Two ABC O&O’s end live news on their partner stations.

KGO-TV 7 / San Francisco – Oakland – San Jose (“ABC 7”)

KOFY-TV 20 / San Francisco – Oakland – San Jose (“KOFY TV 20”)

WLS-TV 7 / Chicago (“ABC 7 Chicago”)

WCIU-TV 26 / Chicago (“WCIU – The U”)

Today, we have a story for you about two ABC O&O’s ending live news on their partner stations and one has to do with an upcoming network affiliation one is receiving.

First up, the San Francisco Bay Area. KGO 7 has decided to no longer produce a weeknight newscast for its partner station, KOFY 20. The newscast, better known as ABC 7 News at 9:00 on KOFY TV 20 has been on the air for over a decade, having first started in 2007 when the station was known as KBWB (it would become KOFY in 2008, named after a former radio station in the area which you can pronounce as KOFY. That radio station is now today’s KTCT 1050, a sister sports radio station to 680 KNBR).

The newscast would run for 12 years until July 19th, 2019 and just recently gained a competitor in 2017 when KRON 4 (MNT) added hour-long news at 9:00 p.m. That station now has the hour all to themselves in the market as it currently runs a three-hour news block from 8:00-11:00 p.m., as a result of KGO’s cancellation of its 9:00 p.m. news. Also recently, KOFY started repeating the 9:00 p.m. news at 10:00 p.m. Both have since been discontinued.

At 9:00 p.m., KOFY replaced the newscast with two episodes of Last Man Standing while at 10:00 p.m., its (temporarily) replaced by KOFY’s longtime Sunday music/dance program, Dance Party, which airs for an hour and also still airs on Sunday nights (it will remain on Sundays once KOFY adds Right This Minute to 10:00 p.m. weeknights starting next Monday). Despite the ending of live news on KOFY, the partnership remains as KOFY re-airs KGO’s weeknight 6:00 p.m. news at 7:00 p.m. and its weeknight 11:00 p.m. news at 11:30 p.m.

Up next, we go to Chicago where it was announced earlier today that after four years, WLS 7 has decided to pull the plug on its hour-long 7:00 p.m. newscast for its partner station WCIU 26, better known as The U, on August 30th. While ratings weren’t great, it was a successful partnership and a successful newscast, but its ending because WCIU has acquired rights to become Chicago’s newest CW affiliate starting September 1st, and as a result, WCIU will have to vacant the 7:00-9:00 p.m. block for The CW primetime, meaning there would’ve been no room left for WLS to air a pre-9:00 p.m. primetime newscast.

Its Independent format, known as The U will stay on air but will move to WMEU 48.1/WCIU 26.2 and because of that, WLS wasn’t too kind of airing a newscast on a subchannel instead of a main channel, also considering the note that The U will be kicked off DirecTV since it doesn’t carry WMEU in its lineup. What will replace ABC 7 Eyewitness News at 7:00 on WCIU – The U is currently unknown.

The current team is Cheryl Burton, Hosea Sanders, AccuWeather with Meteorologist Larry Mowry and Sports with Jim Rose.

The decision was “an amicable parting,” said Steve Farber, senior V.P. of operations for Weigel Broadcasting.

“With that change, we thought that was the right time to end this part of our partnership. We’ve always enjoyed working with ABC 7, and they’ve done a great job producing a very competitive newscast for us. But in moving to the CW, our priorities have changed. While we’re sad to see the newscast go, looking at this from all sides, we thought that was the best way to start things off this fall. Our move to CW is all about having a very competitive primetime lineup available, and that’s what took priority here.”

Although the news partnership is ending, there could still be a collaboration in the works between WLS and WCIU in the future. Could it be news? Don’t know, but stay tuned to find out.

For now, its the end of live and local news on these partner stations from these two ABC O&O’s that have had strong partnerships with these stations for years.