Local News
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July 25, 2008
New Jewish TV Network in Baltimore
Barbara Pash
Associate Editor
Aaron Horning calls it the “Jewish HBO.” That’s a quick and easy reference for viewers to identify The Jewish Channel, a premium cable television channel that is now available in the Baltimore metropolitan area through Verizon FiOS.
Mr. Horning is the publicist for TJC, which is headquartered in New York City under the egis of Compass Productions, the parent company.
TJC’s executives include people with extensive media backgrounds. Mr. Horning said one founder helped to launch the cable channel Showtime, while another founder, Erica Gruen, is the former CEO of the Food Network.
“The Jewish Channel is their first venture,” Mr. Horning said of the channel that began airing here last week on Verizon TV’s Internet service for a fee of $5.99 per month. “There may be more in the future.”
TJC originally launched in September 2007 in the New York metropolitan area. The channel made quite a splash with the Jewish press in the Big Apple, including stories in The New York Jewish Week and The Jewish Star. Even a mainstream newspaper, The New York Daily News, gave it a mention.
The September debut was for Cablevision subscribers only. Cablevison has 3.1 million subscribers, including those in such heavily Jewish areas as Brooklyn, Long Island and northern New Jersey. Mr. Horning said that of Cablevision’s subscribers, about 20,000 homes so far have signed up for TJC.
That number will undoubtedly increase since TJC last month became available on Time-Warner, the other giant cable station in the New York metropolitan market with 1.4 million subscribers.
It’s not by accident that Baltimore is now getting TJC. It is part of a national roll-out of the channel, with Los Angeles, Rhode Island, Philadelphia and Dallas-Fort Worth scheduled for the future.
The Baltimore launch is being conducted simultaneously with a launch in the Washington, D.C., area, according to Mr. Horning, and is based on a demographic study of what markets TJC seeks to cover.
“Baltimore is a great community,” he said. “It has our target demographic — people who are active and involved in Jewish events and programs. If they are likely to watch the History Channel [another cable channel] or go to a Jewish cultural event, they’re who we want.”
While other Jewish cable channels may focus on education, Mr. Horning emphasized the entertainment nature of TJC. The core of its content is films with Jewish and/or Israeli themes, some of which have appeared in film festivals.
“We offer dozens of films every month,” he said. “Only 10 percent of our movies are available on network TV. These are films people cannot get elsewhere.”
There is also original programming, some heavy and some light. On “Inside the Issues,” J.J. Goldberg, editorial director of The Jewish Daily Forward, talks with guests about the news of the day. Alana Newhouse, The Forward’s art and culture editor, hosts “Movie Talk.” A rabbis’ roundtable discusses the spiritual and theological issues affecting the Jewish community.
“We’re working on other programs, but those are what viewers will get now if they subscribe,” said Mr. Horning, who indicated that TJC would not mind if, as has happened in the New York area, another cable system offered it locally.
“There is a lot of interest in Jewish culture and movies that we feel TJC can tap into,” said Mr. Horning