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CNN Headline News used to be a channel which, as the name suggests, presented the headlines of news. Later on it changed its focus to covering crime stories, which is why it changed its name to HLN. But I'm interested in CNN Headline News in its original form.

From what I remember, in the old days, the network didn't just present news headlines. Instead it alternated: for some short period of time it would show headlines presented by CNN anchors, and then for an equal period of time it would air a show called "Comcast Newsmakers", a TV show produced by the cable company Comcast which interviewed newsmakers like politicians. These two things alternated pretty frequently, like every half hour or even shorter.

So my question is, what exactly was going with Comcast Newsmakers? Why did it alternate with regular programming so frequently? Did CNN Headline News sell half its airtime to local affiliates or something?

Note: I apologize if this is off-topic; the on-topic page said "TV news" is off-topic, but I didn't know whether that was referring to news about TV or TV news shows.

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Did CNN Headline News sell half its airtime to local affiliates or something?

Or something.

Hard information is difficult to find given that this is sometime in the past but insertion of this local programming (and especially the timing) seems to have been the source of some complaint.

Comcast supplied the programming in many areas and, according to some sources (complaint forum posts & message boards etc).

It's a legacy from the days when CNNHN didn't air real programs, and the last 5 minutes of each half hour was just the Lifestyle segment of the news. CNN allowed cable companies to replace this with a local segment, and apparently that contract is still in force even though the programming has changed.

and

This comes up from time to time. Comcast presumably has agreements with what is now HLN to insert the local news. It may take a while for those agreements to end. I think it has stopped in some areas.

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  • Wow, it looks like I'm not the only person who found this strange. And I'm surprised it lasted until November 2014. By the way, do you have any idea why Comcast would spend money producing and airing this show? Some people in that forum speculate that it may have been a way of pushing Comcast's corporate viewpoint.
    – Keshav Srinivasan
    Commented Jun 25, 2017 at 15:09

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