AUGUSTA, Maine — The cable and internet giant Spectrum launched a 24/7 news channel focused on Maine, growing its role in the state’s media scene more than two years after opening a small newsroom here.
The move from Spectrum, which is the brand name of Charter Communications, is notable because it is rare for new channels focused on news to form. Almost all of Maine’s TV stations have been on the air since the 1950s.
Spectrum delivers its news product as a channel for subscribers and not over the air. The new channel features Maine headlines supplemented by national stories from the company’s newsrooms across the country. Those headlines will be delivered at the top and bottom of every hour and weather forecasts every 10 minutes.
“There will be many, many minutes per half hour dedicated to only what’s happening in Maine,” said Sam Singal, a Bangor native and former NBC News executive producer who oversees Spectrum’s news operation.
Maine is now the 10th state to be served by Spectrum’s linear TV news network. Charter acquired its channels when it bought Time Warner Cable and another cable provider in 2016. All but two of its 30 news channels across the country are limited to Spectrum’s network.
Spectrum has focused thus far on its online news operation here along with an associated smartphone app. It began a Maine streaming channel in the fall. The company has four journalists here, including John Swinconeck, the former editor of the Brunswick Times Record, and Susan Cover, a former political reporter for the Portland Press Herald and its sister papers. It is hiring a fifth journalist now.
On Friday afternoon, the Maine headlines were being delivered by a Spectrum anchor in upstate New York with forecasts from a Florida-based meteorologist. But Singal said headlines are being generated by the Maine newsroom, and the channel will have extended cut-ins in major breaking news situations.
The news operation is only a small part of Charter, which has a market cap of more than $47 billion as the largest cable provider in the U.S. It has 32 million customers in total. The company’s stock tumbled on Friday after it announced lower-than-expected earnings in the last quarter of 2023 behind an unexpected loss of internet subscribers.
Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated how one of Spectrum’s channels in New York City is delivered and how many states Spectrum serves under this format.