News at the top of the hour?

[K.M. Richards]

I'm on a station that has news at about 5 after the hour. wether its abc news or local news.. and its been that way for years. when our competitors are running network news and commercials, we're playing music...... and our network news is only 75 secs and our local news is kept short sweet and to the point. works well for us.

An excellent example of counterprogramming, Paul.

 

[K.M. Richards]

But there are local newscasts that start a minute (or so) early. I’ve seen late afternoon/early evening newscasts start at 4:59 PM or 5:59 PM.

That's partially because they don't have to accommodate what time the network program preceding it ends (because there isn't one in those examples of afternoon newscasts).

The practice actually started years ago as stations tried to get a jump on the competition. Of course, as any of us could have predicted, the competing stations did the exact same thing.

Here in L.A., ABC O&O KABC/7 airs World News Tonight at 3:30pm (the live Eastern feed) as well as the Pacific feed at 6:30. On the live feed, the Eyewitless ... er, Eyewitness News anchors come on at the end of the last break before David Muir's final segment and do a tease for the 4:00 local newscast. And said newscast starts about one second after the network cast ends ... which also ends up being 3:59pm.

 

[michael hagerty]

Start the thread. I'm sure there would be plenty of opinions and suggestions! 🙂

I mean, there's really only one answer---ideally, sped up to 47 rpm:

 

[Mark Roberts]

You are absolutely right-- misread that; I put it up here to try to illustrate another post (I didn't know how to interpret what you said, so that's why I responded as I did).

Actually, I appreciated the post and it did illustrate how much things have changed in almost 40 years, where spots and programs now run right into each other.

KPRC-TV at the time usually ranked #2 to the hugely successful KTRK-TV. And Johnny Holmes (the Harris County DA) was a master at public relations.

 

[bmasters1981]

Actually, I appreciated the post and it did illustrate how much things have changed in almost 40 years, where spots and programs now run right into each other.

KPRC-TV at the time usually ranked #2 to the hugely successful KTRK-TV. And Johnny Holmes (the Harris County DA) was a master at public relations.

Thank you very much for saying that-- when Kelly A said what he/she said, it confused me somewhat; I'm grateful that you appreciated my first post in this thread in illustration of michael hagerty's post.

 

[TexasTom]

Depends on what automation system they are using. Unless there is a "hard" break time, at the top of the hour there could be a "reset time or restart time" usually at 57 to 59 minutes. The system will "wait" until the song ends then start the next hour. If the last song starts at 58.59 seconds and the reset time is 59 even and the song is 4 or 5 mins log your going to be late. There are some really good music format programs that can get the music time within a minute or two every hour. Too many variables without actually seeing their stuff.

The free automation software that I run on an old PC has that "reset time" capability -- and, in fact, I can set it for any minute that I want to set it for.

So, for that matter, did the old tape-based automation systems that were used back in the day. I was able to hear it in action at two different TM Stereo Rock outlets in the late seventies and early eighties. One of those stations (KHQ-FM in Spokane) did two resets per hour, at just before the start of the hour and just before the bottom of the hour -- I think that the actual times were a couple minutes before, perhaps at :27:30 or :28:00 and :57:30 or :58:00. The other stations (KNWR Bellingham) did a reset at the end of each music sweep, which didn't always work as well. One time they had "Stairway to Heaven" start mere seconds before the reset point and the result pretty much screwed up the entire next music sweep.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

An excellent example of counterprogramming, Paul.

and i think we only have one or two spots after news, if that....... news at 05 after then commercial breaks at 20 35 and 50

 

[AMRadioGuy]

Some disclaimers here: This is the kind of topic that fascinates listeners, but annoys and bores industry professionals. The professionals' point of view is: Who cares what time the news comes on, or if there is news at all? Most listeners find the news is boring, and we have never had a phone call from a listener saying that the news is late. Maybe we don't play the news at all, if we are in the middle of a long song. So, who cares?

I think this is a valid point. This is a 5 page thread, and this is the reaction of most pros here. I understand this.

