Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel broke the story today that Fox 35 will start its new evening newscast one month from today, on March 6.
Morning anchor Amy Kaufeldt will be moving to the new 5 p.m. newscast, which will also feature chief meteorologist Glenn Richards. Other details, such as who will replace Kaufeldt in the morning and if she’ll have a co-anchor in addition to Richards, were not released.
Fox 35 GM Stan Knott told Boedeker: "The way it will be formatted will be different from what are considered early evening, traditional newscasts. We’re looking for the morning feel at the early evening."
Fox’s 10 p.m. news offers an eclectic lineup of stories each night leaning more toward the soft side. But it’s somewhat understandable because it’s the station’s only evening newscast and it needs to come up with different angles to cover stories that have been around all day.
But it seems to me that by adding an early evening newscast Fox will need to use more of a traditional approach to succeed. It will be tough to change the habits of viewers used to the meat-and-potato news coverage from Orlando’s Big 3. Maybe they’ll want something light, but if that was the case why hasn’t anyone else succeeded doing it already?