Genre News | Directed by Joe DeFeo | |
Presented by Morris Jones(National anchor)Vytas Reid(Chief meteorologist) Production company(s) | ||
News Central was a primetime newscast on television stations in the United States owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, mixing locally produced news with nationally produced news and an opinion segment from Sinclair's Hunt Valley, Maryland studios.
Contents
History
News Central was launched on October 28, 2002 with WSMH's 'News At Ten'. The format was original announced to be rolled out to Sinclair stations currently not offering news. But after a successful beta run at WSMH, Sinclair announced that three stations with newscasts would be next in converting to the format during the first quarter of 2003. By April 2003, News Central was planning to launch its own Washington bureau. By December 2003, 12 Sinclair stations were using the News Central format.
News Central ended all newscasts effective March 31, 2006; after that date, its stations either did their newscasts on their own, outsourced their newscast to a larger station in the market, or cancelled their newscasts entirely. Others, like WSMH, teamed up with non-affiliate stations in their market to either simulcast other stations' newscasts or jointly produce a news program. WYZZ and WUHF went into LMAs with other stations in their markets.
Content
The local station news operation provided the first ten minutes of news. Then national News Central operation produced 12 minutes of international and national news of the total newscast, along with customized local weather forecasts produced from the national operation. The national operation also provided nightly The Point commentary by Mark E. Hyman, Sinclair's Vice President of Corporate Relations. CNN footage and AccuWeather data was used by News Central.