Chimp's conversation is that he was listening to a station where the anchor said, "news on the hour." But they didn't get around to the news until 4 minutes past the hour. The reaction of professionals here is: So what? What is the big deal? Anyone can read the breaking news 24/7 on his phone or device these days. No one cares if this station gets around to the news at :04, or :10, or :27, or anything else. It is irrelevant. Maybe they put the news on whenever it is convenient for them. It doesn't matter anyway.

I understand this viewpoint. Maybe radio stations are no longer required to have any news at all. (Maybe 50 years ago, they were required to play 5 minutes of news each hour? But, maybe that regulation, if it ever existed, has changed?)

There are a few geek listeners that notice these things, but most people do not. In the case of this station in the Carolinas, they could be less specific by simply saying, "News coming up soon", or "We'll try to fit the news in if we have time", or "News around the top of the hour, more or less."
Back to disclaimer: I understand that a 5 page thread on what time the news plays, is considered irrelevant and a waste of time by those in the industry. ( That's why I proposed a forum for non-industry listeners ( geeks) like me, who can chat about this without taking up bandwidth in the professional forums. -- D.

I do find it funny that in an era where the news cycle was... well... lets just say a lot longer than it is today, and radio was a primary source of news for most folks (because it was that, newspaper, or TV), stations went to great lengths to back-time, etc. into the news and hit it right on the top of the hour, even station with just local newscasts. That is evident from this thread.

Today when the news cycle is pretty much instantaneous and people can get it many places... "Yeah, a couple minutes after the hour is fine. Nobody will really care anyway" is the attitude.

Kind of ironic, is it not?

 

[AMRadioGuy]

I mean, there's really only one answer---ideally, sped up to 47 rpm:

Yup - that's the one! What a great record.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

But there are local newscasts that start a minute (or so) early. I’ve seen late afternoon/early evening newscasts start at 4:59 PM or 5:59 PM.

True big deal a decade or two ago yes but today not so much given that the stations owned by the Network themselves have been promoting their all news feed on their companies TV apps like NBC Owned stations on Peacock, Paramount owned CBS affiliates on the CBS News and Paramount+ apps and Disney owned ABC Affiliates news feeds on Hulu for some time.

 

[michael hagerty]

I do find it funny that in an era where the news cycle was... well... lets just say a lot longer than it is today, and radio was a primary source of news for most folks (because it was that, newspaper, or TV), stations went to great lengths to back-time, etc. into the news and hit it right on the top of the hour, even station with just local newscasts. That is evident from this thread.

Unless you tape-delayed, you had to hit the network on time or it sounded like hell.

The stations that did their own news that were obsessive about it tended to appeal to an audience that was used to "news at the top of the hour", and in many cases, competed with network-affiliated (or network-owned) stations.

KMPC wanted to have their newscast start at the same time as KABC and KNX. But even then, if Whittinghill or Gary Owens ran late, you'd hear the time tone in the middle of a commercial and the news would start anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute after.

Listen back to airchecks and you'll hear plenty of times where Robert W. Morgan was running late, hit the :36 break at :38 (timechecking as he went in), played a record out of it and the news began at :42...but the newscaster still said "It's 20 minutes before 7, this is (name), KHJ 20/20 News."

Today when the news cycle is pretty much instantaneous and people can get it many places... "Yeah, a couple minutes after the hour is fine. Nobody will really care anyway" is the attitude.

I mean, is it? Where?

As @Kelly A says, news is a scheduled event on the program log. Barring an extreme circumstance, there's very little "It's 6:03 and time for the 6 o'clock news". And nobody's attitude is "when we get around to it or when we feel like it".

Part of it is actually tech---it's HARDER now, with modern software, to adjust stopsets and song lengths on the fly.

