[Medianext.MX]

Over on cable, Nexstar's NewsNation is adding their sister paper The Hill to the network, and aspires to be 24/7 news from moving entertainment programmes (that notoriously aired during HM's passing) to the weekends.

“Next steps for us, obviously, Elizabeth Vargas is going to the network in April,” Sook said during a Thursday call with investors breaking down Nexstar’s fourth-quarter 2022 earnings results. “And by the end of April we will have a program schedule that will be news 24/5. So we will be a 24-hour news network Monday-Friday by the end of April and that will include the daytime expansion, the addition of ‘The Hill,’ the addition of the ‘Elizabeth Vargas Reports’ show at 6 o’clock Eastern, Monday-Friday. And at that point, obviously, we’re getting higher cost per thousands in news programming than we did in off-network programming.”

(Variety)

Elizabeth Vargas is a good hiring for them. Actually, she can bring some credibility to the channel given her experience covering politics and true crime for ABC. Still, Nexstar needs to shake up the bad reputation of the channel, not from scratch, but taking the stronger points of its content into first place.

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Over at NBC, an unexpected situation at the Today Show: Savannah Guthrie is out after testing positive to COVID for the third time (she even left the show on Monday when still on air), and Hoda Kotb has been out for a while due to personal issues. Still, heavy tabloid/clickbait fodder came due to the unexpected situation; as a result, presenters Craig Melvin, Al Roker and Sheinelle Jones (which have been filling in during these few days in the main portion whilst still presenting the Third Hour) had to explain viewers what was happening in an attempt to calm viewers down:

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