WPXI moves morning news start time

On Tuesday, June 1, WPXI-TV will be the first local station to have a regularly-scheduled newscast before 5:00 a.m. The station will start airing news at 4:30. WPXI’s news director, Mike Goldrick, claims the move is giving “people what they want”. “There’s an audience out there that we believe is looking for news, weather and traffic at 4:30 in the morning,” he told the Post-Gazette. WPXI executives have been debating the change since January when NBC made “Early Today” available at 4:00 a.m. for stations who wanted to start news at 4:30. As a result, the one-hour broadcast on PCNC beginning at 7:00 a.m. will be reduced to a half-hour format and will repeat at 7:30. 

The top brass at KDKA-TV and WTAE-TV are studying results from other markets before expanding their morning news. Currently, neither station has plans to do so.