Cablevision shutters Newsday Westchester

Newsday Westchester closed Wednesday, just 14 months after the digital-only news service was first launched.

Cablevision Systems Corp., which owns Newsday, confirmed it had pulled the plug but did not disclose how many employees would be laid off as a result. The company has said that readers who paid for subscriptions to the service will be issued refunds.

As late as Wednesday afternoon, the Newsday Westchester mobile app was sending push notifications regarding the federal Supreme Court rulings. But, after an internal meeting at which staff members were notified of the closure, Twitter and Facebook pages for the service were deleted.

Today, the Newsday Westchester website displays a message reading, “The Newsday Westchester-Rockland digital-only service is no longer available.” It also links to the sites of Long Island Newsday and News12, which are also owned by Cablevision.

Cablevision purchased Newsday, the Long Island-based daily newspaper, in 2009. Newsday Westchester launched in April 2012 and provided news coverage in Westchester and Rockland counties, as well as elsewhere in the seven-county Hudson Valley region. It was viewed as a direct competitor to the Journal News, the Westchester-based daily newspaper owned by Gannett Company, Inc.

Recently, Cablevision has weathered some rough financial waters as a result of declining revenues from its cable service in New York markets in the face of competition from Verizon and other providers. This week, Standard & Poor”™s Ratings Service lowered its outlook for the company from stable to negative after Cablevision reported a first quarter loss. The company has been in the midst of restructuring and it sold all but one of its 42 Clearview Cinemas theaters to Bow Tie Cinema, which is headquartered in Ridgefield, Conn. (Though it retained ownership of  one New York City site, management of that property was leased to Bow Tie.)

Operation of the Long Island Newsday print version and website, News12 networks, and amNewYork, Cablevision’s New York City publication, will not be affected, the company said.