News 12 Networks
regional cable news networks
The News 12 Networks are a group of regional cable news television channels in the New York metropolitan area that are owned by Optimum Communications. All channels provide rolling news coverage 24 hours a day, focusing primarily on regions of the metro area outside Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.
History
The first of the channels, News 12 Long Island, was launched by Cablevision on December 15, 1986, to customers on its Long Island system, as the first 24-hour regional cable news service in the United States. Over the years Cablevision expanded the reach of News 12 by adding additional networks across its footprint.
The network was formerly operated by Newsday Media Holdings and presided over by Patrick Dolan, son of Newsday majority owner Charles Dolan and brother of James L. Dolan. Altice USA, who bought Cablevision in 2016, retained Dolan as a senior network advisor.
In December 2005, News 12 Networks generated criticism when it changed its website and mobile app to a pay subscription service for those who live outside the News 12 viewing area. The News 12 website is offered free of charge to subscribers of Optimum, Spectrum or Xfinity. This has been used as a marketing tool against customers signing up for Verizon FiOS, or satellite providers DirecTV or Dish Network, which are available in many of the areas News 12 covers. At one point Cablevision even made the network's slogan, "Only on Cable.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17071643. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 2016 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “News 12 Networks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.