It has now been a quarter of a century since I was hired by a wealthy visionary to build and train News 12 The Bronx staffers.
Why am I smiling? My child is all grown up after a C-section, we launched in 1998 and as anyone can see, I still have a few fans of various colors, according to Chuck Dolan, who hired me to build, recruit, train, and launch News 12 The Bronx.
Dola's first one was News 12 Long Island, where he lives with his lovely wife in Oyster Bay. He owned Cablevision and launched it on December 15, 1986, to customers on its Long Island system, as the first 24-hour regional cable news service in the United States. Over the years Cablevision expanded the reach of News 12 by adding additional networks across its footprint.
Published reports indicate from wikipedia.org the network was formerly operated by Newsday Media Holdings and presided over by Patrick Dolan, son of Newsday majority owner Charles Dolan and brother of James L. Dolan. Altice USA, who bought Cablevision in 2016, has retained Dolan as a senior network advisor.
In December 2005, News 12 Networks generated criticism when it changed its website and mobile app to a pay subscription service for those who live outside the News 12 viewing area. The News 12 website is offered free of charge to subscribers of Optimum, Spectrum, or Xfinity. This has been used as a marketing tool against customers signing up for Verizon FiOS, or satellite providers DirecTV or Dish Network, which are available in many of the areas News 12 covers.
At one point Cablevision even made the network's slogan, "Only on Cable. Never on FiOS. Never on satellite." (In some ads, FiOS was substituted with "phone company television" and in most areas, "Cable" was substituted with Cablevision in areas where Cablevision was only provided as a cable provider, notably Long Island). In response, Verizon FIOS partnered with RNN to create FiOS1 News in June 2009 and later expanded to the Lower Hudson Valley in 2014, which could be viewed only by FiOS customers. Unlike News 12, FiOS1's website was not behind a paywall and was open to all users except for its live broadcast (which was only offered to FiOS customers).
In October 2016, newspaper reports stated News 12 was consolidating its Westchester and Connecticut News operations, moving news anchor desks and studio operations to New Jersey and Long Island, and news and production staff at these operations would be laid off. Reports indicated Westchester News Director Janine Rose was allowed to resign, and Connecticut News Director Tom Appleby was dismissed
By August 2017, the seven News 12 Network cable channels began airing Cheddar's news summaries segments
In April 2018, Altice announced that it would form a new division named Altice USA News (renamed to Altice News after the Cheddar acquisition) that would consist of News 12 and 24NEWS. The division was headed by Michael Schreiber now succeeded by Jon Steinberg.
Altice has departed from Cablevision's long-standing policy of ensuring that News 12 remained exclusive to cable. In July 2019, https://www.news12.com/