ABC 7 to join early birds with 4:30 a.m. newscast
Not to be outflanked by its competitors, top-rated ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7 will expand its weekday morning newscast by moving its start time to 4:30 a.m., effective next week.
Judy Hsu and Hosea Sanders will anchor the expanded newscast from 4:30 to 7 a.m., along with meteorologist Tracy Butler and traffic reporter Roz Varon.
Monday’s announcement came just 10 days after Tribune Co.-owned WGN-Channel 9 unveiled plans to start its morning news block at 4:30 a.m., effective Aug. 16. NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5 was first in the time period, starting at 4:30 a.m. in 2007.
Emily Barr, president and general manager of Channel 7, said plans for the expansion had been in the works long before Channel 9’s announcement. “It’s a natural extension of what we do from 5 to 7 [a.m.],” she added.
Channel 7 also announced plans Monday for an additional hour of news on Saturday mornings, starting Sept. 4. Stacey Baca, who now anchors solo at 6 a.m. Saturdays, also will anchor the new newscast at 8 a.m. An ABC network newscast will continue to air at 7 a.m. Leaving ABC’s Saturday morning lineup is “Power Rangers.” In announcing the changes, Jennifer Graves, vice president and news director of Channel 7, said:
“This is a great opportunity for us to expand local coverage during morning time periods that have become increasingly more important to viewers. Now, the many viewers who are in the habit of turning to ABC 7 for news and weather have even more choices.”
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YUCKY, TO ABC 7, WGN 9, AND FOX NEWS.NBC IS THE BEST AND ONLY STATION IN TOWN. ABC 7 NEEDS TO GIVE IT UP AND STOP COPYING NBC. WHAT EVER OTHER STATIONS DO THEY COPY IT. I NEVER WATCH 7 AND IT IS BAD NEWS FOR VIEWERS. WATCH NBC THE NEWS IS EXPERIENCE, DEDICATED,AND INFORMATIVE. DONT WATCH ABC, WGN, AND FOX ALL 3 NETWORKS ARE A JOKE BOO ALL NEWS ALL THE TIME. COME ON NBC GIVE IT 4AM AND I BET ABC WILL FOLLOW YOUR NEEDS BECAUSE ABC ARE STALKERS.
Oh goody.
Just what we need….more news!
So each station will have a 4:30 AM news show & each station will have 17 viewers.
Just a brilliant use of money, people & resources!
And the networks wonder why people aren’t watching anymore!
Lucky7: I couldn’t read your ridiculous screed, all caps is annoying beyond belief!
What about the Seventh Son of the Seventh Son of Al Poez? Certainly there is a 330a slot available!
Carl Grayson would have been in his element. Imagine back to a time when Channel 9 was so forward thinking that they had a live newscast at 1am-ish depending on the length of the late movie. Well, at least Carl was live – everything else was on tape. And it had really fancy music too, as well as Lynn Burton for Burt Weinman Ford.
I think all the news stations (and that is what they have become now!) are just leaving the door open for the great MeTV and MeToo to superserve the audience that is looking for a break from morning “news”, also defined as traffic every 10 minutes and weather …punctuated by Blago-centric political news no one cares about. Yup, a great time for Weigel Broadcasting to continue it’s plan of world dominance! Coming soon: MeThree!
It’s gonna happen. You heard it here first.
Goodbye Opie & Sheriff Taylor! I’ll miss you guys more than I’ll be up at 4:30 AM to watch this “paint dry”. Why are all the stations gearing up at 4:30 AM with nothing original???****************************************************
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What I found interesting is that during this weekend’s flood, no station stayed on the air with additional coverage of something much more important than a national news show or cartoons. I understand that that doesnt bring in revenue, but dont stations have a reason to serve the public?
This pretty much only changes one person’s schedule at ABC 7. Save for that ONE PERSON, everyone else is already at the station and (pretty much) ready to go at 4:30am. Content wise… just like all the other half-hours = Alt/Dupe!
So they’re getting rid of “Power Rangers” to make room for news on Saturday mornings? Oh the humanity!!!
Interesting catch Steve… Extreme weather is usually BIG revenue for TV stations UNLESS it happens on FRIDAY nights when all of the ‘b’ and ‘c’ teamers are manning the weather desks…
Did you hear ANYTHING about Fridays storms from Skilling in any sort of a timely fashion?… WGN was showing a Sox game until 11:30pm Friday and then had Micah Materre (by herself)at the anchor desk while the worst of the storms were in progress… Even though 40ft anntennas tend to attract lightening, there wasn’t a single reporter to be deployed!
