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ABC 11 WTVD adding to their afternoon news block

R

RadioDaze

ABC 11 has announced it will fill its 4-5 pm Oprah Winfrey Show timeslot by starting ABC 11 Eyewitness News an hour earlier for a grand total of 2.5 hours of afternoon local news, putting them on an hour ahead of main competitor WRAL-TV. Over the past 30 or so years, WRAL and WTVD have more or less quickly matched each other newscast-for-newscast, with, for example, one starting a 5:30 show and the other following suit, one starting morning news at 4:30 a.m and the other doing likewise.

The ABC 11 move to news beginning at 4pm will be interesting for WRAL, which, since 1993 has been one of the few CBS affiliates in the nation to air the Young and the Restless at 4 pm instead of its regularly scheduled network time of 12:30 pm. The move was made to counterprogram against Oprah, but they have an hourlong noon news show taking up half of the network-scheduled time.
 
ncscradiogeek said:
yay we can now see the same stories repeated a few more times a day.
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If you spend 2 and a half hours a day watching the same TV newscast, dude, you need a hobby. Come on man, you're smarter than that. No one watches an entire newscast from start to finish. No one under the age of 65, anyway.
 
I recall back in the 80s when WRAL went to an hour newscast at 6PM - WTVD countered with a promotion "all the news you need in a half-an-hour, not half the night!"
 
Always good to see more local programming even if it is news. I hope they will add a new feature or two in the new expanded time slot. Also they're saving whatever the cost was for the syndicated programming and getting more local avails too. I remember when channel 8 in the triad started their 5pm news about 1994, it was a novel idea and now everyone is doing it. Adding more news programming also helps justify the cost of the news operation even if they do repeat the stories. Again, its good that somebody is doing more local and not resorting to the tabloid syndication syndrome with the same T & T stories.
 
There is already too much local news on these triangle TV outlets now, since we have the internet and other sources to find out what's going on, you would think twice about adding another newscast, many years ago, WNCN(aka "NBC 17") tried a 4:00 News and failed, of course they were up against Oprah on WTVD at the time, i can see starting news at 5:00
in the afternoon, but 4:00 in the Raleigh/Durham market?, i don't think so.
 
The marginal cost of additional newscasts is low; the on-air talent and production staff are already on payroll, and the stories have already been produced and edited. I'm not surprised that a station would choose to expand newscasts, therefore, instead of paying incremental hard dollars for additional programming. The viewership won't be high, but so what. And if the station decides to go in a different programming direction at a later date, they're not locked into a contract with a syndicator.
 
WNCN (or, historically, any station other than WRAL and WTVD) is not the best bellwether of news performance in the Raleigh-Durham market.

Since beginning their news efforts in 1995, WNCN has done several interesting things to try to gain traction ratingswise. While several have bombed (the aforementioned 4pm news and the "New Generation of News"-format) and more recent efforts have showed some modest growth, WNCN is not on par with the established news brands of WTVD and WRAL, mostly because those two had the market to themselves for about 30 years.

Outside of mornings, there are times that both WRAL and WTVD have a news presence while WNCN does not (noon, 5p, 5:30p and 10pm). WTVD (and, if they follow suit, WRAL) would have a much better shot than WNCN at making a 4pm news work.
 
In my (non-professional) opinion, I do not think WTVD is expecting folks to watch the entire broadcast. I would just tune in for 30 minutes or so and then watch the 11:00pm (or 10:00pm) broadcast to follow up on the earlier news, and of course "Count On Chris" for the current weather update. (not a plug)

Stuart
 
So, anyone have a guess how long before local television stations have to go all local? Networks have cable channels and many devote their programming dollars to them because there is no middle man involved (outside of the cable company - and the revenue often goes the other way).

Can you see several, over-the-air versions of New Carolina 14 at some point in the future?
 
XTalker said:
So, anyone have a guess how long before local television stations have to go all local? Networks have cable channels and many devote their programming dollars to them because there is no middle man involved (outside of the cable company - and the revenue often goes the other way).

Can you see several, over-the-air versions of New Carolina 14 at some point in the future?
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It would be all local like when some smaller stations went with the video shows back in the 80s!
Just throw in some news, a few rants, and a little seltzer down the pants (comedy). :D
 
I think you are right, quad. I can even see things like high school football being televised on local stations. And call-in shows (taking a cue from talk radio). They already do call-in segments in their morning shows.
 
A lot of people would say "the stations gave up" if they stop programming the same syndicated stuff other stations and cable and the internet are showing ["copying, following the leader"].

To me though, like you said, they aren't too far from the point of "copycat saturation" where there needs to be more locally-originated programming, whether it's the radio guys doing a show late on Saturday nights or the churches doing shows on Sunday mornings, or high school sports, or some kind of business directory show, or some taped musical concerts sponsored by nightclubs and venues, or even in some markets, kids sports. There's a few LP stations like WGSR already doing this, but not enough of them are.
 
The biggest fear any TV Station owner has is having their Network go direct to the consumer. HDTV literally forces that, there is a very small percentage of television viewers receiving ONLY over-the-air signals. If the networks didn't have their O&O Stations; it wouldn't surprise me if they eliminated the affiliate system to deal direct with cable and satellite.

That leaves the local station out of the mix and if they are not "doing local"; they might as well go dark.
 
XTalker said:
I think you are right, quad. I can even see things like high school football being televised on local stations. And call-in shows (taking a cue from talk radio). They already do call-in segments in their morning shows.
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Mike, I've noticed WXII TV 12 carrying minor league baseball (Winston-Salem Dash) on their 12.2 sub-channel. In my opinion (and I don't consider myself a sports person) its well produced and good play by play. They even provide closed captioning which is rare locally unless from the tele-prompter. I'm not sure who is producing the games, but I don't think its channel 12. The local stations need to do more local programming such as this on all of their channels, and they need to promote it more than they do. I've only discovered the local baseball games by accident. I would think a "high school game of the week might be possible, especially since the TV stations have discovered h. s. football over the last decade. And how long is it going to take the cable and satellite systems to start carrying the local sub-channels? Will it take an FCC mandate or will it be market demand over time?
 
One hurdle - the NC High School Athletic Association has a long-standing policy that prohibits live television coverage of high school athletic events. Concern about hurting attendance.

The solution, of course, is a rights fee that would cover any loss in ticket sales. Would be a very small amount for a TV station to pay for the broadcast rights.
 
The NCHSAA has opened back up this year according to reports I had heard. Time Warner's exclusive 3 year deal was allowed to lapse as Time Warner failed to carry most games and new technologies made it possible for schools to Webcast their games at little to no cost.
 
XTalker said:
NC High School Athletic Association has a long-standing policy that prohibits live television coverage of high school athletic events.
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Not an issue in some locales! High school football games in Alabama have been televised as far back as the 1960s. The stadium in my home town in Alabama seated over 20,000 and it was routinely sold out on Friday nights.
 
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