Thursday, September 6, 2007
New OC Channel to offer local TV news

Public broadcasting's KOCE will begin airing traffic, weather and bulletins in October.

By JOHN GITTELSOHN
The Orange County Register
Long starved for local TV news, Orange County viewers soon will get to watch traffic, weather and bulletins of breaking news when public television station KOCE launches the OC Channel.

A mockup of the look of the new OC Channel that KOCE-TV is launching in October. screen grab.

COURTESY KOCE-TV

"It will be the only place you can turn on your TV and get updated information all the time," Mel Rogers, KOCE's president and chief executive officer, said of the round-the-clock news service his station is producing.

When it goes live Oct. 24, the OC Channel will be available to cable subscribers or the small universe of people with TVs receiving digital broadcasts.

The OC Channel's news will run in an L-shaped area framing TV screens. It will carry news headlines from The Orange County Register and live footage of freeway traffic in collaboration with Caltrans. Although KOCE is commercial free, underwriters of the public broadcasting station will have opportunities to broadcast their logos and other information inside the L-shaped frame.

Most of the screen will feature regular KOCE programming or locally-produced features by broadcast partners including Chapman University, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. UC Irvine and the Orange County Department of Education have agreed to provide some educational programming.

A KOCE news release said the OC Channel will attempt to build a positive community identity "that counters the soap opera-style image of the county currently found on commercial networks."
KOCE already produces and broadcasts Real Orange, a 30-minute newscast that airs three times daily on weekdays.
Orange County's commercial broadcast TV station, KDOC, is scheduled to begin airing newscasts Monday. The newscasts will run weekday mornings from 6 to 8 a.m. The two stations plan to collaborate rather than compete, sharing footage and some equipment.
"Right now, I'm looking at it as complementary," Bert Ellis, KDOC's president and CEO, said of the OC Channel.
KDOC occupies the former studios of the Orange County NewsChannel or OCN, a 24-hour local news cable station that went off the air in 2001 after losing money during its 11-year run. Those studios are in the Orange County Register's building in Santa Ana.
KOCE, now on the campus of Golden West Community College, is considering moving to the Register building when its lease expires in November, Rogers said. Other sites under consideration, he said, are Chapman University in Orange and The OC Pavilion in Santa Ana.
Rogers said starting the OC Channel will cost $500,000, financed by KOCE, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Chapman.
Cox Cable subscribers will be able to see the OC Channel on Channel 810. Time Warner has not assigned it a channel. Viewers with digitally-capable televisions can see the channel over the airwaves at 50.2 on the UHF dial.
Digital TV allows broadcasters to divide their spectrum and air multiple programs simultaneously. The Federal Communications Commission has announced plans to require all broadcasting to go digital Feb. 17, 2009.