ABC News is quietly gunning to launch what would be the newest kind of cable channel on the block – a heavy blend of local and national news.

It comes in the form of ABC News Now, which first appeared on digital cable tiers across the U.S. last month as a part of a test to showcase ABC’s gavel-to-gavel coverage of the political conventions.

The test has also landed ABC a toe-hold on cable. ABC News has long coveted its own cable news channel. Until it fell apart last year, the network spent years in talks with CNN about a merger.

ABC News Now can be seen on several digital cable distributors across the U.S., including Time Warner’s channel 730. Until now, it has been available only on the Internet and high-end cell phones with special software.

“All I’m concentrating on is making sure that the content, the general programming and the quality are as good as they can be,” ABC News senior vice president Paul Slavin says.

At the moment, the network offers its own commercial free, casual coverage of national news (anchors like Peter Jennings and Sam Donaldson are loose with their commentary and sometimes crack jokes) and repeats of daily ABC News programming like “Good Morning America.”

In the long run, Slavin hopes ABC News Now will offer a huge local news element that would offer coverage, features and weather produced by ABC affiliates around the U.S., like WABC/Ch. 7 and national news from the network.

“That’s what would differentiate us from channels like MSNBC and CNN,” says Slavin.