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Why do the early evening newscasts start ahead of schedule?

K

kramie13

I've noticed an unusual quirk about the local TV stations' early evening newscasts (between 4 PM and 7 PM).

They all start ahead of schedule.

The "News at 4" will start at 3:59 PM.
The "News at 5" will start at 4:59 PM.

And for some reason, the "News at 6" will start at 5:58 PM. WCVB seems to be the worst offender here, as I've timed with my stopwatch that they always seem to start the 6:00-6:30 PM half hour as soon as the clock rolls from 5:57:59 PM to 5:58:00 PM.

WHY do the local stations do this? Whenever I DVR one of these newscasts, I miss the lead story! And why is the early start even MORE egregious at 6 PM? It really irks me!
 
I'd say it's to catch viewers and upcharge the spot rate. By :59 past the channel surfer is likely surfing. They can catch some random surfing viewers. Prime spots are news. So, if news starts at 4 or 5, they're selling an adjacent not an 'in the news' spot at a higher rate.

When I was in Houston we carried a TV newscast at 5 on the radio station. Their news typically started at 4:57 or 4:58.
 
What exactly do you mean by "spot rate". Are you saying advertising is factoring into this?

I've noticed on WBZ and WCVB, they'll come back from commercial break around 5:55 PM, run a "fluff" news story until the clock hits 5:58. One of the anchors will say, "the news at 6 starts, right now!" And cut right to a typical "warm open" to a newscast that you would typically see coming out of a commercial break.

So from a viewer's perspective, it's like the news is being "re-booted" mid-segment. But if I DVR the show to watch later at my leisure, I miss the lead story because it's occurring at 4:59 or 5:59 PM, when the channel's program guide still says it's showing the previously ended program, NOT "the news".

What's wrong with airing a few commercials until the top/bottom of the hour is officially "hit"? The station gets ad revenue, and the viewers don't miss the start of the broadcast, especially if a live viewer is tuning in from another channel.
 
Yes, I'm saying advertisers will pay more more a spot in the newscast so instead of selling an adjacent to news spot for less money, they intro the news a little early to sell that adjacent spot for a premium rate. Sure, you could just run spots until the top or bottom of the hour but if you could get 20% more for each of those commercials if they landed inside the newscast why would you take less money?
 
ssetta said:
Do they usually start the newscast during the closing credits of the previous show (if there is one)?
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Not in KC as far as I’ve seen. Some subchannels like Antenna TV do a split screen and run the next show’s opening during the closing credits of shows, but that’s been going on since some cable channels started doing that in the late 90’s.
 
kramie13 said:
I've noticed an unusual quirk about the local TV stations' early evening newscasts (between 4 PM and 7 PM).

They all start ahead of schedule.

The "News at 4" will start at 3:59 PM.
The "News at 5" will start at 4:59 PM.

And for some reason, the "News at 6" will start at 5:58 PM. WCVB seems to be the worst offender here, as I've timed with my stopwatch that they always seem to start the 6:00-6:30 PM half hour as soon as the clock rolls from 5:57:59 PM to 5:58:00 PM.

WHY do the local stations do this? Whenever I DVR one of these newscasts, I miss the lead story! And why is the early start even MORE egregious at 6 PM? It really irks me!
Click to expand...
Speculation here: Look at audience and advertiser behavior as part of the equation. If audiences are ready at 5:58, even wanting to be there a bit early, as may have been determined, the advertiser will want to catch this "full house" outside of the program "slot" for lower ad rates. The early start may be indicative of the broadcaster eventually becoming wise to this ad buy tactic or station vulnerability or assembled masses. In Los Angeles KFI-A starts its TOH news at about 0:57. Who knows how far a game like that can go.

One thing troubles me about my idea: Such a game as this would have been understood as far back as about the 1950's. It seems that the broadcaster practice of starting news early is fairly recent. Do they worry about impatient audiences and the T.V. Remote(s)? "Radios" have remote too.

So, when did this practice of early starting times become common?

P.S. Sidenote on early audience gatherings: Remember when television sets of years ago had to warm up for a few minutes before a picture could be seen. That problem has been fixed since the late 1960's.)
 
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BLA said:
Speculation here: Look at audience and advertiser behavior as part of the equation. If audiences are ready at 5:58, even wanting to be there a bit early, as may have been determined, the advertiser will want to catch this "full house" outside of the program "slot" for lower ad rates. The early start may be indicative of the broadcaster eventually becoming wise to this ad buy tactic or station vulnerability or assembled masses. In Los Angeles KFI-A starts its TOH news at about 0:57. Who knows how far a game like that can go.

