O.C. Cable News Channel May Be Expanded to All of Southland

The company that is buying Orange County’s cable news channel is planning to expand into Los Angeles, which could create the region’s first 24-hour local news network.

Century Communications Corp., a Connecticut-based cable firm with about 400,000 subscribers in the Southland, agreed this week to acquire Orange County NewsChannel (OCN) from Freedom Communications Inc. The price was not disclosed.

A senior Century executive said Thursday that the plan is to build on OCN’s experience and combine that with Century’s cable subscriber base to create a local news and public affairs cable channel that would appeal to viewers and advertisers throughout the Southland.

It is expected to take three to five years to complete the cable network.

“OCN’s experience tells us there’s a crying need for more quality, up-to-date and more frequent local news,” said William J. Rosendahl, a senior vice president at Century Communications in its Santa Monica office.

Managers at TV stations disagreed, saying the Southland is already saturated with news.

“There’re about 28 hours of local news throughout the day, every day,” said Larry Perret, news director at KCBS Channel 2. “Is there really a consumer demand for more news? I don’t think so.”

Others said OCN’s strength has been its niche market of providing a heavy dose of Orange County news not offered by Los Angeles TV stations. And even then, they said, OCN sustained heavy losses.

However, analysts said a big plus for Century is that any news programming it produces would automatically be available to Century’s existing cable subscribers, instead of having to persuade cable operators to pick up its news programs.

That means that with the acquisition of OCN--which is available to more than 500,000 households in Orange County--Century would potentially start out with a reach of about 900,000 homes.

Bill Marchetti, a cable analyst with Paul Kagan Associates, a media research firm in Carmel, said Century might be able to succeed if it garnered fees from cable systems and kept down the heavy costs of gathering and producing news.