NewsNet

On September 28, 2017, Eric Wotila – who founded low-powered all-news station WMNN-LD in Cadillac, Michigan, and oversaw the studio design and construction for News Channel Nebraska, a Norfolk, Nebraska-based quasi-state network of five low-powered stations that also maintained an all-news programming format – started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the launch of a 24-hour national news channel – under the working title, the Local News Network (LNN) – intended for broadcast, online and mobile distribution.[2][3][4][5]

Citing favorable opinions from viewers about the "straight-to-the-facts, no-nonsense and commentary-free" coverage provided by WMNN-LD, the Local News Network proposed to offer a news wheel format (similar in structure to the 1982–2005 format of HLN, and the formats of defunct all-news networks such as All News Channel and Satellite News Channel) that would eschew the often-politically focused panel discussion programs that have populated the afternoon, nighttime and weekend schedules of cable news channels (particularly CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel) since the early 2000s. The project called for LNN to be based out of WMNN's Cadillac studio facility, with the hope of eventually opening bureaus elsewhere around the United States. The project failed to reach its funding goal of $100,000 needed to develop LNN – which would have been used to pay for equipment and staffing necessary to handle the national broadcasts – by the closure of the 50-day campaign on November 17, 2017, raising only $8,012 from 78 public backers. Wotila subsequently sought to obtain backing from investors to fund the venture.[2][3][4][5]

On March 15, 2018, Wotila and other partners involved in the Local News Network project announced the launch of NewsNet, which would maintain the concept originally developed prior to the commencement of the Kickstarter campaign.[6][7][8]

NewsNet was officially launched on January 1, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, with the Evening Edition serving as the network's inaugural program. On May 8, 2019, ground was broken on new studios. The facility will consist of 3 studios, each with their own control rooms and a new, state-of-the-art master control room overseeing the operations of NewsNet, WMNN-LD and WXII-LP, the new studio went into effect at 4 a.m. on December 9.[9]

The channel's programming is structured around a rolling news wheel format, providing up-to-date information on the top national and international stories in just 30 minutes. Each half-hour of the wheel format begins with the "A" block, consisting of a short teaser of what's coming up in the next ten minutes (as read on-camera by the news anchor onboard), followed by a nearly two-minute-long look at the top story of the hour (with updated details provided when breaking news develops) and an eight-minute roundup of the latest news stories at 02 and 32 minutes past the hour. The remainder of each half-hour features a national weather forecast summary (at 12 and 42 minutes past the hour), sports news, highlights and scores (at 17 and 47 minutes past the hour), and "Health News", a segment focusing on the latest health updates and information or "Living Well", a segment focusing on news and topics about everyday lifestyle and general well-being (at 24 and 54 minutes past the hour).[10]

To comply with programming guidelines imposed by the Children's Television Act, NewsNet also carries a 90-minute block of educational children's programming on Saturday and Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m. ET.

On January 2, 2019, one day after the station launched, TV news industry blog FTVLive.com published a photo of NewsNet primary anchor Remington Hernandez wearing a Make America Great Again hat that Hernandez had published to his public Facebook profile, casting doubt on the station's claim of being politically unbiased.[11] In October 2019, a user of the TV News industry forum TVNewsTalk.net posted a photo taken off of Hernandez's public Instagram page that featured a smiling Hernandez next to conservative political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.[12] Currently, the station provides news and information consistent with current Republican Party themes and trends. For example, unlike mainstream media news outlets, NewsNet consistently reports about the volume of lawsuits filed by the Trump Administration and Republican supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 Presidential election without reporting that they have been rejected or dismissed as meritless or without evidence. (See, e.g. NewsNet Broadcast December 16, 2020.)

As of November 2020, NewsNet has current and pending affiliation agreements with 55 television stations in 51 television markets encompassing 27 states, covering 21.65% of the United States.[1] The majority of NewsNet affiliates are low-power stations that are within the geographic boundaries of a particular TV market, but do not cover the entirety of the market. For example, as of March 2020, NewsNet's website lists San Francisco as a city with an affiliate, despite the affiliate station KAAP-LD being a low-power digital station licensed to Santa Cruz whose coverage barely reaches the city of San Jose and San Mateo County.

In addition to allowing affiliates to sell local advertising (offering four minutes of local commercial time per hour to prospective stations), NewsNet provides the option for its broadcast affiliates to pre-empt the "Health News" and "Living Well" segments at the end of each half-hour to allow to carry a five-minute-long local headline "capsule", providing news and weather information focusing on the local viewing area. NewsNet also provides an optional turnkey local news production service for stations that do not maintain their own local news departments to produce local news capsule segments or full-length newscasts.[10][13][6][7][8]

• Official website