Citytv Toronto is putting its supper-hour newscast on one hour earlier and has made it an hour longer, keeping it in line with the newscast of its former sister CP24.

The Rogers-owned station’s CityNews at Five now rolls out headlines and stories on-air and online in two half-hour blocks, anchored by Dwight Drummond and Merella Fernandez, with meteorologist Michael Kuss. At 5:30 p.m., Mark Dailey will deliver the day’s top stories and Kathryn Humphreys will deliver sports. CityNews at Six follows with Gord Martineau and Anne Mroczkowski.

The move necessitated moving Ellen to the 4 p.m. timeslot. (All times Eastern.)

Citytv director of news programming Tina Cortese says the strategy kicked off with a soft launch on Jan. 21. The station is now selling it more aggressively to advertisers following a hard launch last week.

‘We feel there’s an appetite for local news even earlier than the traditional 6 p.m. suppertime newscast, and we looked at it as an opportunity for growth, especially with the changing lifestyles in this city and various work hours and shifts,’ Cortese says. ‘There’s a lot of us here in this newsroom that live that life. You want news when you want it, and you need it kind of quickly sometimes.’

CP24 — formerly under the CHUM unbrella with the Citytv stations, but now owned by CTVglobemedia — launched its own earlier newscast, Live At 5, last month. Global is currently pushing its Toronto newscast, News Hour, looking to make gains on market leader CTV.

From Media in Canada