Viacom-owned WPSG Philadelphia is taking a page from Headline News, teaming with traffic data provider Traffic.com on a new, fast-paced local morning show.
The program, Wake UP News, airs on the UPN station weekdays from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and is produced in Traffic.com's studios in Wayne, Pa.
Unlike other local news shows, which are generally a balanced 30-minute wheel of headlines, features, weather and traffic, Wake UP News is designed to provide quick bursts of information on traffic, weather and top stories.
The program has three hosts, news anchor Karen Adams, traffic anchor Sean Murphy, and meteorologist Melissa Sander. WPSG's sister CBS station KYW provides the news content.
Susan Schiller, VP of news for KYW and WPSG, calls the new program a "hybrid" newscast.
It's not designed to compete with other morning newscasts, but to serve a totally different morning news viewer -- the commuter who is primarily interested in that morning's traffic and weather, but wants to leave the house with a basic understanding of the day's headlines," Schiller said.
The program features two crawls on the bottom of the screen, one for traffic and the other for weather, news and time.'
