News 12 Traffic & Weather

News 12 Traffic & Weather is an American cable news television channel that is owned by the Newsday Media Holdings subisidary of Cablevision Systems Corporation. The channel provides 24-hour reports on traffic conditions and weather forecasts for the New York City metropolitan area. The channel is headquartered in Woodbury, New York.

It is an affiliate of the News 12 Networks slate of regional cable news channels in the New York City area (each of which focus on areas outside of Manhattan and Queens, including the easternmost boroughs). News 12 Traffic & Weather is carried on channel 61 on Cablevision systems in the region, and is also available on Comcast Xfinity in portions of the Hudson Valley region of upstate New York.

Background

The channel was launched in the early 1990s as News 12 Weather. The service originally aired each morning in place of Bravo and E!, as all three services had shared a channel slot on Cablevision's Long Island systems due to limited channel capacity at the provider's headends. Following the launch of Cablevision's Optimum TV digital cable service in 1996, News 12 Weather gained a full-time dedicated channel slot on the provider's systems.

On August 5, 1998, the service was rebranded as MSG Metro Traffic & Weather and was rolled into the MSG Metro Channels slate (as of 2014, it is the only channel that was a part of the original MSG Metro Channels slate that survives in operation); its format was also revised to include regular updates on traffic conditions in the New York metropolitan area. As a result, it became the first strictly local traffic and weather channel in the Tri-State area; although it faced competition for weather coverage via local broadcast stations and The Weather Channel, the traffic component was the feature that made the channel unique.

In 2005, the channel was brought back in with the News 12 Networks slate of channels, accordingly being renamed News 12 Traffic & Weather. The channel launched high definition simulcast services of its five regional feeds in November 2012. In December 2013, News 12 Networks announced it would lay off eight of the channel's ten meteorologists and News 12 Traffic & Weather before a massive staff lay-off The channel formerly had a full-time staff of 40 reporters and 10 meteorologists and 30 of its 40 traffic reporters; it also announced that the channels would broadcast in a semi-automated manner, with live reports only running between 5:00 and 10:00 a.m. weekdays, unless significant traffic or severe weather conditions warrant extended coverage.

Programming

As with the rolling news-formatted channels under the News 12 umbrella, News 12 Traffic & Weather is divided into five channel feeds available in different regions of the New York metropolitan area (New York City, New Jersey, Long Island, the Hudson Valley and Connecticut), which are centralcasted from News 12's headquarters in Woodbury. The channel maintains a staff of five part-time and several freelance traffic reporters, and two on-camera meteorologists.

The channel broadcasts live segments during the morning commute period from 5:00 to 10:00 a.m. weekdays, but otherwise operates as a semi-automated service. Reports run in 15-minute intervals; live weather segments air every three hours on average, while weather radar and traffic camera imagery are broadcast live during every report. Weather segments airing the channel feature radar data, current temperatures, information on tides and pollen counts, and a seven-day forecast for the individual region. Traffic segments display maps with arrow flows to denote areas of congestion fed by satellite information, and live traffic cameras. Traffic reports and meteorologists employed by the channel do not appear on-camera during regular programming or extended coverage. For most of the network's existence, reporters and meteorlogists have used "Know Before You Go" as a sign-off tagline after traffic and weather update segments.

References

External links

• Official website