over the News 12 operations in 1991.
Today, the bustling, multimedia venture has seven 24-hour local news channels that regularly outdraw ABC, NBC and CBS local newscasts during major news or weather situations.
Its interactive Web site (news12.com) averages 6 million page views a month, and a soon-to-be revamped interactive/video-on-demand service on channel 612 throughout Cablevision’s systems draws more than 100,000 video streams a month.
If that wasn’t enough, Cablevision plans to launch next year a customizable mobile phone service with up-to-date traffic and weather information exclusively to the operator’s customers.
“I don’t think there’s any cable company in the country that provides the amount of resources into their local news,” said Dolan, although he would not reveal specific financial figures.
Much of that financial outlay is recouped from local advertising sales, which, according to Dolan, reaches a hefty $30 million annually.
He added that much of News 12’s value to Cablevision comes from satisfied and loyal customers who will not switch to a satellite and phone company competitors like DirecTV or Verizon Communications, which don’t carry the cable-exclusive local news channels.
Cablevision also plans to reward its customers with even more local news next year. The company plans to launch “hyper-local” Web sites dubbed News 12 My Town that will feature user-generated video and text content to allow residents of virtually every small town and hamlet in Cablevision’s tri-state footprint to discuss the issues and news that concerns them.
“If you’re upset about a pothole, or have great footage from a local school musical or want to promote a local charity event, this is the forum to do it and we’re backing it up with the resources of the News 12 brand,” Dolan said.
Eventually, Dolan expects to offer its channels in true high-definition — a number of the company’s portable cameras are already HD-ready. But for now, Dolan is satisfied with offering the best local news content possible to subscribers — wherever they access it.
“Times are changing and people are consuming their news in different ways,” he said. “I think what you want to do is put out a quality, journalistic product and exploit that on as many platforms as possible so that people have it under whatever circumstances they need it.”
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News 12 Networks reaches over 3.8 million HH's, not 3.1 million...
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