Local news and weather channel FiOS1 New York will launch next Monday, June 22, available exclusively to Verizon FiOS TV subscribers in the New York metropolitan area, according to a source familiar with the telco’s plans. (See Look Out, NY1: Here Comes FiOS1.)
Asked whether FiOS1 NY will launch next Monday, a Verizon spokeswoman said, “We don’t have anything to announce right now.”
The channel’s operations are based on Long Island, in the northern part of Nassau County, according to my source. The source added that FiOS1 NY’s team of largely freelance videographers has been taping footage and producing segments for several weeks in preparation for the launch.
It’s not clear how much of Verizon’s news channel will focus on suburban events versus New York City news. As previously reported by the Wall Street Journal, FiOS1 is expected to feature traffic on the 1s and weather on the 5s. The move into local New York programming comes more than two years after Verizon’s debut of FiOS1 in the D.C. metro area.
In any event, you can expect the incumbent cable operators in the area to tout their services — Time Warner Cable’s NY1 and Cablevision’s News 12 — as providing better live coverage and more professional production compared with the “user generated” reports on FiOS1.
As a consumer of New York news, I welcome the arrival of an additional local news outlet like FiOS1 New York. It’s encouraging to see any type of news reporting being funded, especially given the continuing erosion of the newspaper business.
Let’s hope the FiOS1 crew is able to surface some truly interesting and original stuff, and not simply be lip service to local programming.
