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| More Changes At WFLD: 4:30am News In/Nancy Pender Out |
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| Written by Larz | |||
| Thursday, 29 July 2010 13:43 | |||
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A pair of big changes are coming to WFLD-TV/Fox32 in August. As first reported here on CRM back in April as a strong probability, WFLD-TV will be starting their morning newscasts at 4:30am. The Fox-owned station said today that the new start time begins this coming Monday, August 2nd. WFLD's new "Good Day Chicago" 5:00am-7:00am anchors, Dawn Hasbrouck and Kori Chambers, will now begin their duties 30 minutes earlier. Monday is also the start date for the new anchor team of Anna Davlantes and Corey McPherrin, who will anchor the "Good Day Chicago" newscast from 7:00am-10:00am. With "Good Day Chicago" now running from 4:30am-10:00am, it is the longest of all of the Chicago televised morning newscasts. However, new rumors are now rumbling that WFLD-TV may soon drop the last hour of "Good Day Chicago," ending the program at 9:00am, beginning sometime this Fall. That has yet to be confirmed by WFLD-TV, though. Rumors of this added 30 minutes to the start of morning show started months ago. Out of Fox's 16 news-producing stations, 13 of them have already started beginning their morning news shows at the time of 4:30am. The first to do so was Detroit's WJBK-TV, who started in September 2008. It has been slowly rolling across the country since then. Chicago's WFLD-TV is one of the last hold-outs. In addition to the pressure from Fox's corporate offices, adding pressure on WFLD-TV to make this decision was the fact that WGN-TV announced two weeks ago that it will be starting a 4:30am newscast. That early start for WGN-TV begins August 16th. At the start of this week, WLS-TV announced they too would be moving the start time of their morning newscasts to 4:30am. That new WLS-TV start time begins this coming Monday, as does WFLD-TV's. WMAQ-TV has been doing a 4:30am newscast since January 2007, first with Bruce Wolf's "Barely Today" and then a few months later, changing it to a very simple, straight-forward newscast. Only WBBM-TV does not have an early morning hours newscast and does not currently have plans to start one.  In other WFLD-TV news, yet another veteran news anchor is being let go from the station. Nancy Pender, who has been the solo anchor of the station's Saturday and Sunday 9:00pm newscasts and a contributing reporter for the weeknight newscasts, will be shown the door in just over two weeks when her contract expires. As they have done with many of the station's longtime employees, WFLD management has decided to not renew her contract. Pender had been with WFLD for 13 years. The reason she has been the solo anchor of the weekend newscasts was because her co-anchor, another station veteran in Byron Harlan, did not have his contract renewed in March. Now short on anchors, the WFLD-TV weekend newscasts will be temporarily anchored by reporter Larry Yellen. On her Facebook page today, Nancy Pender seems at peace with the change. She wrote this afternoon: "All sunshine makes a desert, right? Thanks for the well wishes. It's my turn and that's ok. Big hug." Yesterday afternoon she wrote, "Stay-tuned! I'm doing great, everything is fine." when asked how she was holding up in the face of this news. Nancy Pender's upcoming exit is just one of a great many changes that have hit WFLD-TV this year alone. There will undoubtedly be more before this year is over. 
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