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WFAA News 8 Daybreak Starting At 4:30 AM

According their Facebook page at the end of this month August 30, WFAA will start News 8 Daybreak at 4:30 AM instead of 5, joining the ranks with KDFW Fox 4 & KTVT CBS 11 which have already started their newscasts at 4:30 AM. Will NBC 5 follow suit next? The only time they start at 4:30 is when bad weather such as snow & ice hits DFW.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
tested said:
If WFAA is doing it, you can bet 5 will too..
better question: when will one of them start at 4am?

Fox O&O KRIV in Houston starts at 4am. Will KDFW follow?
KDFW starts theirs at 4:30 am.
 
Yeah, I think he knew that. I think his question was whether KDFW would now move to start at 4am since two of their competitors will now be starting at 4:30 too.

I'm just wondering if we're headed toward the day when stations do some kind of live local news all night long. Could they do it cheap enough to make more money than running infomercials in the dead of night?
 
The technology exists to do all-news with a very small staff. Time Warner uses it for its local all-news channels. You basically record a newscast item by item. Then as it plays back you can pull outdated items and insert new material. But would that make money for a local station in the middle of the night? Probably not.
 
fredcantu said:
The technology exists to do all-news with a very small staff. Time Warner uses it for its local all-news channels. You basically record a newscast item by item. Then as it plays back you can pull outdated items and insert new material. But would that make money for a local station in the middle of the night? Probably not.

Correct. It works well in some markets (i.e. News 8 Austin) and has failed miserably in others (i.e. News 9 San Antonio). Honestly, morning newscasts could almost repeat the same news over and over again as long as live weather and traffic updates were recorded every xx minutes.
 
Don't get me started on that. The repetition is fine is you're programming strictly to an audience that is tuning in and out quickly. But people who like you enough to stick through hours of the show may still tune out if it gets too repetitive.
 
fredcantu said:
Don't get me started on that. The repetition is fine is you're programming strictly to an audience that is tuning in and out quickly. But people who like you enough to stick through hours of the show may still tune out if it gets too repetitive.

Almost reminds of my college days in Providence. One particular radio station had "all news all morning 'till 9". So, from 5am to 9am, they literally read the same script every 30 minutes. It was particularly bad on the weekends when there were no traffic reports or live weather reports.
 
The thing is morning show audiences too tune in and out - a lot. Because of that repetition is not necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I don't mind if the lead story is repeated every half hour. Beyond that, the secondary stories can be repeated every hour and it doesn't bother me. I do like it if there's some attempt made to at least make the stories slightly different. Just a slight rewrite on the lead is probably enough. Any kind of update to the story is also helpful. I sometimes find that I hear different info about the same story on different stations. Clearly it means someone bothered to see if there was an update and someone else didn't.
 
I know one thing, I feel sorry for the people that have to get even earlier now to run the morning news programs.
 
I have an idea. KXAS could start at 4am and revive the "husband and wife" commercial used in the early 90's when they expanded to 5am. For those of you not familiar, it was perky wife getting ready for work (telling husband to pick up clothes from the cleaners) and the sleepy husband sitting on the edge of the bed holding his head in his hands. Then, the "Texas News 5" theme music comes on the tv set. All of a sudden, the husband perks up and says excitedly, "Hey Honey, the news is on at 5 o'clock in the morning!!"

As for their people having to get up earlier, why not just stay up all night? Just kidding, but one of the first early morning newscasters in Seattle used to come in at 11:30pm and work all night to prepare the then-new 6:30am newscast. Needless to say, he did NOT anchor at noon.
 
X-Man said:
I know one thing, I feel sorry for the people that have to get even earlier now to run the morning news programs.

Get up early? No. How about stay up all night. Producers get in before midnight many times. Anchors show up around 3 or so.
 
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