Spectrum to launch national news service

Spectrum Networks, the Charter owned television service that owns and operates NY1, will launch a national news service.

Based out of New York City, Spectrum News NY1Mornings on 1” co-anchor Annika Pergament will leave the show to become the national face of breaking news and national stories “providing nuanced, locally-informed context,” according to an announcement from Charter.

She’ll be backed by a dedicated team of journalists throughout Spectrum’s news footprint to cover nationally relevant news and events and their impact on local communities.

Spectrum is not launching regularly scheduled newscast, but will instead insert national content on its 15 regional channels across the country, including NY1.

“I am excited and honored to take on this new role,” Pergament said in a statement. “I’ve spent my career helping inform New Yorkers about the news that impacts their lives. Now I will have the opportunity to do that for audiences around the country, working with my colleagues across the Spectrum Networks footprint to bring our audience the day’s top stories across all of our platforms. The news business is changing rapidly and I am eager to be at the forefront of that evolution.”

Spectrum’s Sam Singal, vice president of editorial and content, will oversee the new venture.

In the announcement, Spectrum emphasizes the networks’ trustworthiness, citing a Front Row national survey of 10,000 Spectrum News viewers from 2021 that reports it is “more trustworthy than other local TV news channels by a margin of more than five-to-one.”

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Spectrum News has its roots in Time Warner Cable’s 1992 effort to launch regional cable news networks available exclusively to subscribers of its cable packages. It was seen as a way to differentiate cable packages from other TV options available.

The first was the now famous NY1, and that was followed by Bay News 9 in Tampa, Florida, Central Florida News 13 in Orlando, Florida, News 8 Austin, News 14 Carolina, News 24 Houston, News 9 San Antonio and Capital News 9 and News 10 Now, both in New York state. An offering in the Buffalo, New York, region used the name YNN, short for “Your News Now,” which would eventually be used at the Rochester, New York, the channel originally launched as R News as well as the Austin channel.

Additional channels would be launched later, including ones serving the Dallas-Ft. Worth, Southern California, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Ohio and Kentucky regions. Some channels were eventually shuttered due to market conditions and low viewership.

Time Warner intended to rebrand all of its channels under the name TWC News in 2013 to emphasize its exclusivity to Time Warner Cable.

However, NY1 viewers objected to the change and Time Warner Cable backtracked and said the NY1 name would continue to be used as the primary on air brand, with the TWC name added to the end.

Time Warner Cable was eventually sold to Charter, who started rebranding its cable, internet and telephone service under the Spectrum name in 2014.

Many of the former TWC networks switched to the Spectrum News brand with some, like NY1, using a blend of the two names similar to the Time Warner days.

Spectrum also operates three digital only streaming networks.

According to Charter data, Spectrum Networks continues to outperform the major cable and broadcast news networks, regularly ranking as the most-watched news network among Spectrum households, averaging more than 2.6 million viewing households per month across its linear and digital platforms in 12 states, according to set top box data that considers a minimum of five consecutive minutes of viewership as a “viewing household,” which is a bit different of a metric than how other networks are rated under most methods.