FIRST ON THE BLOG: The Catch-up Posts series continues. Today, we go to Maine and Florida, two opposite ends of the East Coast spectrum and to put this all together, all of this happened on the same day.
First, we go to Northern New England, to be specific, in Maine where WCSH 6 and WLBZ 2 started a new hour-long newscast at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, June 1st. NewsCenter Maine at 4:00 now airs from 4:00-5:00 p.m. and joins WCSH and WLBZ’s other regularly scheduled weekday newscasts at 5:00, 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. The newscast is currently anchored, just by looking at first day clips, by the stations’ longtime anchors, Lee Nelson and Cindy Williams, which ironically enough, are a married couple too.
In terms of competition, this gives Portland its second option for weekday news at that time after WMTW 8 (ABC) debuted theirs in 2016 while in Bangor, its their first-ever option at that time while WABI 5 (CBS/CW) continues to start at 5:00 and WVII 7 (ABC) continues to have its lone hold out for evening news at 6:00 p.m.
Meanwhile, let’s go to Panama City where, in 2020, they finally got their own primetime newscast. WPGX 28, which has never had its own news operation, has finally launched its first-ever primetime newscast, also starting on Monday, June 1st. FOX 28 News at 9:00 is an hour-long (!) newscast from 9:00-10:00 p.m., but because WPGX’s studios are not sufficient enough for a news operation, the station has contracted an agreement with WMBB 13 (ABC) to produce the weeknight newscast. The newscast is anchored by longtime WMBB anchor Jerry Brown with weather from the WMBB News 13 First Alert StormTeam with Chief Meteorologist Ross Whitley.
This is the first and ONLY primetime newscast in the market as WJHG 7 (NBC/CW), despite having the presence of a CW subchannel, doesn’t produce a 9:00 p.m. newscast at all. It may change soon if they start to take notice. There is also no weekend newscast to start, at least at the moment.
There is another catch-up post to tell you about with two more stations involved. Stay tuned to the blog for those details and thank you for your patience.
changingnewscasts.wordpress.com 