Saturday, April 4, 1998 | 4:21 a.m.
BRIAN GREENSPUN is editor of the Las Vegas SUN.
WELCOME TO the big time, Las Vegas.
For more than two decades, it has been my family's goal to bring to our community a 24-hour local news channel that would afford Southern Nevadans the chance to see, hear and learn much of what they need to know to be good, informed citizens. Tomorrow night, the dream turns to reality.
When my father, Hank Greenspun, started the Las Vegas SUN and, later, KLAS Channel 8, it was his desire to bring a second voice to the people of Southern Nevada. The only real media voice prior to that time was a close-minded, somewhat reactionary Review-Journal whose editor was of the mind that the only good government was no government and the only good public servant was someone who deserved to be publicly destroyed. The bad public servants were usually those related in some financial way to the R-J bosses.
Well, not much has changed in almost half a century, except that the small town of Las Vegas has grown to a metropolitan area of more than 1.2 million people who thirst for news and information of the kind that will help make their lives and those of their families better.
The Las Vegas SUN, of course, is still here and still battling against a reactionary voice down the street that still believes in the same old and tired anti-government mantra. In contrast, the SUN has always believed that we can and deserve to have a smaller and more efficient government that always remains responsive to the real needs of the people it serves.
But times do change and with the burgeoning growth of this place we all call home must come a better way to provide the public with the kind of information it needs to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities. That's where the all-new and newsy local cable channel comes in.
Las Vegas 1 is a combined effort of three of Las Vegas' premier news and communications companies. The SUN has joined with Prime Cable and our former sister company, KLAS Channel 8, to bring to our community what we believe will become the pre-eminent news and information source in Nevada.
It is an idea that Channel 8's owners, Landmark Communications, immediately recognized as the way to do more of what its Eyewitness News team was good at -- broadcast news with time to tell the whole story. And it is an effort that Prime Cable has always been pushing as the way to make sure its 300,000-plus customers receive the best in local news and information.
We are now barely 24 hours away from what will be the newest and most significant entry to Clark County's media lineup. I say it is the most significant because it will have as its goal a 24-hour live, local news format that will be unmatched in any part of the country. Because it is new, though, we will begin somewhat modestly.
Tomorrow night's debut will be live broadcasts from 9 to 10:30 p.m. And, despite what I just said, pulling that off is anything but a modest effort. It has taken Las Vegas 1's general manager, Bob Stoldal, and his team months and months worth of very hard and dedicated effort crammed into the space of just a few weeks.
There will be live anchors from the Eyewitness News desk as well as from the SUN. John Purvis, Deborah Levy and Anne Yeager will draw upon the combined news-gathering efforts of the SUN and KLAS in an effort to bring Las Vegas 1 viewers the most up-to-date news available anywhere in the valley.
But for all of our hard work to be successful, we'll need the involvement of every Las Vegan interested in learning more about the community in which we live. That means you'll need to tune in and pay attention. Let us know what you like, what you don't like and what more you'd like to see. That's the only way we'll get better.
And that's the way Las Vegas 1 will become the ONE in Las Vegas.
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