Amid Layoffs, NY1's Co-Founder Laments An Abandonment Of The News Station's Purpose

A few weeks from his 89th birthday, Richard Aurelio laments a day he wishes he'd never seen.

“I wish they would have waited until I died,” Aurelio said of changes being made at NY1 News, the 24/7 cable news station he helped start 25 years ago while he headed Time Warner Cable.

“The station was meant as a gift to the people of New York. It was never supposed to be about making money."

Over the past week, NY1's now owner Charter Spectrum announced the station would be expected to turn a profit. As part of that, this week it canceled shows and told more than half a dozen long-time employees their services would no longer be needed.

Aurelio sees some of the moves as a betrayal of what NY1 is supposed to be.

When Time merged with Warner in 1989 Aurelio, who had been the head of Warner’s cable systems, was made the head of the newly-created Time Warner Cable. Steve Ross, the CEO of Time Warner, asked Aurelio if there was anything special that he wanted to do.

“I told him I think New York City needed it’s own 24/7 news station that just covered the city,” Aurelio told Patch. “I kept watching the local news and there was so little ‘local’ in it. For every half-hour, there would be ten minutes of commercials, ten minutes of national and international news.

“Then in the ten minutes of local news, you would take away the sports and weather and have very little time for hard local news.”

Aurelio believed the city deserved nothing less than its own station - devoted to telling the stories of the city and reporting the hard news that people needed to know.

“I started out as a reporter,” he said, pointing back to his time in the early 1950s when, fresh back from Army service in Korea, he went to work as a reporter for Newsday where he eventually became news editor.

It was also where, in 1952, he met famed newsman Jimmy Breslin, his friend of more than 60 years who died recently.

“Jimmy was at the Long Island Press and one of the things he showed was the importance of focusing on people to put faces on bigger issues,” Aurelio said. “And that was one of the important things about NY1.

“I wanted it to be a station that told the stories of the city, that covered the hard stories and let people know what was going on, not getting distracted by what was happening in Washington or London. There would be other places to go for that.”

Ross told Aurelio to come up with a business plan.

“We first explored partnerships with the networks who owned and operated their own stations in New York - Larry Tisch who owned CBS was particularly interested,” said Aurelio.

“Finally, we decided that we needed to be honest - this was not about making money. We felt an obligation to provide a community service to the city.”

Aurelio has worked, in one form or another, for the people of New York for decades. After his years at Newsday, he went to work for Jacob Javits, the senior senator from New York. He eventually became Javits' chief of staff and campaign manager before helping John Lindsey get elected mayor of New York.

Aurelio became his deputy mayor.

“All that gave me a real appreciation of making sure that people understand what’s happening behind the scenes,” he said.

“You can’t just cover crime and fires. You need to take the time to explain to people what’s going on.

“You can’t be worried about how the story will do in terms of ratings. It has to be about whether you are telling the viewers something important.’

Aurelio said that by covering government, focusing on stories that were important but not necessarily flashy, NY1 was carving out a niche, establishing its place in the city and state.

“The approach we took set us apart from the others, made us unique,” he said. “It made us a player in the city.”

Aurelio sees that specialness disappearing.

Mixed in with the announcements this week of people being let go was the news that two long-time shows - NY Close-up and The Call - have been canceled. While no one would ever confuse them for shows at the top of the ratings, they were very much part of the lifeblood of the station and the city.

New York Closeup, hosted by Sam Roberts of The New York Times and produced by Doris Bergman, has been a staple of the station for 25 years, a public affairs talk show that explored so much of what’s important to the city.

The Call, hosted by John Schiumo, was a one-hour show that developed out of the station’s coverage of the aftermath of September 11. It allows viewers to voice their concerns about city topics and interact with Schiumo through a variety of ways including phone, Skype, Twitter and email.

“These are the kind of things that show NY1 is a part of the city, listening to residents and responding,” said Aurelio. “By canceling these shows, they’re really abandoning their commitment to the city.

“It can’t be about entertainment and ratings and making money. It’s about doing what’s best for New York and the people who live there.”

Screen shot via Eldridge & Company.