PORT ANGELES – Peninsula News Network, the locally owned cable television news channel, will close Friday after more than 15 years of news programming.

Co-owner Dennis Bragg said he will be a news director for KPAX and KAJ television in western Montana.

He said that without direct financial support from Northland Cable or its successor and current cable franchise holder Wave Broadband, “it’s been difficult” to operate PNN, which appears nightly on Wave channel 3.

“Changes in the local advertising picture will make it difficult to expand PNN in the future. With more national chain stores that don’t spend money on local advertising, and an increasing number of festivals competing for limited dollars, it simply becomes too difficult to bring television to a market the size of Clallam County.”

PNN’s final week features a retrospective of clips from the past 15 years of local television.