Texas Cable News

**Texas Cable News (TXCN)** is an American regional cable news television channel that was owned by the Gannett Company. The channel operated out of offices in Dallas, Texas, located on Young Street in the city's downtown district.

## Background[edit]

The 24-hour channel launched on January 1, 1999, and was founded by its original owner, the Belo Corporation. TXCN combined the news staffs of four television stations in Texas owned by Belo at the time – ABC affiliates WFAA in Dallas and KVUE in Austin (acquired from Gannett shortly after this channel's launch), and CBS affiliates KHOU in Houston and KENS in San Antonio – in addition to *The Dallas Morning News* (which was co-owned with TXCN and the four television stations under common ownership until 2008) and the company's Washington, D.C. news bureau. During the first few years on the air, most of the cable operators have aired TXCN on channel 38 as advertised by the channel itself. In addition to rolling news, weather, and sports coverage, TXCN had public affairs, sports-talk, and entertainment news programming. In its early years, the *Fort Worth Star-Telegram* has called TXCN "CNN Headline News with a Texas flavor."

When necessary, TXCN would also cover breaking news events outside of Texas, especially during the September 11, 2001 attacks.

On December 4, 2004, Belo announced the layoffs of 45 of the channel's 75 staffers. This resulted in the programming on Texas Cable News being scaled down on January 1, 2005. Belo attributed the failure of Texas Cable News to a lack of distribution on cable providers in Texas' largest television markets. From that time until closure, TXCN aired repackaged content from the aforementioned stations in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. All original programming, with the exception of weather segments and occasional original programming, was dropped along with on-air talent, except for weather department staff.

In 2008, Belo decided to split its broadcasting and newspaper interests into separate companies. TXCN remained with the broadcasting side, which retained the Belo Corporation name, while the newspapers (including *The Dallas Morning News*) were spun off to the similarly named *A.H.* Belo Corporation. However, the former corporate cousins maintained a news partnership. On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire Belo for $2.2 billion, including TXCN and its sister stations.[1] The deal was granted FCC approval on December 20, and was finalized on December 23.[2][3]

On March 3, 2015, WFAA's website announced that TXCN was shutting down after 16 years. A meeting between the owner, Gannett Company, and various cable outlets have agreed to shut down the statewide news channel but they decide to keep it as the next company will help keep the channel ongoing. It was slated to go off the air on April 1, 2015, but they continue the channel. in which the channel continue operations before the 11:00 p.m. cycle of the repackaged newscasts. On April 2, 2015, TXCN continues the operations and repackaged Gannett Texas Newscasts. As of June 25, 2015, the channel along with all Texas stations owning by BELO and Gannett is owned by TEGNA. Starting in April 1, 2016, all original programming, including weather segments and occasional original programming, was revived along with new and recent on-air talent staffs, including for weather department staff as TXCN change it background to TEGNA Graphics that WFAA that is usually.

## Website[edit]

In addition to the network itself, TXCN has maintained a website, which listed headlines and weather reports across the state, sports scores, Texas Lottery results, daily Texas History, programming guide for TXCN's original shows, anchor biographies, and a channel finder, and an outdated channel guide (still listed that DFW was being served by Comcast and Houston being served by Time Warner Cable even though the 2 clusters swapped providers in August 2006). On May 1, 2015, the website is upgrade to also including the TXCN logo next to a list of all Texas-area Gannett stations--including the recently acquired London Broadcasting assets logo (now spun off to TEGNA Media as of June 29, 2015) and their corresponding websites. It upgrade to 2017 TEGNA Graphic Website first used on one USA TEGNA station in late 2017

## Former Programs[edit]

*These shows were originally produced for TXCN prior to 2004.*[5][6]
* *The Big Movie Show* (hosted by Gary Cogill)
* *Chevy Sports Day*
* *Ford SportsTalk*
* *High School Football Edge*
* *Lady Raider Sports* (hosted by Marsha Sharpe)
* *Lone Star Park Live*
* *Project Texas*
* *Red Raider Sports* (hosted by Bob Knight)
* *State of the Game*
* *Texas Now*
* *TXCN Early Connect*
* *TXCN Firstcast*
* *TXCN Nightwatch*
* *TXCN Prime*