News van news isn't necessarily news. It creates the appearance of currency by having a big "LIVE REPORTING" tag, which consists of someone standing where ther

News van news isn't necessarily news. It creates the appearance of currency by having a big "LIVE REPORTING" tag, which consists of someone standing where there was a fire/homicide/car wreck four hours ago. I'm actually surprised how aggressively local news seems to still try to fill the space. I assume it's among the more expensive ways for a local affiliate to fill airtime-- paying for talking heads and cameramen must be more expensive than Dukes of Hazard reruns. But you have local broadcasters kicking out a 2-3 hour breakfast show, then noon, 5, 6, 9, and 10pm programs. For a while, when ATSC was new, one of the broadcasters made their own "news channel" by repeating their six hours of local news through the day on a subchannel.