One thing troubles me about my idea: Such a game as this would have been understood as far back as about the 1950's. It seems that the broadcaster practice of starting news early is fairly recent. Do they worry about impatient audiences and the T.V. Remote(s)? "Radios" have remote too.

So, when did this practice of early starting times become common?

P.S. Sidenote on early audience gatherings: Remember when television sets of years ago had to warm up for a few minutes before a picture could be seen. That problem has been fixed since the late 1960's.)
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I think we might be overthinking. You want to be in news while your competition is in spots, or if your competition is also in news, and also starting early, you don't want to be in spots.
 
gr8oldies said:
I think we might be overthinking. You want to be in news while your competition is in spots, or if your competition is also in news, and also starting early, you don't want to be in spots.
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The disadvantage is that users that record news to view at their convenience will miss the first minute or two of the newscast… usually the lead story.
 
gr8oldies said:
I think we might be overthinking. You want to be in news while your competition is in spots, or if your competition is also in news, and also starting early, you don't want to be in spots.
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Good observation. There is the understandable desire to grab'em first as well as the obsession of being first to report.

And I would think that stations are free to charge whatever they wish for any given time period. An account executive would be nice to hear from.
 
In Chicago, all three network newscasts run at 5:30. All three local newscasts coming out of it start at 5:59ish. Have for years. The 10 p.m. news, the same. Network drops out at 9:59 and away they go.

If you're DVRing it, set it to start a few minutes early.
 
DavidEduardo said:
The disadvantage is that users that record news to view at their convenience will miss the first minute or two of the newscast… usually the lead story.
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I'm glad someone other than me understands this. Imagine if you had a virtual work meeting at 9 AM, you joined the call at 8:59, but the organizer started it at 8:58. That would be incredibly rude!

tvnut said:
In Chicago, all three network newscasts run at 5:30. All three local newscasts coming out of it start at 5:59ish. Have for years. The 10 p.m. news, the same. Network drops out at 9:59 and away they go.

If you're DVRing it, set it to start a few minutes early.
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Whenever I record a prime time show on CBS, it doesn't start early. So why does a regular recording of the local news need a "manual override" of the DVR's default settings in order to record the broadcast in its entirety?

And some services like YouTube TV don't have this feature.

Seriously, what's wrong with airing commercials until the clock "rolls over" to the top/bottom of the hour? It gives the station some additional ad revenue, and viewers aren't "late" when they're "on time". Everybody wins here.
 
And with an increasing number of stations and networks moving from traditional staffed master control environments to the cloud, things like Internet latency come into play. Programming is played in-order, not based on the clock.
 
Kramie 13, yes they can roll spots or plug them in to the newscast at a higher rate. They choose to roll those avails into the newscast because that same 15 or 30 gets charged a premium.
 
There's also the issue that some viewers who see a spot coming out of the preceding program are going to instantly flip to another station. By segueing immediately from the end credits of that preceding show to the opening billboard for the news, management is hoping that some of those viewers will stay with their newscast, at least until their own first spot cluster. Since many newscasts go to about 10 past the next hour before the first spot airs, that could mean an extra quarter hour watched, which would be especially valuable if they get the trifecta of viewer staying tuned, the extra quarter hour, *and* that viewer having a Nielsen meter on their TV.
 
It seems like the best way to handle these types of situations is to have the start time, x:58, be reported to the program listing services so that is the actual start time for those who choose to record.
 
BLA said:
Good observation. There is the understandable desire to grab'em first as well as the obsession of being first to report.

And I would think that stations are free to charge whatever they wish for any given time period. An account executive would be nice to hear from.
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Assuming that the 6pm newscast is more highly rated than the 5pm newscast, the ads would generally sell for more within the 6pm newscast. (I'm not in sales, but I'm a data scientist who has worked with media data)

The other side of the coin is the audience. They may be trying to keep the current audience from switching channels by getting them engrossed in the lead story. OTOH, they are potentially losing those who tuned in at the top of the hour and missed the lead story. So, it is most definitely a balance.

In Phoenix (my home market), I've actually noticed the opposite done at one particular station. They tend to start their late news at 10:01pm, which works well for me.
 
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