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I have noticed that with the exception of WFLD and WGN, most of the news stations don't do live shots on the late night news casts. Given the current state of the city, could a reason for this be safety? Thanks.

At the Speer and Lincoln location, lots of TV magic came alive during these past 50+ years. Not to mention lots of changes too. It survived the switch from CBS to ABC in September 1995. It survived KMGH's ownership changes from Time Life, to McGraw Hill to now Scripps. Anchors, reporters and behind the scenes staff came and gone. KMGH Logos, news set design and theme music came and gone. Technology has changed, including going from analog to digital in 2009. Field reporting evolved from film to videotape to digital. Bob Palmer, Bill Stuart, Larry Green and Ed Greene all graced Channel 7 before moving to rival Channel 4 in 1982, which is where most of us remember them most. The two-women of color anchor team of Anne Trujillo and Bertha Lynn lit up the screens. But you know the old saying, The Show Must Go On and Life Goes On. The show and life will indeed go on...at ABC7's new state-of-the-art digital broadcast home in the RiNO district. However, we'll always remember the building as that beacon when entering downtown Denver through Speer and Lincoln, despite its brutalist structure.

Going back to Atlanta, the exception to that 6pm rule is WSB. From observation they usually do live hits in the 6 (even for stories that don't require them). But it's still repeated content from 4 & 5. The logic stations give for new at 4 repeat for the remainders is "audiences stick around for quick hits and don't watch newscasts straight through or for hours". How true that is, IDK? EDIT: To WSB & WXIA's credit, from watching their evening newscasts it looks like they switch up the order of stories between shows. I might run the TV for hours on one station if I'm doing something else, and the repeats are noticeable. A creative thing a station in my market does is a live VO/SOT at 4, half the story in a PKG at 5, and the complete PKG at 6, to give the illusion of new content and to keep people sticking around through shows. From a viewer POV I like it but I've heard reporters complain that turning the package multiple ways adds to their hefty workload. And I get it. 4:00 newscasts often don't leave reporters enough room to make slot. This especially if your editorial meeting begins at 9:30 a.m, and you may not be out the door until after 10:00, plus travel time, editing, etc. The vo/sot at 4 method might alleviate this. And from an employee standpoint the problem with unnecessary live shots, especially at night, is going past your shift hours. If your shift ends at 11:35pm and your 11:00 live hit is an hour away from the station, that has you getting back past midnight which can be a bummer for work-life balance.

A report from earlier in the day when the scene is more active would seem to be maximum bang for the buck. I’m used to the late news being an update show and the 6pm being the most important though… something that dates off and on back to the 1980’s at least.

Better than "the Shart", I suppose.

I get that it’s summer vacation season but bringing in help with 5 full time meteorologist is something.

The Miami TV market is a more serious news market compared to Denver and even though the newsplex idea is a little bit over the top and other news outlets copied it, that is what made WSVN unique and the quality of the journalism there is what makes it the news leader in South Florida. As for KMGH, they have been doing the neighborhood news thing and Scripps has been cutting costs lately so it doesn’t really matter if the set is small or not.

This fandom is so out of touch with real life if you're judging a news set to be a dud because it doesn't have all the bells and whistles and zooming graphics like the Fucking WSVN Newsplex. It's always, always, always fucking style over substance.

Probably because it's very pointless these days more than anything? Unless it's a breaking story or the aftermath of a meeting during primetime you can't possibly rush back to the studio for, 'live at 10' when you can get out your phone and post to the socials straight off well before 10 is more exciting. A live shot in a dark police parking lot you had to burn fuel to get to in a lean time for TV news for 'scenery' just feels pointless. Yes, safety definitely has a lot to do with it (though I'd argue the suburbs are much worse with domestic violence stories), but when everyone has already saw everything hours before, 'welp that happened' live shots feel like a waste of everyone's time, including the journalists and the viewers.