Thinking of a job at news broadcasting? The two major centers have long co-founded one of the country’s big morning programs or led the evening newscasts. These days, there seems to be room for a third.
Every weekday at 1 p.m. on ABC, Amy Robach. TJ Holmes and Dr. Jennifer Ashton host an afternoon hour of news that seems to be gaining momentum. “GMA3: What You Need to Know” was launched as an entertainment-focused extension of Disney’s Good Morning America, but it has evolved. On Monday, the trio opened their watch with a look at how monkeypox is affecting children as well as flooding in the Southwest. But there’s also room for less serious stories: Actor Coleman Domingo visited last week, and Fridays feature a segment dedicated to faith.
“What we found is that viewers are really hungry for news in the afternoon,” says Kat McKenzie, executive producer of “GMA3” in an interview. “They want to know what’s going on, they want this update on what was happening in the morning, or they just want to dig into certain topics.”
In September, NBC is looking to expand the field. The Comcast-owned network is moving the feature-length TV series “Days of Our Lives” to the Peacock Broadcasting Center and will replace it with an hour of “NBC News Daily,” a show built from programming already on the “NBC News Now” video hub. The premise: Depending on the hour of the day, Kate Snow and Aaron Gilchrist or Morgan Radford and Vicki Nguyen will update viewers on the latest national and international stories. Local stations will be able to add chips to the mix, too. Snow, who chairs the weekend edition of “NBC Nightly News,” is one of the biggest names in the news division to take over the day. What’s more, “NBC Nightly News” is getting an afternoon spot in some parts of the country starting September 12. The East Coast version of the show will air at 3:30 p.m. in Los Angeles and at 4 p.m. in San Francisco.
Afternoon television viewers of a different era were making their way through sitcoms, talk shows, and mass reruns. But in 2022, when anyone can call up a favorite show over live broadcasts, TV executives see even more interest in the news. “When something happens in the world, people want to watch it live, but an entertainment program like a TV series is something people usually watch late in the day,” says Ben Bogardus, associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University.
Local stations get into the mix, too. In Los Angeles, Paramount Global affiliate KCAL plans in the fall to broadcast 7 consecutive hours of news coverage between 4 a.m. and 11 a.m., while KCBS will broadcast “CBS Mornings” live at 4 a.m. and on a delayed basis at 7 a.m. Morning from WCBS in New York. It launches a 9am newscast in September, with half an hour on the station and a full hour on its streaming counterpart.
Meanwhile, broadcast networks have found themselves anticipating hours of daytime programming in the past several years, thanks in large part to the coronavirus pandemic, Senate hearings and a volatile political environment in the United States in 2017, ABC News preempted the daylight hours. For a special look at a unique solar eclipse. Yes, viewers enjoy hours upon hours of cable news programming that they can watch every afternoon, but at least one news director believes that the radio outlets offer something unique. “I think it’s not unreasonable to think that an hour of challenging news — objective, traditional, nonpartisan — would also be attractive,” says Noah Oppenheim, president of NBC News.
One of the reasons for the new influx of Al-Nahar news is the increased supply. Some viewers are working from home, developing new routines that include afternoon check-in in the headlines. Thanks to broadcasting, local stations and news divisions of CBS, ABC, and NBC are creating new content and segments throughout the day. The NBC News Daily will use hours already assigned to the news broadcasting site NBC News Now. “GMA3” appears twice more on ABC News Live once it made its broadcast debut. The team that produces it works on the ABC News Live portion of the news operations.
In the morning, broadcasters usually tell viewers what happened last night and what they can expect the next day. At night, the evening news presenters generally tell the biggest stories of the day. However, in the early afternoon, sometimes, the news breaks down, and reporters are on the ground.
Television executives may be looking at other dynamics, too. Both “GMA3” and “Days of Our Lives” are backed largely by advertising dollars for major drug companies hoping to reach older Americans. But the series won about $30.8 million in ads last year, according to Kantar, an ad spend tracker, compared to about $43.4 million for “GMA3” — a difference of about 40.9%. In the first quarter of 2022, “Days” brought in about $4.2 million, while “GMA3” earned nearly $11.9 million – a massive 183.3% gap.
Broadcasting networks are “trying to figure out how to use the fact that people want on-demand news, and they can also grow talent there and maybe they can experiment,” says Jane Hall, associate professor in the American University School of Communications. .
At ABC, “GMA3” was a bit of a trial-and-error process. The show, originally called “GMA Day,” premiered in 2018 with Michael Strahan and Sarah Haines, then adding Kiki Palmer. before launching it. Strahan described the show as “very interesting,” suggesting that viewers “may need to get away from some of the more serious stuff out there.” With the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, ABC News executives changed the format, and the show offered welcome medical updates from Dr. Ashton. As the nation makes its way to a more normalized landscape, GMA3 has evolved into a watch that blends the latest titles with sectors focused on entertainment and inspiration.
“GMA3” won’t stop giving viewers updates on the hottest headlines, says McKenzie, but it has room to test other things. “We respond to what viewers need. They need a lot of things,” she says. “People want to laugh.”
It is also possible to develop the “NBC News Daily”. “I think it will take time to find a new audience in that time period,” Oppenheim says, since viewers are still accustomed to entertainment and talk shows. “It won’t happen overnight, but I do believe in the appeal of the long term.” Meanwhile, the networks seem to be building a bridge that they hope will move the morning news audience into the afternoon before settling in for the evening.
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