News Operation
WFMZ-TV presently broadcasts a total of 39 hours of local newscasts each week (with six hours on weekdays and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). It is the only news-producing television station in the Philadelphia market whose weekday morning newscast continues to maintain a post-5 a.m. timeslot (starting at 5:30 a.m.). Although the station's newscasts primarily focus on Allentown and southeastern Pennsylvania, the station's 5:30 and 10:30 p.m. newscasts on weeknights focus primarily on news stories in neighboring Berks County.
The station's news department debuted with WFMZ on November 25, 1976 and originally featured two daily newscasts under the title Newspulse. The news programs would be retitled as Channel 69 News by 1987 until finally being shortened to 69 News in 1999. Those two newscasts eventually expanded to include additional local newscasts on weekday mornings and at noon and 5 p.m.; in February 2003, the station debuted a half-hour Spanish-language nightly newscast at 11 p.m.
In 2005, WFMZ formed a broadcast partnership with Philadelphia's ABC owned-and-operated station WPVI-TV that allows the two stations to cooperate in newsgathering for local stories. The current set for WFMZ's newscasts debuted in April 2006. On May 1, 2008, WFMZ became the fourth television station in the Philadelphia market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.
Read more about this topic: WFMZ-TV, Local Programming
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