KTLA Newscast to Vie With Network Morning Shows

KTLA Channel 5 plans to create Southern California’s first two-hour local morning TV newscast this spring, airing from 7-9 a.m. opposite the three national network shows: “CBS This Morning,” NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

While four other local stations produce newscasts between 6 and 7 a.m., there has never been a local broadcast facing off against the national programs on Channels 2, 4 and 7. Independent stations traditionally have counterprogrammed them with children’s shows.

KTLA was encouraged to invest in the project by independent stations in New York, Washington, Miami and Oakland that have enjoyed ratings success against the networks with their own morning newscasts, said Steve Bell, KTLA’s general manager. Channel 5 also commissioned a poll of local viewers of the morning news programs that showed that “the audience was basically disloyal,” Bell said. “More than half told us they would switch to a local newscast.”

KTLA’s expansion, expected in April, May or June, comes at a time when all of the Los Angeles independents have made extensive and expensive investments in their news operations. KTLA, which has dominated the independent news ratings at 10 p.m. for the past decade, is the last of the four independent stations to announce a major new push in news.

“It has become more and more obvious that the future of independent stations depends on the way they reach their local market,” Bell said. “In cable homes we have to compete with 50 stations and the only way to stand out and to continue to be the station that viewers want to turn to is through your local programming that they can’t get elsewhere.”

KTLA will hire more than 20 people, including a new anchor team, to produce the 10 additional hours of news each week, and will purchase some additional equipment that will give the station more capability to go live to various sites around town in the morning hours.