All News, All Northwest -- Northwest Cable News Is Finding Its Utilitarian Blend Of Regional Reports And Neighborly Chat To Be A Hit With Viewers

With a minimum of razzle-dazzle and a folksiness that sometimes betrays its humble resources, NorthWest Cable News has emerged as a utilitarian news service in a region that until now has had no unifying media outlet.

When Mariner executive John Ellis suddenly called a press conference last month to announce the baseball team was for sale, NorthWest Cable News was the only channel to carry it live.

On election night, it tapped former Speaker of the House Tom Foley of Spokane for regional analysis when Seattle broadcast stations featured state or local pundits.

When the other stations have to weigh the potential financial losses from pre-empting network or syndicated programming or infomercials, NorthWest Cable News does not hesitate - it jumps on breaking news.

It's the only place you can always find local news on television, whether it's 3 a.m. or 3 p.m.

At 3 p.m. the day after Christmas, the snow was falling hard and NorthWest Cable News scored its highest rating ever - 3.7, representing about 56,000 households in the Seattle television market and 10 percent of the audience at that hour.

Thousands more across the region were watching NorthWest Cable News, but Nielsen Media Research has no easy way of measuring the channel's entire three-state reach of nearly 2 million households.

It was quite an accomplishment for a niche cable station that's only a year old. An hour later, KSTW-TV (CBS), whose Seattle-area

audience is not limited to cable subscribers, had a 3.5 rating with its news.

"They love the weather," says NorthWest Cable News news director Elliott Wiser, a veteran of CNN. "The second thing people love and we hear all the time is that we have news when they want it - and regionality."

On Monday, NorthWest Cable News will be added to the cable-channel lineup of another 105,000 households, in Seattle's Eastside suburbs. Later this year, Alaskans will join Washington, Oregon and Idaho viewers.

NorthWest Cable News is looking back on a first year of operation that by any measure is encouraging for its current owners, Providence Journal Co. - which also owns KING-TV (NBC) - and for its future owners, TV-and-newspaper company A.H. Belo Corp., which owns KIRO-TV (UPN) and is acquiring the Providence media group.

Higher-than-anticipated ratings, good feedback from viewers and fast-increasing advertising sales mean NorthWest Cable News is on schedule to be in the black in five years - if not sooner, said Craig Marrs, president and general manager.

"We've become more successful faster than any other regional news channel," Marrs said.

Nielsen figures from July showed NorthWest Cable News reached more TV households in a given week in its primary market - 18.7 percent - than any of the other dozen similar services around the country, including established operations such as Newschannel 8 in Washington, D.C., and New England Cable News in Boston.

Still, NorthWest Cable News has a long way to go to be a widely recognized player in local news the way CNN is on the national and world stage.

When it comes to putting on a newscast, NorthWest Cable News isn't as slick as top-rated KING-TV, recently rejuvenated KOMO-TV (ABC), news-obsessed KIRO-TV or smartly packaged KSTW-TV.

"This is designed to be a service, not a show," explained Marrs.

There are eight "one-man-band" reporter-photographers posted around the region who supply stories. But to a great degree NorthWest Cable News must rely on repackaged material or live feeds from KING-TV and siblings KGW-TV (NBC) in Portland, KREM-TV (CBS) in Spokane and KTVB-TV (NBC) in Boise.

During a routine hour of news, you will seldom find scoops that haven't been aired or published somewhere else. Except when big news is breaking, most of the broadcast day is actually recorded. Newscasts are updated at regular intervals or as developments warrant.

The staff at NorthWest Cable News is mostly young and green. It's a training ground, although there are experienced journalists in leadership positions.

The cutting-edge technology behind the scenes - all the video is produced with personal computers - has proved cumbersome at times.

Some of the apparent drawbacks are inherent in the design. Simplicity of presentation, and the idea of economizing with a young crew and new technology, likely won't change much. They seem to be working.

Despite a staff about half as big as that of the other Seattle TV-news operations and an obligation to cover far more territory, NorthWest Cable News is fast becoming a friend for many around the region.

Perhaps the biggest question facing NorthWest Cable News is whether it should stay true to its newscast-anytime-you-want-it mission or venture into talk shows and specials during prime-time hours. That issue is being studied, Marrs said. Already, the channel airs a weekly Sunday-night sports show hosted by former KIRO-TV and radio personality Wayne Cody.

Sometimes the channel feels like a talk show. When a shared crisis of weather or professional sports has loomed, NorthWest Cable News has aired phone calls from viewers who told their own stories or vented their own sound bites.

Although it's not always very enlightening, such chitchat lends a neighborly cohesion to the Northwest.

In terms of shared issues, "it is the most-unified region I've ever lived in," said Dana Middleton, formerly a host of "Northwest Afternoon" on KOMO-TV and, later, now-defunct talk-radio station KING-AM.

Anchoring during the afternoons is Middleton's first TV-news job. The combination of experimental digital technology and the young staff "was very intriguing to me," Middleton said.

She has learned to ad-lib in the news environment and is invigorated by the chance to teach younger staffers.

One of those staffers, who as a child watched Middleton when she was on "Northwest Afternoon" in the 1980s, is Shannon O'Donnell, a 23-year-old weather forecaster. NorthWest Cable News is her first on-camera TV job.

"We'll be 30 seconds away from the top of the show, which is my first weather hit," O'Donnell said. "I'll be all ready to go, and then I'll look up at the desk and see Dana and think, `Oh my God! I'm working with Dana Middleton!' "

For inexperienced staffers like O'Donnell, NorthWest Cable News is a way to break into television in a big city - without having to start in a place like Lewiston, Idaho.

The exposure is greater than in small-market TV. O'Donnell, who majored in atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and still does research there, seems to be a natural and already is attracting interest from other news outlets.

Meanwhile, the folks at Belo in Dallas have their eyes on NorthWest Cable News. While acquiring Providence early this year, Belo will divest KIRO-TV and pick up KING-TV, as well as the other three Providence stations in the region - plus NorthWest Cable News. Belo will be one of the most powerful media outlets in the region.

Belo is a group TV owner with journalism as its core mission. It owns the Dallas Morning News as well as its TV stations. NorthWest Cable News and similar projects it has in development elsewhere are a good fit.

Until the ownership changes are approved by the Federal Communications Commission, Belo vice president for broadcast news Marty Haag can't say much about NorthWest Cable News. But he clearly has ideas.

"I see this as an opportunity to do a lot of things, such as news in depth, that a regular broadcast schedule at times makes harder to do," Haag said.

"And certainly the Northwest is an ideal place to have such an operation, simply because the Northwest sees itself not as separate cities but as a region, and there is commonality of interest in issues that would involve Seattle and Portland and Boise and Spokane.

"I think the Providence Journal people were very forward-thinking in launching that operation," Haag said.