OTHER NEWS - Feb. 29, 1996

O.C. Cable News Channel to Be Sold: Plagued by heavy financial losses since it went on the air 5 1/2 years ago, Orange County’s only cable news channel is being sold to a Connecticut company for an undisclosed sum. Freedom Communications Inc., a privately held Irvine company, said it reached a tentative agreement to sell Orange County NewsChannel (OCN) to Century Communications Corp. Century, a national cable systems operator, could not be reached, but Freedom executives indicated that Century plans to continue the 24-hour programming as it has been operating since September 1990. Alan Bell, Freedom’s broadcast division president, said Freedom was unloading OCN because the losses were too much to bear. Lewis Robertson, OCN’s general manager, declined to comment on the employees’ reactions or their fate.