Cable Channel

Si TV has secured more than $60 million in financing from a group that includes major pay television distributors and several private equity investors including Time Warner Inc., EchoStar Communications and DND Equity Partners. The Los Angeles-based cable channel, which targets Latino viewers, launched in February with English-language programming that targets 18- to 34-year-old second- and third-generation Latinos.

For a half-hour lesson in the correct method of battery and pesticide disposal, local residents can turn on cable Channel 3. Residents can use the public-access channel to take a closer look at Mayor Phil Sansone, who sometimes draws chuckles from audiences at City Council meetings with his colorful comments. Or they can check out news on weekend social activities.

Six months before City Council members Eric Garcetti and Janice Hahn stand for reelection, they can be seen four times a week on cable Channel 35, touring city restaurants on the show "Flavors of Los Angeles." Also shown repeatedly on the channel, available on cable systems throughout Los Angeles, are Mayor James K. Hahn and others running for reelection talking about how they are making the city a great place to live.

President Clinton will sit down on election eve with Black Entertainment Television talk-show host Tavis Smiley for his first one-on-one interview since January, executives at the cable channel said Tuesday. Under the agreement with BET, Clinton is expected to spend much of Monday's interview discussing the Tuesday election and its possible effect on the White House and will encourage viewers to go out and vote, BET officials said.

When Viacom launched TV Land in April 1996, it pulled out all the stops for the new cable channel. The company decorated the Paramount Pictures lot and served wine, shrimp and roast beef to thousands of celebrants. A-list stars of nostalgia TV, including Barbara Eden, Eddie Albert and Rose Marie, were on hand. The launch of My Pet Television Network last month was somewhat more modest.

Al Gore wants to make it clear: He's no Al Franken. Backed by a roster of media heavyweights, the former vice president said Tuesday that he was jumping into the cable television business with a new channel aimed primarily at young Americans in their 20s. But the 56-year-old Gore stressed that he was not out to play politics.

Westinghouse/CBS will launch its first cable channel by March, drawing on programming from the entertainment, news and sports divisions of its television networks and from its TV stations and affiliates. Named for CBS' eye-shaped logo, the channel, called Eye on People, will have a biographical bent, focusing on historical and contemporary personalities both in and out of the news.

Cable programmer Discovery Communications Inc. on Tuesday began its march into Hollywood by plucking a veteran TV executive to run its TLC cable channel, which it hopes to turn into a more popular destination for women. The hiring of Angela Shapiro-Mathes, president of Fox TV Studios and a former Walt Disney Co. executive, represents a dramatic departure for the Silver Spring, Md.-based company. Discovery to date has largely operated outside the media power centers of L.A. and New York.

Though the five-month writers' strike has pushed the start of the networks' fall television season into the early days of winter, TV fans will be introduced to some new shows as usual in September. Local television stations and several cable channels have stockpiled an array of new and revamped game shows, tabloid-style news shows, talk shows and medical shows that, for the most part, have been immune to the ravages of the strike and will begin to hit the small screen as early as Monday.

Kids have Nickelodeon and Disney. Women have Lifetime and Oxygen. Jocks have ESPN, and nerds have G4. Gays and lesbians have Logo. There's even Animal Planet, for pet people. Everyone has a TV channel these days, except senior citizens. The fastest-growing and wealthiest segment of the population has been ignored or forgotten by Hollywood's broadcast and cable networks. Until now. John Erickson, a 68-year-old who made his fortune building large retirement communities, has created RLTV, a cable channel designed for the AARP-adjacent.