As a jock, I'd start backtiming in my brain at :50 and give myself plenty of room to stick the landing at the top (before we started recording the :54 and playing back). Making the "executive decision" to ditch a promo, skip a jingle or move a commercial into the next hour to hit the mark cleanly was no big deal.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I figured out how to tell exactly what time it was, but I wasn't in the car at the top of the hour. The oldies station had just started a song when the clock said 2:00. This is the clock I can't figure out how to set. I turned to the NPR station and the local host was saying he hoped people were having a good day. That's something they do a few minutes before the next show starts, or the next hour if it's in the middle of the show.

So last week when the news started 4 minutes after the top of the hour it was less than that, and when it was 2 minutes before the top of the hour, more than that.

And the next time I drive that car I will be close enough to a station with 50s and 60s oldies that I can listen to that one instead. No news there, or even any attempt to do anything at the top of the hour.

 

[K.M. Richards]

That seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to figure out when it's exactly "hour o'clock". You may well be one of the last people on the planet to care about that, chimp.

 

[charlestondxman]

It’s been happening as long as I can remember locally. Them starting the news at 1 minute before the top of the hour. The only station that doesn’t do it is the CBS which shows the Powerball drawings at 10:59pm 3 days a week and the regular lottery drawings at 6:59pm 6 nights a week.

The 3 networks started doing the split screen credits in the 1994-95 season and that was when starting the news before the top of the hour became the standard.

 

[Kelly A]

Part of it is actually tech---it's HARDER now, with modern software, to adjust stopsets and song lengths on the fly.

A few years ago RCS developed an option in their automation software that allows a station to time stretch or shrink the last song in the hour to hit a live event-like network. I played around with it and it worked fairly well at least 50% of the time. Sometimes it couldn't shrink a song enough to hit the TOH, mainly because the wild card list it picked songs from had too many longer-length, or too short-length songs in it. What happened then is it would just dump the last remaining minutes or seconds of the song. Whoever scheduled the music needed to find a happy medium song length with the wild card list that would generally allow the stretch or shrink to be within the parameters of what the software could do.

 

[vchimpanzee]

That seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to figure out when it's exactly "hour o'clock". You may well be one of the last people on the planet to care about that, chimp.

If I'm relaying on my watch, the one time it would matter is Saturday morning when "Wait! Wait!" is on. If it's something on TV, as long as I set the TiVo to record I should be fine.

Oh, also online radio when there's a specific show I want to hear. There seems to be a slight delay sometimes, though.

 

[AMRadioGuy]

Unless you tape-delayed, you had to hit the network on time or it sounded like hell.

The stations that did their own news that were obsessive about it tended to appeal to an audience that was used to "news at the top of the hour", and in many cases, competed with network-affiliated (or network-owned) stations.

KMPC wanted to have their newscast start at the same time as KABC and KNX. But even then, if Whittinghill or Gary Owens ran late, you'd hear the time tone in the middle of a commercial and the news would start anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute after.

Listen back to airchecks and you'll hear plenty of times where Robert W. Morgan was running late, hit the :36 break at :38 (timechecking as he went in), played a record out of it and the news began at :42...but the newscaster still said "It's 20 minutes before 7, this is (name), KHJ 20/20 News."




I mean, is it? Where?

As @Kelly A says, news is a scheduled event on the program log. Barring an extreme circumstance, there's very little "It's 6:03 and time for the 6 o'clock news". And nobody's attitude is "when we get around to it or when we feel like it".

Part of it is actually tech---it's HARDER now, with modern software, to adjust stopsets and song lengths on the fly.

As a jock, I'd start backtiming in my brain at :50 and give myself plenty of room to stick the landing at the top (before we started recording the :54 and playing back). Making the "executive decision" to ditch a promo, skip a jingle or move a commercial into the next hour to hit the mark cleanly was no big deal.

It seems like even the little MOR local stations would back-time into the local newscasts, hitting them on the TOH. Top-40 stations did, too. This thread is full of small-time operators insisting on airing newscasts live and not tape delayed by a couple of minutes back in the day (which is essentially what most stations do now, only digitally and not with tape).

