Spectrum News

Spectrum News is the collective name for the regional cable news channels owned by Charter Communications. The portfolio numbers about 30 networks, assembled through Charter's May 2016 acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Before the rebrand, the channels carried the Time Warner Cable News name; before that, many operated under individual identities that predated the corporate parent by decades. NY1 signed on in New York City on September 8, 1992, and remains the oldest property in the group.

The channels are built around a fixed local loop: city hall, county government, weather systems, high school and college sports, and community features that national outlets have no reason to cover. A shared "Weather on the 1s" format runs across the networks, giving each market a regular forecast segment at the top of every hour. Flagship stations include NY1 in New York City, Bay News 9 in Tampa Bay, News 13 in Central Florida, and the Spectrum News 1 channels serving upstate New York, Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky and Southern California. OC16 covers Orange County, California.

Distribution is mostly tied to a Spectrum pay-TV subscription, which caps the audience but guarantees carriage that independent local outlets cannot count on. NY1, Spectrum News Southern California and the Dallas–Fort Worth channel reach beyond the Charter footprint; the Dallas station rides KAZD's must-carry status onto over-the-air signals and rival cable systems. In July 2022, Charter placed every Spectrum News network in the 2200s channel tier of its Spectrum TV apps, so a subscriber in one region can watch feeds from another. The spectrumlocalnews.com site and the Spectrum News app carry live streams, a 90-second headline digest refreshed through the day, and on-demand clips.

Charter does not report Spectrum News revenue as a separate line. The division sits inside the company's cable operations, which generated about $54.6 billion in total revenue in 2023. The local news unit is a small, cost-conscious piece of that total, and no independent valuation exists for the brand. [edit]