Boston Station to Shift News Schedule (Patreon)

FTVLIve has learned that later this morning, WFXT Boston 25 will be announcing a big change to the start and end time of their morning newscast. 

In looking at the ratings, the Cox station has noticed that early morning viewership is way down and it picks up strongly later on. 

They believe that since people are stuck at home, they are sleeping in and not turning their TV's on until later in the morning. 

So, the station is going to change the times of their morning newscasts to try and get more eyeballs.

Instead of airing the news from 4-10 AM, the station is pushing everything back and hour and will move the newscast to 5AM to 11AM. The change starts next week and will be announced later this morning. 

WFXT General Manager Joe Pomilla sent an internal email to the staff announcing the changes and why they are being done. 

FTVLive obtained that email: 

From: Pomilla, Joe (CMG-Boston)
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 4:16 PM
To: !CMG-BostonAllusers
Cc: Casella, Eric (CMG-Charlotte)
Subject: Shifting viewing patterns

 Hi Team!

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe. As you know, the impact of COVID-19 has affected our lives and the lives of the communities we serve. Our role as a trusted local news source has never been more important as people hunker down in their homes in order to reduce the spread of this virus. We play a vital role as a local news organization and I want to thank you for your continued commitment to providing important information to our community.

As people work remotely, you may have noticed a trend in TV viewing. Since March, TV viewership (PUT’s) have declined from 4-7AM, but TV viewership has grown significantly from 7AM-12M. Obviously, with people not commuting to work, they are getting up later which has impacted early morning TV viewing. Also, our share of news viewers from 7-9AM and 4-7PM have significantly increased thanks to the strong news product we produce every day.  We’ve brought the viewers fantastic live interviews, and answers from the experts on the front lines of this pandemic, as well as stories of people coming together to help others in their times of need.  We are doing great work and are looking to get our product in front of as many available viewers as possible.

In order to provide local news to this growing audience when they want it, we will be shifting our morning news from 5-11am instead of our normal 4-10am. We see this as an opportunity to reach more local news viewers than we were able to at 4AM. We will start this on Monday April 20th.

Our world has changed dramatically in the span of a month.  I’m so impressed by the team’s ability to switch gears, with many working remotely for the first time ever, and those in the field working hard to tell compelling stories at a physical distance.  It is impressive to see, and your work has been a great service to our community.

Thank you all for the work you do each and every day and I look forward to the day I see you in person again at our Boston 25 studios.

Warmest regards,

Joe