WCIA, the Nexstar-owned CBS affiliate in Champaign, Illinois expanded its 6 p.m. newscast to an hour yesterday. But hey, when you already do a live, hour-long, local magazine show geared towards women every morning and a live, hour-long, life-style show every afternoon, producing an extra half-hour news segment is no big deal, right? “We have […]
WCIA, the Nexstar-owned CBS affiliate in Champaign, Illinois expanded its 6 p.m. newscast to an hour yesterday.
But hey, when you already do a live, hour-long, local magazine show geared towards women every morning and a live, hour-long, life-style show every afternoon, producing an extra half-hour news segment is no big deal, right?
“We have a history of moving away from syndicated programming,” says Coby Cooper, WCIA’s general manager.
“It comes out of the long-range plan for this TV station which is to provide more hyper local information to our community.”
Cooper says the station has progressively added staff over the past few years by taking on more challenges with local programming.
“It’s helped us prepare for the launch of the expanded news at 6 o’clock.”
Cooper says the station was already “pushing the envelope on our 30-minute newscast and we had a lot of material we wanted to cover, that we didn’t have the time to handle.”
Cooper promises some surprises that can’t be revealed yet including the development of some key franchises.
WCIA launched ciLiving, a local life-style program highlighting interesting people, places and events from all over central Illinois, three and a half years ago. The program airs daily at 4p.m. and features in-studio hosts with field reports from dedicated story-tellers.
Current, an in-depth magazine show, airs weekdays at 9 a.m. It’s produced by and for women and explores the issues and stories of the day that a female audience finds relevant.
According to Cooper, ciLiving is second in the 4 p.m. time period.
“I’m within two share points of Ellen,” says Cooper.
While Current is in a “3-way dog-fight tie in the demos, especially women” against The Today Show and Live with Kelly and Michael in the mornings.
The success of both local shows bodes well for WCIA’s expanded newscast at 6 o’clock and is consistent with WCIA’s on-going, hyper-local plan.
“We can control our own destiny on programming,” says Cooper.
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