Cnn in The Neighborhood

By Richard Zoglin

The January 1990 crash of an Avianca jet near Kennedy Airport was the sort of local disaster that gets TV news departments pumped up -- and often brings in Emmys. But the first station to arrive at the crash site in Cove Neck, L.I., was not one of the big boys from New York City. It was a crew from News 12, a 24-hour cable channel seen only on suburban Long Island. One of the channel's satellite trucks happened to be half a mile away when word of the crash came over the police scanner. The crew raced to the scene and provided dramatic footage that was picked up by all three networks. The coverage even, yes, won an Emmy.

News 12, launched in 1986 by Cablevision, is the vanguard of a growing array of efforts to provide local news -- and lots of it -- on the same basis as CNN. In Orange County, near Los Angeles, an all-news channel was started last September by the Freedom newspaper chain, owner of the Orange County Register. TCI Cable and the local Fox station are teaming up to create a 24-hour news channel for Chicago, set to debut this summer. A similar operation for the Washington area will be launched in September by Albritton Communications, and Time Warner has announced plans to start a 24-hour news channel for New York City in early 1992.

The new entries are striving to fill what many see as a substantial gap in local TV news. In large metropolitan areas, stations cannot come close to covering the welter of communities that make up their region -- especially with more and more air time being devoted to sensational crimes, celebrity fluff and network promotions ("The real story behind Switched at Birth -- at 11"). Cable systems, which serve more circumscribed areas, have jumped in with a fresh twist: the news they provide is hyperlocal.

Long Island's News 12, for example, starts each morning with a news radio- style mix of news, weather and the inevitable traffic reports, live from key points on the Long Island Expressway. The channel has extensively covered everything from unsolved cop killings to controversial local issues like garbage dumping. Boasts executive producer Drew Phillips: "Nobody can make a move without us knowing about it."

Orange County NewsChannel, seen in 350,000 cable homes, has a similar news- radio approach -- its traffic reporter goes by the moniker Dr. Drive -- but offers broader horizons. During the gulf war, an OCN crew traveled to Saudi Arabia and Israel to interview Orange County natives there. The station's * success is being monitored by other urban newspapers, which are considering all-news cable stations as a way to expand their franchises in a sluggish market for print media.

With enormous amounts of air time to fill, these all-news channels can be dull and repetitive. Their audiences, moreover, are still small; neither of the local news channels now in operation is turning a profit. But industry observers contend that these channels fill a need, and will eventually attract plenty of viewers and provide a lucrative advertising niche. "News is the most expensive programming," says media analyst Paul Kagan. "But for a cable system, it is a big traffic builder." So those traffic reports will come in handy.

With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles and Leslie Whitaker/New York