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Have networks considered having a national newscast in the late evenings as well, such as at 10 pm (9 pm CT)?

I'm not sure giving up 10pm is such an apocalyptic scenario. Sure, it is a sign of weakness for the Big Three, and it is unfortunate that the timeslot will just be used to stretch local news departments even further when we're already overloaded with news on TV. But FOX and the CW (including its predecessors) have already been doing exactly this for decades and they're still around. I see it more as another step in the slow managed decline of linear TV than an instant disaster for the networks.

Sidebar, this is a great looking desk and set and hopefully it or one like it is used once CBSEN relocates to NYC.

Move the local news up to 10-11/9-10c so they can get that full hour of ad revenue. Put the late shows on 11/10c. I would imagine being seen earlier would help their ratings. Nightline especially would benefit from being earlier. Now, networks now only have to fill 2 hours of lack luster content a night. The solution should not be what some Fox stations do: news at 10 and 11pm ET (a full 90-95 minutes). News departments are stretched thin enough.

Don't forget the aging uninspired set that's 13, going on 14!

Not so much that people feel that the answer to all television's problems is more news; I'm sure there are people who would like less of it. And all this news does work a strain on a station's news staff, as well as their thinking they should be paid more since they're working longer hours. However, that seems to be management's first impulse when a time slot opens up (Gray, for one, would be happy if its stations junked all syndicated programs and devoted the non-network slots to local news and/or public affairs). And frankly, I don't know where or when it ends. And that's why I think that if NBC gives back 10/9 you'll see its affiliates take the easy way out and move their news from 11/10 to 10/9...where a bunch will get clobbered by established Fox stations' newscasts. But stations can control the costs and are not at the mercy of a syndicator. There is one plus to this, and if you live in the Central or Mountain time zones you've known about it for decades. It's that the 10 PM news is the showpiece newscast, as opposed to the 6 PM one in the Eastern and Pacific time zones. People do like to get the weather at least before they turn in, which they can do an hour sooner than they would on the two coasts. That has been one of the appeals of 10 PM newscasts on Fox stations in the Eastern and Pacific time zones, and there's one Fox station in the Central time zone (Birmingham) that has no problem pulling 60 shares at 9 PM. I'm not any more crazy about more news than any of the rest of you but I know that's every station manager's automatic solution.