News at the top of the hour?

[Mark Roberts]

Different stations did news at different times. The Bill Drake RKO stations were famous for news at :20 before the hour (and in the early days, both :20 after and :20 before). Some stations went for news at :15 and :45.

The old ABC FM network fed news at :15.

KIOA in Des Moines did news at :15 and :45; WHB in Kansas City did it at :55 and :20.

On a different scale, the radio station in my mother's hometown in Missouri does local news at :15. It always has, ever since its first day on the air in 1955. I don't know why. In recent years, it's been running network news (first AP, more recently, "Fox") at the top of the hour and a statewide network newscast right after that. A good part of the day on that station is still live.

 

[michael hagerty]

True about radio news. That field was dying even 40 years ago. It took a pretty traumatic firing to get the point across to me, but at least I learned and pivoted to another profession. As for TV, even in a market of Denver's size, the quality really varies now. The lead sportscaster at KUSA is just a couple of years out of the Cronkite school at ASU, and the nightside reporters seem very green*, though a couple of them are really good. On KCNC, the constant requests to viewers to "call our reporter in _____ County with your tips" seems kind of embarassing. KDVR (Fox 85 31) has so many hours of news that it feels like they'll take anything they can get.

(* = as in inexperienced, not as in Martian or any other kind of extraterrestrial individual.)

I'm not big on promoting FTVLive, as the site never met a clickbait story it didn't like, but this proves a point:

Fresh Out of School — FTVLive

This is a great example of how the TV news business has changed…

www.ftvlive.com

The market is Tulsa, Oklahoma. And while it's not the bigs, it's market 62.

As a point of reference, when I went to Las Vegas, 40 years ago, it was my second TV job, and I had about three years TV news experience. That was on par with most of our new hires.

It was market 94 at the time.

I was also making reasonable money there---$64,990 adjusted for inflation.

Today, I doubt any of those newbies in Tulsa are making $40,000. Which means they'll be in something of a hurry to grab a better-paying TV gig as soon as they can---a year, if they can hang on that long---in markets like Denver and Sacramento. One year of TV experience in markets with two million people.

In my day (nobody tell Seth Meyers I said that), it used to be five years minimum to get to that level.

 

[K.M. Richards]

NBC did two feeds of the same newscast---at :54 and :00.

So I had engineering put an ITC cart recorder/player deck in the studio. It would record the :54 feed onto a five-and-a half minute cart. The newscast could then be played back anytime after :59:30.

At a station that I worked at briefly between my first employment and my first PD gig, we were a Mutual affiliate. Before my time there, they were running BPI's "good music" format and did a "fade the instrumental" to the TOH. Then they got the Angels/Rams/UCLA affiliation for the market and updated their music to BPI's adult contemporary. At that point, whoever was on duty had to record the Mutual "Progressive" newscast at :55, on a custom-wound 2:50 cart which we would then play after whatever song ended past :58. We only carried the first news segment and required spot before doing a local/regional live news segment.

I worked nights there and after 8:00pm (Pacific), when there were no Progressive newscasts, we instead delayed the headlines from :30 that were supposed to be part of the Larry King package ... but since the King affiliate didn't carry the live segment before midnight, we were entitled as the primary MBS affiliate to carry those in the late evening hours.

Oh, and we also had to record, tone, and load into one of the carousels the second Mutual network spot at :28:50 for the automation to play at the :35 break. With all that direct-to-cart recording, we became experts at knowing just when to hit the start button on the recorder.

 

[K.M. Richards]

The old ABC FM network fed news at :15.

By the mid-1980s, it had moved to :50 (right after the Direction network cast @ :45) so that stations could do a short delay and run it @ :55 if they wanted to. Probably the same reasoning for Direction, and IIRC most Contemporary affiliates always delayed their newscasts.

 

[K.M. Richards]

61 Big WAYS in Charlotte NC, the Top 40 station, would advertise news at :55 and music on the hour.

Prior to the 1968 retooling of ABC into the four "American (Information/Contemporary/Entertainment/FM) Networks" their network news was @ :55 and always started with the line "The news, five minutes sooner, on ABC".

