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What's so special about 4:30 AM?

K

kramie13

Banned
That all 5 Boston news stations are airing local news at that time?

WBTS actually starts the earliest, at 4:00 AM, but the other 4 Boston stations all start their news at 4:30 AM. WFXT's morning news is now 4:30 - 11 AM, which is *really* surprising given the recent budget cuts at that station! Even WHDH starts at 4:30 AM when they go until 10 AM, and started at 5 AM when they were still affiliated with NBC.

I've always considered the top of the hour to be the ideal "starting time" for local news, and for stations to broadcast their lead stories. But why is the bottom of the hour considered the starting point for morning news? It just seems weird to me.
 
kramie13 said:
That all 5 Boston news stations are airing local news at that time?

WBTS actually starts the earliest, at 4:00 AM, but the other 4 Boston stations all start their news at 4:30 AM. WFXT's morning news is now 4:30 - 11 AM, which is *really* surprising given the recent budget cuts at that station! Even WHDH starts at 4:30 AM when they go until 10 AM, and started at 5 AM when they were still affiliated with NBC.

I've always considered the top of the hour to be the ideal "starting time" for local news, and for stations to broadcast their lead stories. But why is the bottom of the hour considered the starting point for morning news? It just seems weird to me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it is weird. However, this was the way the trend started back in the late 2000s, 2010-ish. The earlier 4:00 a.m. has not caught on, at least not yet. Will it happen this decade? I highly doubt it but anything is possible.

It only expanded during that timeslot because most Americans who work in the morning have happened to start work earlier and earlier than ever before and thus, decided to launch a newscast super early to at least give those the news, traffic and weather they need before they head out the door and for some, they may have to be out by 5:00 or 5:30 a.m., thus having such a need for 4:30 a.m. news.

I agree that its weird for BOTH news as the starting point but its where its at right now since ratings are not that great at that early of an hour, hence why 4:00 a.m. has not caught on.
 
I think that 4 A.M. local news on weekday mornings will catch on and quite a few stations will adopt it.

Two major reasons:

1. Expanding early morning news can often be done without hiring any new people and thus, the increased costs will be minimal. That means more profits.

2. There's going to be a record amount of political advertising for a midterm election this year, and the 2024 Presidential election campaign may start the day after the midterm elections (I think you may see a couple of formal declaration of candidacies by Thanksgiving!). And if President Biden doesn't run for a second term, there will be numerous candidates in both parties whose campaigns' spending on TV advertising will mean a revenue bonanza for local TV stations, especially in key states.

Political advertisers love to sponsor news programs, so I can see stations expanding local news to capture those political ad dollars.

I can actually see all of Boston's local TV news stations launch or continue local 4 A.M. local weekday morning newscasts in the near future.
 
In November 2020, I got at 3:45 a.m. to watch NBC's coverage of the election between Biden and Trump. At 4 a.m. on the dot, NBC10 switched to their local morning newscast to relate on how the election affected the Boston area market. I stayed up for 10-15 minutes to watch it before heading back to bed.
 
To give a historical perspective, when early morning local newscasts started, they were generally at 6:30am for 30 minutes. Then, they went to 6am for a full hour. As you can imagine, it was only a matter of time that they started at 5am. Then, stations finally landed on 4:30am. A number of stations throughout the country (usually lower rated ones) have tried 4am, but it usually doesn't help anything. 4:30am is about the earliest that station can get any sort of audience and, even then, most of the audience starts watching at 5am.or later.
 
Here in Boston, the first pre-7 A.M. local newscast was WBZ-4's "Daily Almanac", which began in the mid 1950's as a fifteen minute program at 6:45 A.M. Besides news and weather, it also featured agricultural and market reports! In fact, there were only four or five minutes of news.

But until the 1970's, "Almanac" was very popular, despite having very little hard news.

Then in the fall of 1973 WCVB-5 launched a full hour of early morning news at 6 A.M. Before long, WCVB dominated TV viewing at that hour.

A few years later, WBZ expanded "Almanac" to a half-hour, with twelve more minutes of news. By 1980, WBZ changed their early morning newscast format, expanding it to an hour, dropping the agriculture and market reports, and renaming the broadcast "4 Today".

I'm pretty sure WCVB has dominated early morning news viewing continuously since 1974 or so.
 
kramie13 said:
That all 5 Boston news stations are airing local news at that time?

WBTS actually starts the earliest, at 4:00 AM, but the other 4 Boston stations all start their news at 4:30 AM. WFXT's morning news is now 4:30 - 11 AM, which is *really* surprising given the recent budget cuts at that station! Even WHDH starts at 4:30 AM when they go until 10 AM, and started at 5 AM when they were still affiliated with NBC.

I've always considered the top of the hour to be the ideal "starting time" for local news, and for stations to broadcast their lead stories. But why is the bottom of the hour considered the starting point for morning news? It just seems weird to me.
Click to expand...
No one cares about "top of the hour" except radio and TV people.
 
One reason news is such a big deal to stations is they control the content and commercial avails. Any programming that is syndicated or a movie costs the station money for rights and usually that includes a few network spots, limiting how many avails you can sell. With news, you hire a crew and just keep it updated as the hours roll by and you get to sell every commercial avail. Sure, you'll pay for a news service for non-local stories and some salaries but from a cost of operation aspect, news is cheap and more easily sold producing the best chance of profitability.
 
I find most early morning newscasts use a 30 minute wheel, so the top stories would air at 4:30, 5, 5:30, 6, 6:30 and so forth. Sometimes even quicker.

4:30 start times are probably based on viewership numbers. Somewhat contrary to the above from Joseph, you don't get paid much for spots that air when no one is watching. Even from politicians.
 
Expanding on what b-turner posted- Earlier start time for the program brings the opportunity to classify it as morning drive (or whatever) and negotiate a different advertising rate. If the advertisers accept it, there are more avails that can be priced at a higher rate. In this instance I am thinking of buyers who are OK with transactional buying, and sellers who have a yield management approach.
 
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WHDH has returned to a 5 AM start time for their weekday morning news block. Maybe there is less demand for 4:30 AM news now, or the station is more focused on delivering local news after 7 AM, when 3 other stations have network news obligations.

Side note - is there a reason why Ch. 7 starts their weekend morning news an hour earlier on Sundays (7 -11 AM) vs. Saturdays (8 - 11 AM)? Is there more demand for news on Sunday mornings vs. Saturday mornings? It seems really weird to me.
 
kramie13 said:
I've always considered the top of the hour to be the ideal "starting time" for local news, and for stations to broadcast their lead stories. But why is the bottom of the hour considered the starting point for morning news? It just seems weird to me.
Click to expand...
My hunch when 4:30 AM local newscasts started it was to be able to say “our competition starts at 5 AM, we start earlier so you can count on us more.” Almost all the local newscasts in Philly start at 4 AM. Ironically our local all news radio station starts their morning drive newscast at 5 AM, as does our local NPR affiliate.
 
I remember Art Amadon as the announcer introducing Daily Almanac. I’m trying to remember the agriculture report guy—Trakis? Also, at one point WGBH Radio started news at 4:50. Not sure if they still do.
 
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