The California Channel
The California Channel or CalChannel was a public service news television channel funded by the California Cable Television Association.
History
The channel started out by operating every weekday from 9:00am to 3:30pm; broadcasting proceedings of the California Senate, Assembly and their various committees. It now runs twenty four hours a day reaching 5.5 million subscribers across the state. The channel was created by the Center for Governmental Studies together with the USC [Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism|Annenberg School of Communications] at the University of Southern California and first broadcast on February 4, 1991. In 1993, the California Cable Television Industry assumed responsibility for governance and funding for the channel.In mid-August 2019, the CCTA announced the network's closure. The organization and network cited the November 2016 passage of 2016 [California Proposition 54|Proposition 54], a ballot initiative which required all legislative proceedings to be recorded and made public with posting them on the Internet 72 hours before a vote was tallied, and be accessible for twenty years after a proceeding. As the Senate and Assembly have internal video and radio news services, the CCTA considered The California Channel effectively a duplicative service to those efforts. The legislature has since made efforts to retain the network and its coverage before the network's closure, to keep proceedings public on a televised venue in some form. On October 15, 2019, the channel ceased operations.