Northwest Cable News was an American cable newstelevision channel owned by Tegna Media. The channel, which launched on December 18, 1995, provided 24-hourrolling news coverage focused primarily on the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The channel was headquartered out of the studio facilities of Tegna-owned NBC affiliate KING-TV in downtown Seattle. The channel was available to 2.9 million residents within the region, and, to a lesser extent, Alaska, Northern California, and other areas of Montana. Some of the network's programming was carried on a sister broadcast station KTVB in Boise, during the overnight hours. From August 28, 2009 to January 20, 2015, it was also aired over the air on their DT3 subchannel, as well as Cable One. It was previously on Cable One until 2003; it was re-added on February 12, 2010. On January 20, 2015, a corporate mandate where Gannett became a charter carrier of the Justice Network meant that it was replaced on KTVB-DT3, and it was carried on Dish Network from April 26, 2011 to February 29, 2016, when it was removed per a mutual decision between the two parties. On October 28, 2016, Northwest Cable News announced that the channel would shut down on January 6, 2017. The closure arrived after the retirement or contract buyouts of several high-profile on- and off-screen talent the previous April. It came at a time when the channel's viewership had decreased in the face of increased news consumption on digital and other non-television platforms, along with the nationwide streaming availability of the newscasts live or delayed of the stations contributing content for the network via their websites, effectively making the entire operation superfluous and duplicative. In addition, the network did not broadcast in HD, which was nearly universal for television news in the U.S. by the time of the shut-down announcement. Approximately 20 employees were affected, and Tegna offered some of them positions at other Tegna stations.
Programming
The network incorporated news content purposed from four Tegna-owned stations in the northwestern United States – NBC-affiliated stations KING-TV in Seattle, KGW in Portland, KTVB in Boise and CBS affiliate KREM in Spokane. In addition, the channel maintained content sharing agreements with several other stations. In addition to rolling news and weather coverage throughout the day, Northwest Cable News produced the nightly sports highlight and discussion program Northwest Sports Tonight and the call-in shows Gardening with Ciscoe LIVE and Northwest Sports Tonight Game Day. The channel also aired rebroadcasts of sister station KING-TV's lifestyle program Evening each evening at 10:00 p.m. Three other KING-TV programs, Gardening with Ciscoe, Northwest Backroads and The 5th Quarter, were also rebroadcast on the channel on weekends. In addition, the channel aired the KGW-produced Sunday evening discussion program Straight Talk. In February 2011, NWCN switched their format from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratio. At the time of the channel's shutdown, NWCN was the last news station in the Tegna portfolio that did not air their newscasts in HD.
