It seems like a station in Northeastern Pennsylvania has decided to ditch partners in favor of doing something all by themselves. In fact, it has already started.
Since yesterday, Sunday January 1st, which happened to be New Year’s Day, WOLF 56 now produces its own 10:00pm newscast all by themselves. FOX 56 News – First at 10:00 is still an hour-long newscast, 7 days a week that is now produced in-house. It was previously produced by WBRE 28 (NBC) that lasted for 6 years but the agreement was dropped on December 31st, the day before. Still… with this new in-house operation, it still competes against WNEP 16 (ABC)’s half-hour nightly 10:00pm newscast for its second digital subchannel WNEP 2 (Antenna TV) for local news at that timeslot in the market.
WOLF 56 and sister stations WSWB 38 (CW) and WQMY 53 (MyTV)’s General Manager, Jon Cadman:
“We are extremely excited to give the viewers and advertisers what they have been asking for. Our years with WBRE have been great but it was time to give the area another voice.”
As part of the change to going in-house, the station has hired anchors, meteorologists, multimedia journalists, photographers and news managers.
The on-air personalities highlighted are anchor Dayne Marae, a New Jersey native who most recently worked at as an anchor at KRBC 9 (NBC) in Abilene, TX; Brian Sheehan, a journalist from Bucks County who previously worked as the executive producer and host for The Daily Meal in New York City; Alex Belser, a journalist coming from the Altoona-based WTAJ 10 (CBS); Katie Berlin, a journalist who interned for NBCUniversal in Los Angeles and Jade Jarvis, a Philadelphia native who began her career at WTXF 29 (FOX) in Philadelphia.
WOLF 56’s News Manager, Dawn Miller:
“It will be great to be a three-station news market again after so many years of only having two.We’re looking forward to covering the local stories in communities throughout our coverage area, everywhere from Pottsville to Williamsport, Stroudsburg, Scranton and beyond.”
The station is owned by New Age Media but is operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group under a MSA – master service agreement.
So a new news department makes it a three-station news market again for the first time since WYOU 22 (CBS) shut theirs down in 2009 and combined it with WBRE 28 (NBC). With the area’s only hour-long 10:00pm newscast, I think viewers may react positively to these news but we’ll see if they will watch it.
DISCLAIMER (new to 2017 on the blog): Some of the info used came from The Citizens’ Voice, which first reported on this story. We give them credit for some of the information used here.
changingnewscasts.wordpress.com 
I wonder what’s the tipping point for Sinclair to do in-house news in their smaller markets. As seen on this site, FOX Charleston has in-house news, but that was because of common ownership at WCIV. There’s this market; and you have some anomalies like Toledo (news from Fort Wayne?) and Tallahassee (WCTV produces news on WTWC 40.2 via a previous agreement).
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Actually, all of WTAT 24’s newscasts are produced by WCIV 36.2 as the morning anchors on FOX 24 are also seen on ABC News 4 so WTAT’s news are not in-house.
Toledo’s at WNWO is coming from South Bend in terms of technical production.
Yes, Sinclair allows that Tally partnership since WTWC doesn’t do its own in-house news. At least having WCTV produce news for WTLH is good.
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Actually, there is no news on WTLH; the FOX affiliation was moved to WTWC 40.2 (still branded FOX 49) two years ago. The newscasts that were on WTLH air on 40.2… New Age Media tried to sell its stations to Sinclair, but this MSA stuff and affiliation change happened instead.
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Well yes WTWC 40.2 but thats where the intellictual unit of the former WTLH as FOX is at.
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Yeah, I’ve had brain farts on the other markets lol
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Why won’t Sinclair start a newscast on its Fox affiliate in Pittsburgh? Isn’t that market big enough, the largest Fox affiliate without its own newscast? What’s the excuse there?
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Good question and your right… WPGH 53 is the largest FOX affiliate without its own news department. Before they disbanded it 2006, WRAZ 50 in Raleigh was the largest without one and is still without one thanks to WRAL 5.
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WPGH also largest FOX affiliate with no morning newscasts. I wonder if WPXI will eventually produce morning news for WPGH?
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Here’s an interesting twist: Sinclair is talking about a merger with Tribune; Tribune operates WNEP (Dreamcatcher Broadcasting, which is owned by a former Tribune Exec, owns WNEP). If this does happen the FOX56 News would end up where it started in 1991: produced by WNEP, and Wilkes-Barre / Scranton would be back to a two station news market. The FCC forced Tribune to spin off WNEP to Dreamcatcher because WNEP’s signal overlapped with the are covered by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper, also owned by Tribune. The FCC though might not allow Sinclair to Control four TV stations: WNEP/WOLF/WSWB/WQMY.
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It was too good to be true!!! WOLF’s FOX 56 WOLF’s newscast is actually coming from a studio at Sinclair station WSBT in South Bend Indiana, 600 miles away from Scranton. Ryan Cummings and Dayne Marae not only anchor the FOX56 News at Ten from WSBT but also anchor the 6 O’clock news for Sinclair station WNWO Toledo, Ohio (which is piped into Toledo the same way it is piped in to Wilkes-Barre / Scranton). Check out this picture with both anchors presenting the WNWO newscast in the very same studio that they will later in the day use for WOLF (minus the NBC24 graphic) http://static-16.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/75e21c4d-9469-434e-87bd-43130b14b13a-large16x9_poster_4d5db0c10e954b52a78fedac0d839014.png?
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