Local News: Morning TV Star   

Once an a.m. rarity, it's now a popular staple at many stations.

Until a few years ago, no one watched television in the morning to get local news. Nowadays, live TV newscasts are literally flooding the airwaves between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m.

In many markets, the competition for viewers is
as intense as it is in the evening and late news time periods, with three or four stations going head to head with newscasts for two to three hours in the morning.

"Morning news is perceived at some stations as being second only to the late news as the most important, in terms of news growth and revenue growth," says Marty Haag, senior vice president of news for the A.H. Belo Corp., which owns 16 TV stations. "The audience is there because people are getting up earlier and earlier."

So the newscasts are starting earlier too. What began in the 1980s as one or two stations in a city doing 15- or 30-minute newscasts at 6:30 a.m. before the network morning shows has evolved into an increasingly competitive battleground stretching back to 5 a.m. "No one wants to be the third or fourth station to start a newscast at a certain time period," says Haag, "so if the competition starts news at 6 o'clock, I want to go at least at 6 and probably at 5:30, and if the competition is already at 5:30, I may want to go back to 5."

Local news established a beachhead in the 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. time slot when stations owned by Fox began programming there in the early 1990s. Then, a year ago, CBS gave its affiliates the option of broadcasting more local news in the 7 o'clock segment of "CBS This Morning." Many stations took an aggressive approach and dedicated the maximum 39 minutes for local news feeds.

"There's been some growth in every CBS market where locals have taken over the time period," says Frank Graham, vice president of the TV news consulting firm McHugh-Hoffman.

The news fed to the viewer at 5 or 6 a.m. is a lot different from the news he or she gets at 10 or 11 p.m. "The whole focus of morning news is not just a review of what happened overnight, but it also is preparing the viewer for what's going on today and what's happening in the news that will impact his or her family," Graham says. "The viewer is less interested in long, reflective, think pieces that might be on the early or late news, but wants more information that has personal value. 'What's in the news that will impact my investments? How long is it going to take me to get to work, and what should I wear?' "

Thus, weather, traffic and "live" field reports on the activities that will occur that day in the community have become a staple of the morning newscasts. "It's that local angle that has excited stations more than anything else," Haag says.

Not only is the content of the morning news different, but so is the presentation – it tends to be less formal. And the morning format is often repetitive, with the same information reappearing every 20 minutes or so.

"You may only have the individual watching for 15 or 20 minutes," says Dennis Fisher, news director at WTAJ in Altoona, Pennsylvania, which starts its local newscast at 5:30 a.m. and runs through CBS's "This Morning" until 8 a.m. "Remember, people are getting up, showering, getting breakfast, maybe getting the kids ready for school before they go to work. They may not even be paying complete attention to what's on. But they'll tune in for something they want. That's why our weather has to hit every 10 minutes."

Still, there are some folks who do sit down and watch the entire newscast. "People have told us in our research that our hour of news from 6 to 7 a.m. is their news of record," says Loren Tobia of KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska. "They say this is the one time of the day they can sit down and watch the news without any distractions, unlike what happens at 5:30 or 6 at night."

TV newscasts have not supplanted radio as the prime source of news in the morning, since highway commuters still rely on the radio on their way to work. "They're at least the equal of radio," says Bill Yeager, vice president of Metro Network's News/Sports/ Weather, which provides traffic and weather information as well as news to both radio and television. "There is a lot more 'in-home' listening of television than of radio. Morning listenership is way down at many all-news radio stations, while morning television news in those same cities is up."

Expansion of the morning newscasts is expected to continue, particularly in cities where the 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. time period is not already saturated by news. Some stations may even try to attract an audience with news at 4:30 a.m.

"Every time I've done it [added local news in the morning] or my competition has done it against me, I've seen it work," says Fisher, whose station serves the Johnstown-Altoona market of central Pennsylvania. "Any news director who's not immediately making plans to expand in the morning news period ought to have his head examined."