5.10.2016

TFTP News: "58 After... News" (newsbreak) from KSCH/Stockton, CA (Oct. 20, 1986)



Posted to YouTube by user 'Chuck's New Classic TV Clubhouse'

Here's a classic "newsbreak" of the kind that used to appear constantly in the afternoon and evening hours on local stations and networks alike. This mid-1980s example--from independent station KSCH (now KQCA) in Stockton, California--is an especially pedestrian one in that it doesn't even include any reported material or over-the-shoulder graphics (other than the station logo)--just the newsreader reading the news. Apparently, KSCH (channel 58) did such a newsbreak on a regular basis at 58 minutes after the hour (or 2 minutes before the top of the hour), thus the title "58 After... News".

This kind of newsbreak, while still used occasionally, is one of the features of television from the past that has been made obsolete by newer forms of learning about the news. Now, online headlines, Facebook feeds, and 24-hour cable news have taken the place of such TV news summaries. But in 1986 (and more so in the years prior to that) this was one of the only ways to get a quick update of what was happening locally, nationally, or internationally.

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