Waking up with local morning shows
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- Category: Media Matters
- Created on Wednesday, 23 November 2011 16:26
Scott McLean, Rustie Dean and Heather Anderson smile on the new set of Global's Morning News. Photo by Kim Jay.
by Kim Jay
A month ago Regina had no morning TV news programming. Now, Global and CTV will be battling it out for an audience. On Nov 28, Global Regina will roll out their morning news program, shortly after their competitors at CTV Regina hit the air with a similar local morning show.
Global's three hour long program will provide news headlines every 30 minutes, along with a variety of weather reports, traffic updates, in-studio interviews and live hits from around the city.
“We are banking on the fact that people are only going to watch the show for 30 minutes in the morning,” said Scott McLean, the live reporter for the show. “That’s about the time they have before they go to work in the morning.”
“You don’t want to repeat all last night’s news, and people don’t want to wake up in the morning seeing doom and gloom. People want to know what is going on, but they also want something to get them going in the morning.”
McLean said this format will give viewers a chance to go live to community-based events they wouldn’t see on the evening news.
Meanwhile, CTV Regina is getting some backlash from some long-time fans of Canada AM, which was replaced by the new local morning program, called Morning Live.
“I liked finding out what was going on nationally in the morning. I have the evening local news to catch up on local news,” said Katie Desjarlais, a Canada AM viewer.
“Now we are going to have another morning show? I think it’s overkill. Regina is too small for all that.”
Another Regina resident, Robert Toth, said more options is good.
“I like listening the radio in the morning. You know, it’s hard for an old man like me to change my ways,” he laughed. “But I say the more variety, the better. There’s nothing wrong with being informed.”
And with just a few rehearsals left before the big roll-out, McLean and the crew at Global hope the youthful energy on show will attract an young audience.