The area's only local television station is poised to go regional, as a cable distribution agreement extends its reach farther up the Interstate 215 corridor and into San Bernardino County.

KZSW, which remade itself as a Southwest County broadcaster after a move from Hemet in 2005, will reach 70,000 viewers in Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga and northern San Bernardino as Channel 327 starting next month, officials at the station said. Charter Communications will carry the station's signal on the digital system used by most of its subscribers. Another few thousand Charter subscribers receive an analog signal that is being replaced with a digital signal.

The new agreement follows two deals the station made last year with Verizon Communications, whose fiber-optic cables carry Internet traffic and television signals throughout much of Southwest County, and Mediacom, a cable operator in Menifee and Sun City.

Station officials say the deals have made KZSW available to about 120,000 viewers. That number couldn't be independently confirmed, but station officials say they have hired a telephone surveying firm to estimate its reach and viewership. A relative handful of Southwest County viewers' antennas pick up the station's signal, which is broadcast on Channel 27 from a hilltop in northern Murrieta.

Chief executive Kevin Page, whose family owns the station, said its news crews will begin making frequent trips to cover events in the Charter area. The station doesn't plan to expand its news staff of a dozen members, Page said, meaning that less Southwest County news could end up being aired as the station selects news stories from a larger pool of events. The station's reports air once in the early morning, once at noon and three times each evening.

Page said last week that the station plans eventually to cover news and events throughout western Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County. To that end, the station has pursued a distribution deal with Time-Warner, the dominant cable provider throughout Southern California. The company recently acquired the assets of Comcast and bankrupt Adelphia.

"Because of consolidation, it's more likely that it will be a much bigger area," Page said. "Until then, we don't know. We're not making any program changes."

The station was launched in 1996 as KHEM, airing religious programs for Hemet-area churches. It expanded its offerings and began to accept paid advertising in 2004. The station relaunched as KZSW in October 2005 after opening a new suite of studios on Business Park Drive in Temecula.

- Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2615, or cbagley@californian.com.