FIRST ON THE BLOG: If your looking for an alternative to local morning news after 7:00 a.m. in Austin, your out of luck because that ‘alternative’ no longer exists.
Just recently, KXAN 36 has gotten rid of its two-hour extension of KXAN News Today that aired from 7:00-9:00 a.m. on its sister station KNVA 54. Despite maintaing an hour-long simulcast at 6:00 a.m. with KXAN, in which the station will keep for now, KNVA has replaced the two-hour extension with its lifestyle show Studio 512, signaling a move that the show could move from KXAN to KNVA and expand to two hours early in the morning instead of an hour at midday.
However, it also gives KTBC 7 (FOX)’s local morning news, once again the ONLY home for local morning news after 7:00 a.m. in the market. The broadcast continually sustained low ratings from 7:00-9:00 a.m. against FOX 7 Austin News – Good Day Austin (which also has another hour at 9:00 a.m.), hence the cancellation.
Another move that has just taken place is that KXAN has cut its Sunday morning newscast at 8:00 a.m. down to 30 minutes to air a Sunday morning public affairs show at 8:30 a.m. called The State of Texas, which is repeated on Sundays at 9:30 p.m. on KNVA after the latter’s 9:00 p.m. news.
So ratings haven’t been fared well for local news on one half of a duopoly where the other offers the most-watched local news in the market. Hmm… low ratings will kill it and that’s what happened here.
changingnewscasts.wordpress.com 
It would be interesting if there was another round of “affiliate music chairs” in which KTBC would downgrade from 7 to 18, KLRU PBS from 18 to 42, KVUE upgrading from 24 to 11 and KEYE moving up to 25 to become CBS 25 Austin.
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Your dreaming.
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According to the NMSA, KWKT was simulcasting the KNVA morning newscast as “Fox 44 Capital News”. The cancellation also has resulted in KWKT replacing the simulcast with syndicated E/I programs during the 7:00 a.m. half-hour and “Consumer Corner” (which is probably a block of infomercials) from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m., thus leaving the Waco-Temple-Killeen market without a 7:00 a.m. newscast unless KWKT were to launch an in-house morning newscast in the near future, which should have been done when it took news production in-house in 2017.
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