The News of Texas was a statewide newscast in Texas. It was syndicated to 27 affiliate stations in the state by the San Antonio

San Antonio, Texas

San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...

-based Texas Network

Texas Network

The Texas Network was a San Antonio, Texas-based media company that was founded in 1998 and disestablished in 2000. It produced radio and television broadcasts, as well as Internet content, at its height. Its flagship program was The News of Texas, a statewide newscast syndicated to 27 television...

 (TXN) between 1999 and 2000.

History

In July 1998, TXN started up, just as Belo Corporation (owners of a chain of Texas television stations - KENS, WFAA, KHOU-TV

KHOU-TV

KHOU is the CBS affiliate television station in Houston, Texas. Serving Greater Houston, it is owned by the Belo Corporation and broadcasts on digital and PSIP channel 11...

, and later KVUE) founded Texas Cable News

TXCN

Texas Cable News is a regional 24-hour cable news television network based in Dallas, Texas. The service is owned by Belo Corporation, and operates out of the Belo campus in downtown Dallas....

 (TXCN). TXCN launched easily in early 1999, gaining carriage in San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston, but Time Warner Cable

Time Warner Cable

Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...

 Austin refused to carry TXCN due to starting up News 8 Austin (now YNN Austin), one in a long list of Time Warner Cable 24-hour

24-hour news cycle

The 24-hour news cycle arrived with the advent of television channels dedicated to news, and brought about a much faster pace of news production with increased demand for stories that can be presented as news, as opposed to the day-by-day pace of the news cycle of printed daily newspapers...

 cable news

United States cable news

Cable news refers to television channels devoted to television news broadcasts, with the name deriving from the proliferation of such networks during the 1980s with the advent of cable television. In the United States, early networks included CNN in 1980, Financial News Network in 1981, and CNN2 ...

 television channels. (Belo did not own a station in Austin at the time.) TXCN was billed as a regional CNN

CNN

Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

, with news and weather for the entire state of Texas. In the summer of 1998, KVUE

KVUE

KVUE, virtual channel 24 , is the local Austin, Texas-based ABC affiliate, owned by Belo Corporation. Its transmitter is located in West Lake Hills, just west of Downtown...

, the ABC affiliate in Austin, was acquired by Belo, adding a fourth Texas ABC station to the Belo mix as News 8 Austin started broadcasting.

Meanwhile, TXN was mainly signing up WB, UPN, and independent stations, which was a major concern. Fox affiliates were skeptical, and Big Three network affiliates were not considering the News of Texas at all. KNVA

KNVA

KNVA is the CW-affiliated television station for Austin, Texas. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 49 from a transmitter in the West Austin Antenna Farm north of West Lake Hills. Owned by 54 Broadcasting, the station is operated by the LIN TV Corporation through a local...

, one of the major hopes, pulled out of The News of Texas due to the startup of a KXAN-TV

KXAN-TV

KXAN-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station for Austin, Texas. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 21 from a transmitter in the West Austin Antenna Farm north of West Lake Hills. Owned by the LIN TV Corporation, the station is sister to MyNetworkTV affiliate KBVO and...

 newscast. But KNVA would end up airing the News of Texas once the newscast was dropped. The News of Texas finally hit the air in January 1999.

The News of Texas was not a technical masterpiece, either. A "cannon-boom" music theme and amateurish graphics, along with internal splits (the head of TXN was asking for drug tests) were problematic for TXN's news department. In 2000, TXCN expanded its carriage immensely with a 10-year deal on most of Texas' Time Warner Cable systems. A 2000 refresh gave it a new news theme (its own Texas Highway by Stephen Arnold Music

Stephen Arnold Music

Founded in 1993 by Stephen Arnold, Stephen Arnold Music is a Dallas-based music production company, specializing in Television news music. With additional offices in San Diego, California and a studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the company services television networks, cable channels, TV stations,...

) - but affiliates were dropping the program quickly.

Meanwhile, TXN's news product eventually moved slowly to PBS stations such as Austin's KLRU

KLRU

KLRU is the local Public Broadcasting Service member public television station in Austin, Texas, in the United States of America.-History:...

, giving it reliable carriage but not advertising. On 31 July 2000, after losing $45 million in news and even after an eleventh-hour restructuring which saw the layoffs of 40 of 120 staffers, The News of Texas signed off the air and TXN folded, leaving 13 affiliates to replace the programs it offered and 80 people out of work.

External links

The News of Texas open, 1999 (with first theme and graphics)
The News of Texas open, 2000 (with updated presentation)