A watershed event came in the final weeks of training, with the collapse of a former post office building on Manhattan's West Side.

[10] Following the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, NY1's feed was temporarily transmitted throughout the United States via Oxygen after the cable channel was unable to broadcast regular programming from its headquarters in the Manhattan neighborhood of Battery Park City, located near the World Trade Center.

In 2005, NY1 launched NY1 on Demand, a video-on-demand service for Time Warner Cable customers, available on channel 1111 in the provider's New York City system.

The reasoning for the name change was due to the perception by the company that Time Warner Cable subscribers did not know that the provider owns its regional news channels and are largely exclusive to its systems (NY1 is an exception, as it is also carried by Cablevision in the New York City market).

[12] The proposed name change for NY1 met with immediate controversy among Time Warner Cable's subscribers due to the familiarity with the brand and dissatisfaction with the provider's service by its New York City area customers.

[13][14][15] Time Warner Cable explored the possibility of keeping the NY1 brand while also including on-air references to its TWC ownership in some fashion, though executives confirmed that the rebranding would have no effect on the channel's news format or reporting style.

[20] On March 30, 2017, Charter Communications announced plans for a major restructuring of NY1, as several reporters were laid off and some shows were cancelled in the upcoming months.

"[23] On April 1, 2017, the day after this restructuring, Richard Aurelio highly criticized this move and admitted that NY1 has turned from a stalwart local news channel to a "money-making machine".

He also noted a deemphasis on local coverage that NY1 was supposed to focus on, especially after the cancellation of longtime shows The Call and NY Times Close Up, claiming that "they're really abandoning their commitment to the city.

It also acquired Spectrum News 1 (which debuted in the late 2000s as cn|2) in 2012, after it assumed cable franchise rights in much of Kentucky from Insight Communications.

The remainder of the half-hour is filled with mostly taped news segments heavily focusing on stories from the New York metropolitan area.

[25][9] A practice unique only to NY1 when it debuted, the 'one-man band' mode of journalism where the reporter records their own stories and surrounding narration has now become a standard with most local newscasts throughout the United States.

NY1 and its upstate sister channels have collaborated on (and sponsored) a number of political debates, coverage of these use Inside City Hall presentation.

Launched on July 25, 2005, The Call was a live, one-hour call-in and write-in news show hosted by John Schiumo.

The show gave viewers an inside preview of the most compelling reports from Sunday's Times, with the correspondents who filed the stories.

It featured Times reporters, columnists, and editors examining the week's top stories in the New York City area.

[46] Debuting on December 2, 2017, Spotlight NY was a 30-minute program hosted by weekend afternoon anchor Vivian Lee that explored the arts and culture of the city.

The channel features traffic and transit updates on five-minute intervals with separate feeds for Manhattan and Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Hudson Valley, respectively.