NY1
NY1 (pronounced "New York One") is a twenty-four hour news channel available exclusively to cable television customers within the five boroughs of New York City and nearby Bergen County, New Jersey. It appears on the unused-for-broadcast Channel 1 on Time Warner Cable and Cablevision service, and is owned and operated by Time Warner Cable. In addition to news and weather forecasts, the channel also features human-interest segments such as the "New Yorker of the Week" and the "Scholar Athlete of the Week," as well as specialty programs such as "Inside City Hall" and "Inside Transit."
- See also: Media of New York City
History
NY1 was conceived in 1991 by the president of Time Warner Cable's New York City cable group, ostensibly to add value to cable as it eroded market share to budding satellite services such as DirecTV and Dish Network. The station launched in the fall of 1992. In January of 2002, the station moved to a brand new, all digital facility in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. In June 2003, NY1 Noticias, a Spanish-language version of the channel, began operating for digital cable subscribers.
NY1 was the first Time Warner Cable local news channel, and Time Warner Cable went on to add local 24-hour local news networks in several other markets modeled after NY1, including "Bay News 9" in Tampa, "Central Florida News 13" in Orlando, "News 8 Austin" in the Texas capital, News 14 Carolina", which serves the Triangle and Charlotte in North Carolina, "Capital News 9" in Albany, NY and News 10 Now in Syracuse, NY. Notably, "News 24 Houston" and "News 9 San Antonio", both joint ventures between Time Warner Cable and Belo, were closed within the first two years of operation.
In 2006, Time Warner Cable began offering NY1 to digital cable subscribers in upstate New York.
Format
The most common "program" on NY1 is a half-hour block beginning at the top and bottom of every hour. The first minute contains a local weather forecast and top headlines. The remainder of the half-hour is filled with taped news segments heavily focusing on stories from the New York metropolitan region. Nearly all stories are taped, even segments made to look like they are happening live; instead of a "live" indicator while reports speak, most NY1 stories have a graphic saying merely that the reporter is (or, rather, was) "on scene." This may be because reporters generally shoot their own stories with cameras. The stories are then edited at NY1's studio.
Outside of the weather updates during the top of the block at one and 31 minutes past every hour, there are interruptions "on the ones" at 11, 21, 41, and 51 minutes past the hour for local weather updates.
On programs like "Inside City Hall", NY1 offers much more extensive local political coverage than the area's broadcast stations. Seeking to expand its political coverage, WCBS-TV attracted "Inside City Hall" anchor Andrew Kirtzman.
Parodies
In 2003, NY1 was featured in the movie Elf as the station on which the story of an alleged Christmas Eve sighting of Santa Claus spread throughout New York.
NY1 was also featured in the film Maid in Manhattan, where it showed a Mexican hotel maid impersonating a high-class woman having an argument with a politician.
