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Morning Edition Format Changes With New Program Clock

WFAE’s Morning Edition format will be a little different beginning Monday. The format reflects changes to NPR’s program clock that will give the network and WFAE longer in-depth news segments.

The biggest change is there will be one less NPR newscast. A new 90-second NPR newscast at 30 minutes past the hour will replace newscasts that had aired at 19 and 42 minutes past the hour.

WFAE’s local newscast that normally aired at 31 minutes past the hour now air 30 seconds later, following NPR’s newscast.

Each hour of Morning Edition will begin the same. You’ll hear 3 minutes of NPR news headlines, followed by a local newscast from WFAE’s newsroom. The first big news block that follows – what we call the “A” segment – will expand by one minute. There will also be expanded time for news in the segment that begins roughly 30 minutes later.

So why the change? Simply put, we want to improve the flow of Morning Edition. We believe shorter breaks between segments will do that. For example, there used to be nearly 5 minutes between the two in-depth story blocks in the first 30 minutes of each hour. With the elimination of a newscast, that break is now 2:50. The new format basically shifts that longer break to the bottom of the hour. We believe that’s a more natural place for listeners to get their newscast update, and effectively reset the second half of the show.

One more thing. We are always striving to improve Morning Edition with more local content that informs, entertains, and connects people to our region and each other. A big part of that is hearing from you. You can email WFAE’s newsroom at news@wfae.org, or communicate with us on Facebook or Twitter.

Greg Collard served as news director from 2008 to 2023. He served as WFAE's executive editor in 2023. He came to WFAE from West Virginia Public Broadcasting. In his eight years there, Greg had roles as a reporter, editor and producer. He was the executive producer of a television news magazine and news director for radio and television when he decided to head south for Charlotte.