Lexington, KY - Insight Communications has begun the phased rollout of its new CN-2 news, weather, sports and public affairs channel.
Local weather forecasts began appearing last week on channel 2 in each the cable system's five Kentucky markets (Lexington, Louisville, Northern Kentucky, Bowling Green and Henderson/Evansville.)
"Each market will have its own separate weather forecast," said Insight Public Affairs Director, Jason Keller. "If you turn it on in Lexington you're going to get a different forecast then if you turned on CN-2 in Bowling Green. In Lexington we have CN-2 Weather Morning, CN-2 Weather Check and CN-2 Weather Evening throughout the day," he said. "The weather vendor that we're currently using allows us to tailor forecasts for each market and deliver those up-to-the-minute forecasts for each of those communities."
The 24/7 all-weather format is a response to audience research conducted for Insight by Frank N. Magid Associates, one of the nation's leading broadcast research and consulting firms. The cable company wanted to determine what unfilled or potentially competitive programming niches might exist. More than 90 percent of those surveyed, according to Keller, indicated a desire for more in-depth local weather, public affairs, local and regional news and sports talk.
"We've billed this as a new kind of media entity that is going to take advantage of a multi-platform approach to disseminating news and information," Keller said. "So we're going to be rolling out a number of different television and web-based applications to make sure we reach people in the places where they live."
The first web-based launch came during the weekend with the online debut of CN-2 Politics , a website devoted to happenings on the Kentucky political scene. The site is the dominion of former Lexington Herald Leader political reporter Ryan Alessi, who signed-on in early May as CN-2's senior manager for news and public affairs. Alessi and a group of freelance reporters are covering today's primary election, offering updates and analysis of races across the state.
"The Herald Leader and Courier Journal do a good job with their political reporting," noted Keller, who served as spokesman for former Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher. "But I think there is more analysis and more comprehensive coverage of political events to be had and I think Ryan's going to fill that void very nicely."
Recent Kentucky visitors to nytimes.com, townhall.com and a host of other national websites may have spotted Alessi's name in a banner ad at the top of web pages - part of a "geo-targeting" advertising strategy to capture the attention of Kentuckians interested enough in politics and current affairs to log on to such sites.
Monetizing web content is an urgent challenge for media as the internet leaves most other communications mediums going the way of the rotary phone. While free online content of every sort imaginable is more than abundant, ad revenues generally have not followed the transition from traditional to new media.
Keller said Insight will offer packages to advertisers. "We do have advertising on the CN-2 Politics site. That's part of a more comprehensive advertising strategy that we're going to be employing with all of the CN-2 sites (Politics, Weather and Sports), and also with the commercial content that will be on the CN-2 (TV) channel itself. The CN-2 Politics site is just a piece of the pie that we're going to try and leverage to make this venture profitable."
Insight is expected to name a General Manager for CN-2 by early June.
Business Lexington
For a comprehensive March, 2010 report on Insight's plan to launch CN-2, click here.