Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
If WPXI‘s morning anchor team looks sleepy next week, there’s good reason. Beginning Tuesday, Channel 11 will move up the start of its morning news from 5 to 4:30 a.m. weekdays — making WPXI the first local station to have a regularly-scheduled newscast starting before 5 a.m.
Morning has been the one reliable growth area in local news for the past decade. In April, WPXI shifted the start time for its Sunday morning news from 7 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. Pittsburgh’s morning news ratings have grown more competitive in recent months as KDKA has begun to stir from its perpetual cellar-dweller position
“There’s an audience out there that we believe is looking for news, weather and traffic at 4:30 in the morning,” said WPXI news director Mike Goldrick. More…