WABE shifts news schedule starting Sept. 3, trimming 'Closer Look,' adding 'Here & Now'

"Here & Now," a live news and interview show out of Boston hosted by Robin Young and Jeremy Hobson, will air live at noon for an hour. Its second hour will air at 3 p.m. delayed two hours. The popular NPR show is now available on more than 400 stations nationwide with an estimated audience of 3.7 million viewers.

"Closer Look," which is currently on from noon to 2 p.m. each day, will now air a single hour, from 1 to 2 p.m.

"Listeners have been connecting most with 'Closer Look' at 1 p.m.," wrote Je-Anne Berry, director of marketing. "so that led our decision to keep it at that time. By picking up the 3 p.m. hour of 'Here & Now,' we're able to give our audience the latest version of the show at a time that creates a nice lead-in for 'All Things Considered.' In the past few months we've aired 'Here & Now' at 3 p.m. as part of breaking news coverage and the WABE 90.1 community has responded well to that scheduling."

"BBC NewsHour" will lose its 3 p.m. slot but a BBC News show will start airing at 5 a.m.

This means "Morning Edition" will air four hours a day from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. instead of five hours from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Two local weekday shows "City Lights with Lois Reitz" and "Closer Look' will have "best of" shows airing on Sundays. "Closer Look Weekend" will be on at 1 p.m. Sundays. "City Lights Weekend" will be heard at 7 p.m. Sundays.

Management made even more changes on weekends. Notably, old repeats of "Car Talk" (which aired its final new episode four years ago) will finally go away at 10 a.m. Saturdays, replaced by "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" an hour earlier. Mid-day classical music on Saturdays has also been excised but an opera show will be added at 6 p.m. Sundays.

There were several other weekend changes. You can find them here:

Credit: Rodney Ho

Credit: Rodney Ho