WNBC, has yet again changed its news schedule for the fourth time since last year. Since adding the 7PM newscast, the 5 o’clock slot have been a mess since. After getting rid of News 4 You in October, WNBC had a segment at 5:30 after a showing of television-magazine Extra at 5 anchored by Sue Simmons and Michael Gargiulo. Now its flipped, the news is on 5 then Extra is on at 5:30, with the news coming up again at 6. I’ve heard that the schedule changes was a rumor the week before Christmas but I decided to wait to confirm the rumor before publishing this post.

An email from a WNBC fan that was sent to us by the schedule changes wrote “Maybe they’ll cut their idiocy and bring it back to sanity - like the way it was!!!”

I agree with the comment that I recieved. I understand that the budget of the newscast is up to 2 hours of production during the evening slots, like most other television stations. NBC O&O station WTVJ in Miami, which also has the news at 7, removed the 5 o’clock hour of news completely; there is only a 6PM, Nightly News, then the half hour 7 o’clock news. This was my evidence in September that the 7PM newscast was forced by the network.

I believe that the previous schedule was alright to fit the 7PM news (starting at 5:30), it was just non-stop news for 2 hours, including Brian Williams at 6:30. But now there is a block of no news, its going to cause distraction.

But overall, I think the 7 O’clock news is at its best of a 2.5 rating in October. But if the schedule is going to keep on changing, then the NBC network should force WNBC to stop the 7PM newscasts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Entertainment News, News, Observation on Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.