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Date: March 8, 1999

Section:

Location: Trenton

Title: Cable Operators Vote To Close Down CTN

Author: By Rob Garver

Deck: The 17-year-old network was losing lots of viewers and lots of money.

Story:

The Trenton-based Cable Television Network (CTN), a joint venture of the state”s cable television providers, will cease operations on June 30, according to the New Jersey Cable Telecommunications Association (NJCTA). The network is in failing financial health and has suffered a decline in viewership in recent years.

A member of the CTN board of directors, which made the decision to close the network down, says that financial considerations “weighed very heavily on our decision.” CTN was “losing a lot of money,” he says, and “subsidizing that was no longer an option.”

Karen Alexander, president of the NJTCA, is overseeing the dissolution of the network. She says that efforts to keep CTN alive simply failed. “The board of directors, working with executive director Jim DeBold, had pursued a number of different avenues to try to beef up revenues,” Alexander explains. “It just did not turn out the way they expected, in part because of lack of interest among the viewers and in part because not as many cable systems are carrying CTN anymore.”

Some sources note that the financial management of the network did little to help keep it in the black. In spite of the network”s poor financial health, DeBold”s company car was a pricey Jeep Grand Cherokee Orvis edition. In addition, they say, the company paid for such things as multiple cellular phones for individual employees, expense account meals and, in past years, high-priced hotel hospitality suites at the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce”s annual trip to Washington, D.C.

As recently as November, sources say, CTN required an emergency infusion of cash in order to meet monthly obligations, including its payroll. DeBold did not respond to requests for comment.

Alexander would not discuss the management of CTN”s financial affairs. “We”re in the process of trying to shut down an operation that has been very popular among some in New Jersey for a long time,” she says. “It is not an easy thing to end something, and we are trying to make it as comfortable and smooth as possible for everybody. It is not in the industry”s interest to throw stones.”

Most sources agree that the board”s decision to dissolve the network was driven to some degree by changes in the cable industry. The network was founded in 1982 as a source for New Jersey-focused programming, and a forum for public-access cable television, at a time when there was no other provider of those services in the state.

Cable industry insiders say that, financial considerations aside, the network has simply outlived its usefulness. “I don”t know that CTN fills a big void anymore,” says Bob Smith, director of public and government relations for Comcast”s Northeast region. “There are other homes for the type of programming that is on CTN.” CTN”s standard fare includes a large amount of paid programming, numerous talk shows focusing on religion, health, cooking and politics, and gavel-to-gavel coverage of the state legislature. Much of the material, with the exception of the coverage of the legislature, is available on other networks.

The NJCTA, says Alexander, is helping program producers whose shows appear on CTN to find other outlets for their work. Gavel-to-gavel coverage of the legislature will continue, she says, although the exact method by which it will be taped and distributed isn”t yet known.

One industry source sums up the attitude of the state”s cable providers toward the doomed network: “Maybe if they were making money, or breaking even, you could live with the fact that the programming is largely duplicative. But the combination of the both–that”s the driver. No one has ever looked at CTN as a profit center, but it shouldn”t be costing a lot of extra money in emergency assistance all the time either.”