I know the news is a scheduled event on the program log. I've built automation clocks with it, etc. What I mean is that the attitude is no longer that it needs to play right on the money - whenever the automation software starts it is cool. It's a "floating" start time. That seems to be common with a lot of different things - just needs to be "close enough." Which, for most listeners, is fine.

You're right about the back-timing issue for sure - I worked for an owner who insisted that the news start right on the top of the hour (music station). I was in charge of the automation for the station at that point and attempted to explain that barring cutting a song off halfway through, that was just not possible unless he wanted to pay me to sit there and back-time into the news at the top of every hour haha. He just didn't get it.

On the tech side, it's pretty crazy to me that modern automation systems can't back-time. I think there are a couple of them that can but it seems like there aren't many. It's really not all that difficult, and ditching a song halfway through to join up with a pro baseball feed or whatever is just... unprofessional. I knew better than to do that even as a high-school-aged board-op. Computers are great at crunching numbers, and it's not like there are many variables at play aside from file lengths (computing for segue times, of course). Baseball feed coming in at 6:15? Great. It's 6:05 now. Lets select music that will get us to 6:15 cleanly with a promo thrown in. Is that really too much to ask a doggone computer to do? I guess that's part of my point - back in the day it took work for jocks to back-time cleanly into the news and other things. Work that computers are great at. But... I guess people just don't really care enough to make that happen. Is it crucial that the news begin right on the top of the hour? No. But is there really much of an excuse, either, in our modern computer-driven world? Also no.

 

[b-turner]

My first time on commercial radio back in the day of cart machines and records, I had to backtime to UPI News on the hour, UPI Sports at :15 and :45 and Oklahoma News Network on the half hour. Add in Weather at :20, :40 and Bulletin Board at :50 plus about 6-8 commercials in 4 breaks. Toughest hours I ever had with backtiming.

 

[Kelly A]

It seems like even the little MOR local stations would back-time into the local newscasts, hitting them on the TOH. Top-40 stations did, too. This thread is full of small-time operators insisting on airing newscasts live and not tape delayed by a couple of minutes back in the day (which is essentially what most stations do now, only digitally and not with tape).

How many major market music stations these days have news at the TOH?

On the tech side, it's pretty crazy to me that modern automation systems can't back-time. I think there are a couple of them that can but it seems like there aren't many.

Automation will play whatever you want, whenever you want it. You have three choices: time all the music to end exactly at the TOH, have the automation fade music out whenever the timed event is scheduled, or as I mentioned, some will stretch or shrink the song before the timed event to hit it on the nose.

But is there really much of an excuse, either, in our modern computer-driven world? Also no.

There's zero financial benefit to making an automation system hit the TOH for a newcast, so why bother? Because your old boss wanted you to? Because a handful combination of board ops from the 70's and radio nerds still care? Get real.
I'll bet that 99.999% of anyone who cares about such a thing wouldn't go out of their way to spend one cent at a station sponsor, or donate to a station who hit the TOH with news.

 

[K.M. Richards]

On the tech side, it's pretty crazy to me that modern automation systems can't back-time. I think there are a couple of them that can but it seems like there aren't many. It's really not all that difficult ...

Actually, it's more difficult with today's all-computer automation systems than it was back in the day, and if you think about it for a second, you may see why before you continue reading!

Computers are great at crunching numbers, and it's not like there are many variables at play aside from file lengths (computing for segue times, of course). Baseball feed coming in at 6:15? Great. It's 6:05 now. Lets select music that will get us to 6:15 cleanly with a promo thrown in. Is that really too much to ask a doggone computer to do?

Why, yes ... yes, it is too much to ask.

Here's the problem: The automation is running from a log which was pre-generated by music scheduling software, merged with the log from the commercial scheduling software. It's not able to select music on its own to accomplish what you propose. This is a situation where we human operators could do a better job.

The only way to do anything remotely close is for someone to tweak that hour's log to schedule an instrumental as the last music event before the live event, and then use an automation command to fade that song a few seconds before the live join.