News Operation
WAGA presently broadcasts 55 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (ten hours on weekdays, four hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays), this gives the station the largest local news output of any television station in the Atlanta market and the state of Georgia in general. As is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts, WAGA's Saturday and Sunday 6 p.m. newscasts are subject to delay due to network sports coverage. WAGA also provides news reports and weather forecasts for news radio station WYAY (106.7 FM), through a partnership between WAGA and WYAY's owner Cumulus Media struck in May 2012.
For many years as a CBS affiliate, the station called its newscasts 5 News Scene. In the 1980s, this changed to Eyewitness News. In 1992, WAGA dropped CBS This Morning in favor of a locally produced morning show called Good Day Atlanta. With the 1994 affiliation switch to Fox, WAGA poured more resources into its news department. Channel 5's news department was already very well respected; for most of its history it was a solid runner-up to longtime leader WSB-TV, but from the 1970s until early 2009 had to fend off a spirited challenge from WXIA-TV. As of mid-2009, with plummeting ratings at WXIA, WAGA-TV has returned to a solid second-place position in the Atlanta news ratings. After affiliating with Fox, channel 5 increased its news output to 40 hours a week.
On January 14, 2008, WAGA debuted a new 11 p.m. newscast called Fox 5 News Edge, returning a newscast to that timeslot since the station was still affiliated with CBS. On March 16, 2009, WAGA became the last major network station in the market (behind WGCL, WSB, and WXIA) to begin broadcasting its locally produced newscasts in high definition.
On September 14, 2009, WAGA expanded its weekday morning newscast to five hours from 5-10 a.m., with the addition of an hour-long 9 a.m. extension of the program called Good Day Xtra. On April 1, 2010, WAGA expanded its morning news by an extra half-hour, with the start time moved a half-hour earlier to 4:30 a.m., becoming the first Atlanta station to expand its morning newscast into that slot; the extension was made in order to attract those who wake up go to work earlier than most; the additional half-hour competes against national early morning newscasts airing on WXIA, WGCL and WSB. As of September 2010, WAGA dropped the Fox 5 Morning News and Good Day Xtra titles, in favor of using the Good Day Atlanta branding throughout the morning newscast.
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