Breaking news is the lifeline of any local newscast.  Viewers want to know that when they turn on a show, they will get the most up to date stories and information.  Ideally, every show should start with some kind of breaking news.  If there is no breaking news, it would be considered a slow news day.

The definition of breaking news, is anything that is new, or developing, or happening at the moment a newscast comes on the air.  Of course, some stations have a different description of breaking news.  Often, stations label a story breaking news, even though the story happened 8 hours earlier.  When they do that, they are not being true to the viewer, and in the long run, they lose viewership because the audience loses trust in the anchor team.  They also become frustrated because what’s being sold as breaking news, simply is old news.

Let’s say you are producing a 5pm newscast.  A fire is raging in Queens, and the fire started at 2pm, but is still not under control at the start of a 5pm newscast.  That would constitute as breaking news, even though the fire started hours earlier. It is breaking news because there is still an active scene, and the fire is still ongoing.  In this scenario, a producer would have a reporter live at the scene of the Queens fire, and that would be the breaking news lead to the show.