Poor Jim Ramsey !
It is encouraging to see any media company these days expand. It’s a small positive, but I will take it. Whether the 4:30 a.m. experiment will be worth the added cost, in say a year or two, for Channels 7 and 9, remains to be seen though. It may work out.
Channel 7 and Channel 9 are in position. They are relatively successful. For ringrats such as Channel 2 and Fox Chicago, it almost would be worth it for them to drop their newscasts all together. The option for news is larger than ever, yet the amount of viewers is smaller. How much longer can a WFLD and WBBM-TV continue to waste money for so little results, when airing a taped program or a syndicated show costs little to nothing?
My family and I enjoy watching TMZ at 430am on WFLD. However, we can afford cable so we watch other shows too at 430am. There is no need to fret over WLS exapnding to 430am because it has no bearing on your well being.
Here’s my take on this…way too many newscasts are popping up right now and maybe it’s time to start cutting them instead of adding on as people are going to get pretty tired of over-exposure of the newscasts. When is enough enough? At Channel 2, they need to 86 that Monsters in the Morning Show now from 5-7 and let CBS program that timeframe. Bring back Up to the Minute and get rid of the infomercials in the late night hours. Channel 5 has it right for now BUT Channel 7 is doing overkill on this process. They need to reduce the 8-9:30 AM newscast to a half hour to 8-9 AM on Sundays but way too much could hurt them in the long run. Get rid of the 6-7 AM broadcast then on Saturdays. FOX 32 is irrelevant right now. Channel 9…enough said there.
“This portion of Nightbeat is brought to you by Burt Weinman Ford”. – Cliff Mercer Voice Impersonated
It’s great that the local stations are adding to their newscasts… Soon
WGN-TV will have 9 hours of scheduled news programs daily. Just imagine how REALLY great it would be if they increased their content as well…
All that they seem to be doing is adding one more half hour repeat of the same stories in an additional block of time…
Funny you mention “Power Rangers” is leaving ABC Saturdays since they’re re-running the very first episodes (Featuring the late Thuy Trang as the Yellow ranger) the promos state that Rita Repulsa the first antagonist of the series was “making a return” and was out to “stop the power rangers so that they’d be finished FOREVER!” Which only leads me to believe the forces of evil are actually the Circle 7 O&O’s:)
At least there’s still “Married…with Children” reruns on TBS at 4:30am!
If you watched Ravi on Channel 7 Saturday night news, there were NO reports from the scene by reporters. None. I figured that Ben Bradley was sleeping to get ready for his important 6 am Sunday news and Michelle Gallardo would have been too expensive to call at the last minute… since the storm had only been going for 12 hours! Pathetic. As for WGN on Friday night, KUDOS to them showing their live 9 pm news now on CLTV when a baseball game is being shown. They did 30 minutes LIVE at 9 and then on Channel 9 after the White Sox game. I just wish NBC Universal did not gut the Weather Channel with their takeover of such a useful network. They formerly had 24 hours of live coverage of important weather events. Now, they have SOME live programming but mostly taped shows about weather history and weather events. I wonder if COMCAST will change that back when their takeover of NBC Universal is complete. But I am concerned about COMCAST and what their conservative hierarchy will do to MSNBC and Dylan, Chris, Keith, Rachel, and the new Lawrence O’Donnell show – a great evening lineup of knowledgeable hosts and shows.
Great. Another 30 minutes of Hosea Sanders mumbling unintelligbly.
It’s time for someone, somewhere to revist the word NEWS! I am tired of hearing “breaking news” after it was broadcast the previous day and usually so trivial that no one is interested anyway. Too much “news” broadcast too many times each day. It’s time to initiate more programs that would make us laugh in these bad economic times. Stop the news churn now!
Pretty soon one of the stations will begin Friday’s morning news at 12:01 AM the preceding Monday…..
BREAKING NEWS!!! NBC 5 will now go on the air at 3:30 AM with a fascinating Lifestyle show for a full hour. Set your alarm clocks!
Great. Another 30 minutes of Tracy Butler saying “Good morning tew yew”! and another 30 minutes of Roz Varon trying to figure out what to do with her hands while showing us useless views of traffic from the tower cam.
When will sponsors stop enabling such horrible programming?! What an offensive waste of “The Public’s Airwaves”! Cartoons would be a better use of the airwaves than more “news”!