I suppose being only about one rung higher on the ladder than Mutual at the time caused them to try anything as a selling point ...

 

[vchimpanzee]

Gene Autry, when he bought both KMPC in Los Angeles in 1952 and KSFO in San Francisco in 1956, had TOH tones installed. On stations that did their own newscasts.

Serenade Radio, British and online only, has the pips at the top of the hour (and something worthy of Hyacinth Bucket at midnight). Supposedly they can time it precisely but I've never questioned it.

They make a point of saying no news, no traffic, no commercials (there are occasional breaks to remind listeners they can support it).

The DJ just said, "We'll have the pips just to prove it is 8:00".

 

[Mark Roberts]

Prior to the 1968 retooling of ABC into the four "American (Information/Contemporary/Entertainment/FM) Networks" their network news was @ :55 and always started with the line "The news, five minutes sooner, on ABC".

The ABC station that I referred to in one of my posts upthread (the full-service standalone AM AC station) was an ABC affiliate since the 1940s. Before the 1968 four-network schema, it carried ABC news and then local news at the top of the hour. I always thought they much preferred that schedule, but Information fit the station's positioning far better than Contemporary did, Information didn't offer any kind of pre-feed, and there was no way the station's owner, himself a former newscaster, was going to put a newscast on the air that was 54 minutes old.

CBS would have been a good fit for that station, but CBS at the time made more demands on affiliates than the other networks, including requiring running the hourly newscast at the top of the hour. So that wouldn't have solved the problem for the radio station I worked for. The NBC approach would have done that for them. But, in 1968, it was a two-station TV market with NBC and CBS primary affiliates; the radio station had barely survived the advent of TV in the 1950s before bouncing back to thrive again and wanted nothing to do with anything associated with those TV stations, though, in the 1970s, it was willing to carry the CBS Radio Mystery Theater at night. That was gone from the station, though, by the time I got there. (Note that there was only one other radio station in the market with a network affiliation, and that was with one of the ABC networks. So the field was wide open.)

I suppose being only about one rung higher on the ladder than Mutual at the time caused them to try anything as a selling point ...

Perhaps from a business point of view, but the journalism on ABC radio was generally sound and it often seemed to me (in the 80s) that they tried harder to make their newscasts engaging.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Serenade Radio, British and online only, has the pips at the top of the hour (and something worthy of Hyacinth Bucket at midnight). Supposedly they can time it precisely but I've never questioned it.

They make a point of saying no news, no traffic, no commercials (there are occasional breaks to remind listeners they can support it).

The DJ just said, "We'll have the pips just to prove it is 8:00".

The pips are still fairly common in Europe. I can even get you an example in Luxembourgish if you really want it. (In my recording, the RTL local service faded the song - Alphaville's Sounds Like a Melody - down before the top of the hour.)

 

[michael hagerty]

The DJ just said, "We'll have the pips just to prove it is 8:00".

....and then played "Midnight Train to Georgia".

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

NPR News runs at 01 after the hour live, we air it live.... sometimes we hit the id at 00 and run a 1 minute instrumental to fill the time to 01 during live dj hours.. (dont ask why.. that was set up before me, were moving to a new automation system soon, so im not wasting a ton of time on the current one)

When im on live, i try real hard to back time to news...most times i run a song right into news... quite often, having it fade out at damn near the perfect time. sometimes i run the id between the last 2 songs.... sometimes i run the id right after news into the first song of the hour.

I'm on 12-3 pm ak time today....... which is 4 to 7pm eastern.. if anyone cares to check out how it sounds. kskopublicradio.com we stream

 

[vchimpanzee]

....and then played "Midnight Train to Georgia".

Not in the usual format, but one DJ probably would.

 

[vchimpanzee]

NPR News runs at 01 after the hour live, we air it live.... sometimes we hit the id at 00 and run a 1 minute instrumental to fill the time to 01 during live dj hours.. (dont ask why.. that was set up before me, were moving to a new automation system soon, so im not wasting a ton of time on the current one)

"Wait! Wait!" has an introduction before Giles Snyder or whoever. They say it's 10:00 before the news, so I wondered if that was really true.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

"Wait! Wait!" has an introduction before Giles Snyder or whoever. They say it's 10:00 before the news, so I wondered if that was really true.

the NPR shows at night and on the weekends will almost always have a one minute intro, recorded, like the rest o the show segments... the statio nswitches to live news, then switches back to the recorded show

 

[Gregg.]

