The California Channel or CalChannel was a public service news

television channel A television channel is a terrestrial frequency or virtual number over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the terrestrial or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with ...

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 The California State Senate is the upper house of the California State Legislature, the lower house being the California State Assembly. The State Senate convenes, along with the State Assembly, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. Due ...

Assembly Assembly may refer to: Organisations and meetings * Deliberative assembly, a gathering of members who use parliamentary procedure for making decisions * General assembly, an official meeting of the members of an organization or of their representa ...

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 The Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) was an American non-profit, nonpartisan organization founded in 1983, which provided 28 years of policy research and recommended improvements to political and government processes in California. It create ...

together with the Annenberg School of Communications at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

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 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.

References

Television channels and stations established in 1991 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2019 Legislature broadcasters in the United States Companies based in Sacramento, California Defunct local cable stations in the United States 1991 establishments in California 2019 disestablishments in California {{SacramentoCA-stub