Northwest News Around The Clock -- New Cable Channel Hopes To Become The Regional Version Of Cnn, But Will Enough People Tune In?

With big announcements recently that ABC and NBC (with Microsoft) will join Turner Broadcasting in the 24-hour news business, it might be easy to shrug off NorthWest Cable News as another mind-numbing, live-at-the-scene, talking-heads channel.

It might well turn out to be that. It's derivative. There will be nothing revolutionary in the structure of its hourly rotation of news. Much of the on-air talent will be discernibly green.

And yet there's nothing quite like NWCN anywhere.

NorthWest Cable News, owned by Providence Journal subsidiary King Broadcasting Co., will be on Viacom Cable systems in metro Seattle-Tacoma tomorrow and on Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) systems Dec. 28.

Of about a dozen regional or local all-news cable channels, NWCN will cover the most territory. Unlike the other operations, it will supplement its own video reporting with that of four commonly owned broadcast stations.

It will have one of the few all-digital newsrooms in the country. Analog video will be converted into the binary language of computers, and the preparation and broadcast of stories will be done using Macintosh and Windows-based personal computers.

In the early going, NWCN will be available in 1.2 million homes in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. In a year or so, it will be in 2 million homes.

"When people think about regional news, we want them to think about us," said news director Elliott Wiser.

If that sounds familiar, remember KIRO-TV (Channel 7), the newly independent broadcast station that aspires to be the authoritative TV-news operation in Western Washington. NorthWest Cable News will have entrenched competition.

Even its sibling in the King Broadcasting building on Dexter Avenue North is competition. KING-TV (Channel 5), one of the dominant stations in the market, serves up a lot of news itself. So does KOMO-TV (Channel 4), and KSTW-TV (Channel 11) is a potential future contender.

With five sources of local TV news to choose from, why choose NorthWest Cable News?

"A slightly broader view"

General manager Craig Marrs, a former TV consultant for Frank N. Magid Associates in Marion, Iowa, says NWCN will devote itself to stories that local stations won't have time for or won't bother to get. "We have a slightly broader view," Marrs said. "We don't do local stories. We do regional stories."

Indeed, on Seattle stations it's common to see a helicopter view of a routine fire in suburban Seattle, but it's rare to see a story about agriculture, the biggest economic force in the region.

The aim of NorthWest Cable News is not to ignore big news from the bigger cities. It will provide reports gathered from KING, KGW-TV in Portland, KREM-TV in Spokane and KTVB-TV in Boise. But the cable channel also will have eight reporters of its own in the three states to cover news the sibling stations don't. Their stories are to be more issue-driven than reactive.

Marrs, who advised Canadian stations during his term at Magid, has even talked with BCTV-TV in Vancouver about picking up news from British Columbia, an arrangement that could take the sting out of TCI's decision to drop CBUT-TV to accommodate NorthWest Cable News. Canada is another area largely ignored by Seattle media.

The other components deemed important and universal by NWCN are weather and sports. No expense has been spared in weather technology, and those who have longed for a broader perspective won't be disappointed. Seattle pro teams and other sports, naturally, are of interest in all three states.

Can it be successful?

Still, with all the sources of information, on TV and elsewhere, will enough people watch NorthWest Cable News? Will its sales staff sell enough advertising? Will revenue support the staff of 100 over the long haul? The economics are unknown - except that TV news is a high-overhead endeavor.

Remember that CNN 15 years ago was a joke. It was called "Chicken Noodle Network." Television has become a niche business. Three states might be a pretty good-sized niche.

News director Wiser is a veteran of CNN Headline News. Senior executive producer Bill Kaczaraba worked at Cable News Network. "We took the best of both," Wiser said.

News will be organized by the hour. After all-live newscasts at 7 a.m., 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., many of the subsequent hours will be rebroadcast recordings (with all the images and sound stored on computer hard drives). The lead news segment will always be live. Other segments will be updated as news develops.

TV station of the future

The technical commitment, a joint venture with digital-video specialist Avid Technology, is like few others. The sweeping newsroom on the fifth floor of the King Broadcasting building looks like any other. But behind glass walls and in back rooms is an expansive, PC-based TV station of the future.

Said Nick Lawler, a senior TV consultant from Magid who has been helping with the NWCN launch: "You see the future being built here."

In more ways than one. One of the keys to making a financial go of regional newsgathering in a technologically complicated medium is to reduce costs. At some point, wetware - the people - enters the cost formula.

You will see mostly young, unfamiliar faces - except for Seattle TV and radio veteran Dana Middleton - who aren't being paid as much as those at the bigger broadcast stations.

"We've been saying there will be green people, yes, but the managers won't be kids," Wiser said. "We wanted people who didn't have a lot of preconceived notions."

Such as having a photographer accompany a reporter. NWCN reporters will shoot their own stories. Increasingly portable video equipment makes it possible. There's one less person to pay. One less brain covering the story. One less set of eyes and ears.

Will we notice? Or will it look like all the other TV news?