It seems that channel 17 has sorta soft launched this week a new morning news/magazine program called "Eye Opener" to air weekdays from 6-8AM. From what I've so far this morning, it's appears to be a version of the NBC Today program for the 20something set (skewing for a younger demo than stay-at-home moms, I think) and focusing on gossip news and fluff pieces (with a "what's cool in tech" bent).
This seems to originate from a sort of national feed with some local inserts probably every 15 minutes. The local cut-in spots appear to consist of a young newsreader Marlie Hall reads the news standing behind a podium with a Macbook laptop. Her delivery seems very hesitant and she tends to look down at lot as she reads text from news printouts while onscreen. There is some footage cut-in to hide some of these moments, but it looks like much of that footage is taken from shots used by NBC10 mostly from their newscast the night before. Some segments do use Tango Traffic feed cut-ins at times.
For the most part, I'm not sure if this is a real contender as altenative for morning news/info programs already out there. It looks very unpolished and way too modern/chic for its own good. Even the age of the hosts on this show (late 20s/early 30s, I think) seems to belie almost an inherent agenda on the presentation of this show. So far, I don't see this format as being very much of a great success.
Here's a
short promo clip on the PHL17 site.
