Owned by Charter Communications Country United States | Slogan Your News Now. Language English | |
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Launched September 13, 1999 (1999-09-13) Picture format 1080i (HDTV)
480i (SDTV) | ||
Spectrum News Austin (formerly Time Warner Cable News Austin) is an American cable news television channel that is owned by Charter Communications. The channel provides 24-hour rolling news coverage focused primarily on Central Texas. Its main taped feed serves the Austin metropolitan area, while the channel maintains sub-feeds for San Antonio and Waco.
Contents
The channel's studios are located at 1708 Colorado Street in Austin, just north of the Texas State Capitol and immediately south of the main campus of the University of Texas. It is available only to Time Warner Cable subscribers within the cable provider's Central Texas division, which includes Austin, San Marcos, Round Rock, Temple, Killeen and Waco.
Background
The channel was launched on September 13, 1999 as News 8 Austin. The channel changed its name to YNN Austin (for "Your News Now") on January 10, 2011, as part of gradual transition to a uniform brand for most of Time Warner Cable's other regional news channels that originated the year prior on its Buffalo and Rochester news channels in New York.
On December 16, 2013, the channel once again rebranded, this time as Time Warner Cable News Austin as part of a new rebranding attempt to standardize channels across the provider's news channels that included the introduction of a new graphics and music package. On March 11, 2014, Time Warner Cable announced that it would again attempt to launch a regional news channel for the San Antonio market (the first attempt by TWC in 2003 quickly failed after News 9 San Antonio, a joint venture with Belo (then-owners of CBS affiliate KENS (channel 5)), which operations shuttered by the start of the next year, 2004), which would be operated out of TWCN Austin's headquarters and share managerial staff, with reports being filed for cablecast by San Antonio-based mutli-platform reporters in a separate bureau that was established in that city. The subfeed, Time Warner Cable News San Antonio, soft-launched with a series of weeknight preview broadcasts of two programs airing on the channel (the political discussion program Capital Tonight and the sports highlight program Sports Night) that began on April 8. The feed formally launched on June 2, 2014. Plans call for the future hirings of additional journalists based in San Antonio.
On September 20, 2016, it was announced that all TWC News channels would be rebranded as Spectrum News months after Charter acquired Time Warner Cable earlier in the year.
Programming
The channel operates on a news "wheel" format, offering recorded blocks of news and weather segments, and feature reports. On weekday mornings and afternoons, the channel also provides traffic reports; sports segments are also provided on a nightly basis. Producers update the wheel throughout the day, inserting new material as stories are filed and updated information becomes available. In addition to running regular weather segments every 10 minutes "on the 1's", the channel also provides wall-to-wall severe weather coverage whenever tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings are in effect for any part of viewing area of Spectrum News Austin or its subfeeds.
Without different limitations faced by broadcast television stations due to network and programming commitments, Spectrum News Austin is known in the area for its taped coverage of community news. The channel typically does not report on stories or events relating to crime and scandal. The channel is also distinct from traditional television news operations in that its cablecasts are traditionally anchored by a single presenter. Its reporters occasionally set up, shoot and edit their own stories without the assistance of a photojournalist (a format known as one man band).
Spectrum News Austin also operates several other video and information services, including: