YNN provides 24/7 local news coverage on individual channels in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany.

Time Warner Cable has placed its owned and operated news channels – including YNN, NY1 News, NY1 Noticias, and News 14 Carolina – behind a TV Everywhere pay wall, requiring a video subscription with the cable operator to access anything beyond the latest news headlines:

The expanded video content includes a new web-only weather forecast, plus expanded long-form news interviews and extended on-location footage. In the future, Time Warner Cable TV subscribers will also be able to comment on our articles and receive e-mail alerts for top news stories.

In order to access our full, enhanced site, Time Warner Cable customers must sign in to YNN.com using their Time Warner Cable username and password – the same ID used to access TWC’s online bill pay service, stream TV shows from WatchESPN and HBO GO, access the TWC TV mobile apps, and use Remote DVR manager, Phone Manager and other TWC services.

This ID is free of charge to all TWC TV subscribers, and there is no additional charge for the enhanced website content. However, TWC subscribers with only high-speed data or phone service will need to upgrade to a video subscription to be able to fully access the upgraded site.

Customers can find their current account number on their latest Time Warner Cable paper or online bill. Viewing first requires an online account (available on TWC’s Registration Page by entering your e-mail address and following the registration instructions.)

YNN and other Time Warner Cable news sites used to offer video content for all site visitors. The change is part of Time Warner’s TV Everywhere project, designed to enhance the value of cable television subscriptions by offering accompanying enhanced web content — streamed video, live access, and on-demand video — over the company’s broadband service.

CNN faces another challenge to its declining brand as Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings prepares to launch a competing network, viewable only in airports.

Since 1992, CNN has dominated airport televisions with its CNN Airport Network, a live channel showing a custom-programmed feed of CNN that assures it will never televise graphic video coverage of commercial air accidents or incidents to its viewers.

CNN makes its money selling advertising opportunities on the channel, which it claims is seen by nearly 248 million air passengers yearly in more than 40 airports for an average of 47 minutes each.

But much like CNN’s declining ratings, airport travelers have increasingly tuned out the channel, preferring to spend their waiting time with their own mobile devices. As the times have changed, Clear Channel has proposed that airport viewing change with it.

The media conglomerate announced this week it is unveiling a new TV service for airports that will air programming from major television networks and cable channels. With more than 100 content deals signed thus far, ClearVision intends to give CNN a run for advertiser money.

Toby Sturek, Clear Channel’s head of airports, told Reuters the company is in discussions with about 20 mostly medium-sized airports to host the new service. ClearVision has already signed Raleigh-Durham International, where CNN Airport Network is not seen. ClearVision will launch in that North Carolina airport this November.

Sturek said airport owners want a variety of programming to show waiting passengers, and CNN no longer cuts it with advertisers, which he says have shown little interest in supporting CNN’s venture. Sturek says they simply do not see the value of advertising on the airport channel. Still, industry insiders estimate CNN Airport Network earns the Time Warner-owned news channel at least $10 million annually.

ClearVision intends to challenge CNN’s dominance by giving viewers a greater range of programming, and starting next spring, its viewing monitors will also act as Wi-Fi hotspots, letting mobile devices connect and stream the same content for free to enhance a personal viewing experience. Because the service will be available over Wi-Fi, viewers will avoid eating away their monthly data allowance with wireless providers.

Eventually, ClearVision intends to serve up multiple channels of video content. Sturek says that will allow one viewer to watch the latest business news headlines while another watches “America’s Got Talent.”

New Yorkers know the end of summer is upon us when the New York State Fair opens every year at the end of August in centrally-located Syracuse. But at this year’s fair, Time Warner Cable has also made it clear the season for its 4G mobile broadband service has also come to at least a temporary end.

Fierce Cable’s Steve Donohue noticed big changes at the cable company exhibit:

When I attended the New York State Fair outside of Syracuse last year, the Intelligo mobile hotspot–which Time Warner Cable offered to subscribers through a partnership with Clearwire –was one of the hottest pieces of technology that it had on display. Time Warner Cable said that it tripled the number of 4G wireless hotspots that it sold at the fair in 2011 compared to 2010. Here in Central New York, where subscribers don’t have access to the Wi-Fi networks that Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Cablevision offer in the New York area, apparently there was a significant demand for mobile hotspots.

‘Intelligone’

This year, the mobile broadband technology is all gone. Both Time Warner Cable and Comcast are no longer selling access to Clearwire’s 4G WiMAX service marketed under each cable company’s brand. Once it became clear they were partnering up with Verizon Wireless to sell each other’s products, the days of Clearwire were numbered.

Both cable companies are still supporting existing Clearwire mobile broadband customers, but for how long nobody is certain. Verizon Wireless’ products have not yet appeared on the western or central New York regional Time Warner Cable websites, but may be forthcoming soon.