NPR always begins its news at :01 each hour. And so does the BBC World Service. Some NPR stations will run the BBC a few times a day for variety.

And as Paul says, that first minute is used for an introduction to the show that will follow the news. Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Here and Now, and on weekends everything from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me to The Splendid Table.

 

[charlestondxman]

True about radio news. That field was dying even 40 years ago. It took a pretty traumatic firing to get the point across to me, but at least I learned and pivoted to another profession. As for TV, even in a market of Denver's size, the quality really varies now. The lead sportscaster at KUSA is just a couple of years out of the Cronkite school at ASU, and the nightside reporters seem very green*, though a couple of them are really good. On KCNC, the constant requests to viewers to "call our reporter in _____ County with your tips" seems kind of embarassing. KDVR (Fox 85 31) has so many hours of news that it feels like they'll take anything they can get.

(* = as in inexperienced, not as in Martian or any other kind of extraterrestrial individual.)

I think there’s 1 local newscaster on in the Charleston market, whoever is on 1250 WTMA in the morning. And usually the talk hosts read the news. The iHeart news/talk just has one of the anchors from a local TV station read the news in AM and PM drive.

I remember in the early 2000s, WTMA had like a 5 person news staff. They were live all day on weekdays after network news and had 2 hours straight of news in the morning leading into their heritage local talk show.

And the local TV stations are all reporters just out of school. One station focuses on local school alums, the other 2 just get whoever they can rangle out of school making 35-40K in one of the most expensive markets in the country.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

NPR always begins its news at :01 each hour. And so does the BBC World Service. Some NPR stations will run the BBC a few times a day for variety.

And as Paul says, that first minute is used for an introduction to the show that will follow the news. Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Here and Now, and on weekends everything from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me to The Splendid Table.

many stations .. ok... some.. cutaway at 59 for weather, a sponsor read, an event mention... some join back up at 00, some take that whole 2 minutes

 

[nowradioguy]

And realistically ... how many listeners actually care what time the newscast starts? A lot of them find the news an annoyance anyway!

A pox on them. And on you if you agree with them.

 

[K.M. Richards]

The ABC station that I referred to in one of my posts upthread (the full-service standalone AM AC station) was an ABC affiliate since the 1940s. Before the 1968 four-network schema, it carried ABC news and then local news at the top of the hour. I always thought they much preferred that schedule, but Information fit the station's positioning far better than Contemporary did, Information didn't offer any kind of pre-feed, and there was no way the station's owner, himself a former newscaster, was going to put a newscast on the air that was 54 minutes old.

Not to mention that until 1980, when ABC/I adopted the "ABC News" branding and the audio logo from "World News Tonight", the newscasts started with "News ... of the hour, on the hour, from American Information Radio."

 

[Mark Roberts]

Not to mention that until 1980, when ABC/I adopted the "ABC News" branding and the audio logo from "World News Tonight", the newscasts started with "News ... of the hour, on the hour, from American Information Radio."

By that time, ABC television news had elevated itself to be fully competitive with NBC and CBS, so it was a positive for the radio network to strengthen its association with the TV network. That wasn't really true in 1968. Such an association wouldn't have been negative, but I think would have been a wash. Again, there was nothing necessarily wrong with the journalism on ABC radio or TV, but it just didn't have the mindshare that CBS and NBC had.

 

[K.M. Richards]

By that time, ABC television news had elevated itself to be fully competitive with NBC and CBS, so it was a positive for the radio network to strengthen its association with the TV network. That wasn't really true in 1968. Such an association wouldn't have been negative, but I think would have been a wash. Again, there was nothing necessarily wrong with the journalism on ABC radio or TV, but it just didn't have the mindshare that CBS and NBC had.

All true, Mark, but my intent was to show why a tape delay of ABC/I before then was at least implied by the network as being out of the question.