Sundance Channel Coming to New York City on Sundays

by Eugene Hernandez

On the heels of its recent launch in Los Angeles, the Sundance Channel has gained limited carriage in Manhattan through a special arrangement with Time Warner Cable of New York City. Robert Redford and Time Warner Cable of New York City President Barry Rosenblum met the press yesterday afternoon at the Regency Hotel in Manhattan to announce the deal. The channel will be available on Sundays in Manhattan for an additional fee, beginning in June.

The move comes a few months after the channel's rival, The Independent Film Channel, debuted on Time Warner Cable as part of a subscription-based tier of new channels in New York City. All of Time Warner's nearly 500,000 customers will be eligible to buy a Sunday of the Sundance Channel for either a daily ($1.95), monthly ($4.95) or annual ($29.95) rate. The service will debut with a special free preview on June 7th. When asked if Time Warner Cable would offer this arrangement to other pay channels, Rosenblum stated, "I think there's a certain uniqueness to the product we're talking about today, and its not likely that we would offer something like this to a more broad-based service."

Sundance executives characterized the deal as the latest in a series of developments that have created momentum for the Channel, following the pre-Festival announcement of a new leadership team (Nickeodeon's Tom Harbeck and Fine Line's Liz Manne), the recent broader deal with Time Warner Cable, and the debut on Century Cable in Los Angeles on April 1st. Explaining the Sundance Channel mission to the media, Harbeck underscored what has become the clear message for the Channel's programming concept, "One of the promises of the brand is that if you don't see it here, you might not see it at all." Seeking to distinguish his Channel from the IFC, Redford echoed Sundance's focus on premiere work and categorized the Independent Film Channel as "essentially a library service." Clarifying the differences, Barry Rosenblum said that the Sundance Channel is differentiated by "product that perhaps hasn't been seen before," but commented that "the IFC is perhaps a little bit more broader-based, with some more library titles."

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As indicated by Redford, Sundance executives are clearly hoping that Sundance Channel Sundays plan will ultimately lead to a full time Manhattan run for the network. "Obviously Sundance would like to be here, as we are in other citites, seven days a week, 24 hours a day," he explained, but clarified that he understood the "complex" cable landscape in New York City made that difficult. In a conversation with indieWIRE following the conference, Rosenblum confirmed that indeed Time Warner's New York City system is "channel-locked" until digital technology allows for greater capacity, but insisted that there is no time-frame on the Sundance arrangement and confirmed that the extent of the Channel's carriage would be determined by "constant evaluation" of viewer response. Login to recommend this article » posted on April 28, 1998 Films to Snag Login to Leave a Comment »