Meanwhile, Time Warner’s push this year is on home automation and security. The company has been test marketing its IntelligentHome service in Rochester for quite awhile and has now expanded to other upstate areas. The service offers a respectable suite of traditional security products apps ranging from watching your pets over webcams to controlling your home’s heating and cooling system from remote locations.

In 2010, Time Warner Cable featured celebrity Mike O’Malley at the Fair to shake hands and sign autographs. This year, they have a player and “spokesmodel” from the Syracuse Crunch, a minor league pro hockey team. Time Warner Cable also hired a juggler on a unicycle to attract crowds to their pavilion.

Despite glowing media reports about Time Warner Cable’s announcement it is investing $25 million to expand its fiber optic network in parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, in fact the fiber expansion is part of a previously-reached franchise agreement with New York City officials and will only be available to large business customers that can afford the asking price.

Time Warner Cable’s press release, which generated favorable media coverage in The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, focused considerable attention on fiber upgrades for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, since reborn as a modern tech-friendly business park.

TWCBC also announced that the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, a 501(c)(3) organization, will receive a state-of-the-art Time Warner Cable Learning Lab in its Employment Center, located inside the massive complex and accessible to the public.

“We are very pleased to work with the City of New York to make significant investments to ensure that this city has the technology infrastructure to successfully compete in a worldwide marketplace,” said Ken Fitzpatrick, President of Time Warner Cable Business Class, East Region. “Our fiber optic network provides dedicated Internet access at incredible speeds and high-bandwidth capabilities to serve the communications needs of any business.”

Time Warner Cable was required to make its investment in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as part of its franchise agreement with NYC officials.

Time Warner Cable did not, however, provide this investment out of the goodness of their heart. They were required to under the terms of the current franchise agreement the company signed with city officials:

[Time Warner Cable] will install, at its own expense, the fiber optic and coaxial cables and related facilities and equipment needed to provide its service to the buildings and occupants throughout the Brooklyn Navy Yard facility.

Time Warner Cable is also extending its network to more commercial establishments throughout the city, in keeping with its previously-announced interest in expanding services to business customers. Nothing new to see here either.

That did not stop Bloomberg News from comparing Time Warner’s network expansion with Google’s gigabit network in Kansas City:

Time Warner Cable Inc. will expand fiber-optic lines to businesses in New York, a move that boosts Internet speeds as much as 20 times and provides an East Coast counterpoint to Google’s ultrafast network in Kansas City.

The company faces a threat from Google more than 1,000 miles away in Kansas City, where the Internet-search giant is building a fiber-optic network as a test project. Time Warner Cable is the main broadband provider for the area, which spans parts of Missouri and Kansas. While Google’s network will be available to both companies and households, Time Warner Cable’s New York fiber network is focused on businesses.

Google’s network initially will only be sold to residential customers, which are the primary targets for the service. Time Warner Cable’s fiber backbone network primarily works in tandem with its coaxial cable network and does not provide a fiber to the premises connection except for the company’s largest corporate customers.

Time Warner Cable Business Class sells different speeds and services to commercial clients. Most choose speeds considerably lower than 1,000Mbps because of the cost.

What was missing from the coverage is the fact ordinary residential Time Warner Cable customers in New York City will not benefit from these fiber upgrades — they are targeted only to commercial clients. Residential customers will continue to receive the same hybrid fiber-coax service they always have from the cable company.

If New York customers want fiber service, they will have to buy it from Verizon, assuming FiOS has made its way to your borough and neighborhood.

Some Time Warner Cable customers have received e-mail notifications of a security breach involving legacy Road Runner Safe Storage accounts:

Dear Customer,

We are writing to inform you of a recent security incident involving your Road Runner Safe Storage account, which may have exposed your password. Recently, an unauthorized third party accessed one of our databases. As soon as we learned of the attack, we limited all access to the database and thus the vulnerability was eliminated. However, as a result of this incident, your account credentials may have been exposed.

The database that was accessed contained information you would have entered when you first created your account, including your name, e-mail address, user ID and password, your hint question/answer, and if you ever purchased more storage, possibly your billing address. Please be assured that no credit card numbers were accessed as a result of the attack and that none of the content that you previously stored with us could have been accessed.

Road Runner Safe Storage is a remote data storage and backup service provided to Time Warner Cable broadband customers that offered 500MB of free, “secure online storage.” The service is operated by Symantec/SwapDrive.com but appears to have been largely forgotten, with no apparent functioning provision for new accounts to register. Time Warner Cable discontinued its “Road Runner” branding earlier this year.

Long standing customers who enrolled in the service years ago may find a copy of the notification e-mail either in their inbox, or in the case of Gmail, in the spam folder.