FIRST ON THE BLOG: If you’ve been following the Charleston (SC) TV market for a few weeks now, you’ve been noticing that changes were coming, especially on WTAT. Now, those changes are coming in the first of the new year and we can report them, FIRST ON THE BLOG…
Starting New Year’s Day, Friday January 1st, 2016, WCIV 4 (DT 36.2, but will use 4 for marketing and branding purposes) will take over newscast production responsibilities for its sister station, WTAT 24. The newscast production will be shifting away from its long-time partners at Raycom-owned WCSC 5 (CBS), which has been producing local news for WTAT 24 since the early 1990s. On that day, WTAT 24 will adopt Sinclair’s new graphics and music to collaborate with WCIV 4’s graphics and music plus a new set.
First off, starting on that day, WCIV 4 will expand WTAT 24’s FOX 24 Morning News from an hour-long to a two-hour broadcast and will soon air from 7:00-9:00 a.m. Under WCSC 5, the newscast was on from 7:00-8:00 a.m.
The morning newscast will utilize the crew from WCIV 4’s ABC News 4 – Good Morning Charleston (weekdays from 5:00-7:00am):
After the morning newscast is expanded, WTAT 24 will continue to air its nightly 10:00pm newscast as FOX 24 News at 10:00, continuing as an hour-long newscast on weeknights and a half-hour newscast on weekends. Newscast production will also shift on this newscast from WCSC 5 to WCIV 4 with a new anchor.
Leyla Gulen, who you see in this video, will anchor the weeknight newscast, starting on Friday. She comes from KGO 7 (ABC) in San Francisco where she used to be a morning traffic/feature reporter:
With these changes, WCIV 4 will add another three hours of weekday news and another half-hour of weekend news.
This marks the end for WCSC 5 which produced news for WTAT 24 since the early 1990s under a news sharing agreement. According to Wikipedia, it started out as a nightly half-hour broadcast before expanding the weeknight broadcast to an hour on August 31st, 2009. Years after the newscast production began is when WCSC 5 added an hour-long morning newscast at 7:00am on WTAT 24. But soon after more than 15 years, the partnership between WCSC 5 and WTAT 24 will end and a new partnership between WCIV 4 and WTAT 24 will soon begin.
The last weekend newscasts produced by WCSC 5 have already aired on WTAT 24 with the last-ever newscast produced by WCSC 5 on WTAT 24 will come at 10:00pm on New Year’s Eve, December 31st.
All changes for the better in the South Carolina Lowcountry, indeed and it all takes place on the first of the new year. Happy New Year, Charleston!
changingnewscasts.wordpress.com 
FOX affiliates have expanded local news right and left in both 2014 and 2015 and there up to it again in 2016. But how much news can FOX stations be expanding in 2016? There is only so much news FOX stations can expand. Maybe FOX stations motive to expand news right and left for almost 3 frigin years in a row is for their national news channel to influence the 2016 Election. Even though it is local news that is expanding on FOX stations when there is national and international newz being reported on local Faux Stations they get the news feeds from FOX News and FOX News has influenced the politics and media of the Grand United States of America.
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I do hope NBC stations decided to air local 4:00pm newscasts on the O&O stations in 2016 such as KNBC, WNBC, WVIT, WTVJ, KNTV and the NBC stations in TV Markets such as mine in Albuquerque KOB-TV where Comcast is the main cable TV provider which is also owned by NBC to give FOX affiliates a run for their money as you know NBC News MSNBC is the counterpart to FOX.
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PS at one time WCIV-TV used to be an NBC affiliate
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Yes, I know that already.
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In my city of Albuquerque KOB-TV 4 use to produce the 9:00pm newscast for KASA-TV 2 the FOX affiliate in 2006 KRQE-TV bought KASA-TV 2 and KASA’s newscast production shifted to KRQE-TV is same way as WTAT production is shifting.
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That I know too.
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[…] ON THE BLOG: We broke the news two days ago that WTAT was ready to switch news providers from WCSC to WCIV. But it seems like WCSC is not ready to give up one of its newscasts, just […]
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I really dont like the switch.
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KGO San Francisco is stupid. They did not keep Leyla Gulen. She’s beautiful, smart, talented, and engaging. She brings a breath of fresh air feeling with her wherever she goes. Charleston is very lucky to have her. She’s a delight.
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