Times, KCAL to Offer Cable News Service

In a unique combination of newspaper and television resources, the Times Orange County Edition and KCAL-TV are teaming with local cable operators and Turner Broadcasting to produce an Orange County television news show.

Slated to debut April 16, the new service consists of 4 1/2 minutes of Orange County news appearing every half-hour as part of Turner’s CNN Headline News service on cable television.

The program will be produced by KCAL-TV based on news stories supplied by The Times’ editorial staff in Orange County and will be updated four times each weekday and twice a day on weekends.

Initially, the service will be available to the 200,000 Orange County households that are served by Dimension Cable Services and Comcast Cablevision. Other cable companies may be added in the future.

The venture is believed to be the first in the country in which a newspaper, a television station and cable operators have joined forces to produce a news program. Lawrence M. Higby, president of the Times Orange County Edition, said the show would be “the most timely and comprehensive television news service available in Orange County.”

The new service also represents an extension of the fierce advertising and circulation battle between The Times and the Orange County Register. The Register in January announced plans to launch a 24-hour Orange County cable news channel in the fall and is recruiting cable operators to carry the service.

Higby noted, however, that the Times-KCAL venture and the Register service would not necessarily be competitors. Cable operators, he said, might choose to carry both services.

Dimension Cable Services, which is owned by Times Mirror Co., parent company of The Times, provides cable service in Mission Viejo, San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Hills, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Dana Point, San Clemente and several unincorporated areas. Comcast Cablevision serves Buena Park, Fullerton, Newport Beach, Placentia, Santa Ana and Seal Beach.

KCAL, a Los Angeles television station that was purchased by Walt Disney Co. in 1988, has gambled heavily on news programming, adopting an all-news format for the critical 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. prime-time hours on Channel 9.

KCAL news director Bob Henry said the new venture “will help us do better coverage in Orange County.” The program will be produced at KCAL’s Hollywood studios by the regular news staff, Henry said, but will strive for “an Orange County look and feel.”

The Times will act as a news service for KCAL, feeding the station stories for use on the Orange County news show.

CNN Headline News, a national news service produced by Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting, contains six-minute “windows” to run 24 minutes and 54 minutes after every hour to enable individual cable operators to insert local news. Cable companies participating in the Orange County news venture will receive the updated news segment by satellite from KCAL four times a day (twice a day on weekends) and will place them on the Headline News channel at the prescribed time.