CBS News confirmed that it has been working on a third hour of its morning newscast, CBS Mornings, and that the extra hour is expected to debut in September.

In a memo to staff Friday, Shawna Thomas, the executive producer of CBS Mornings said the additional program is being develop for a few of the CBS owned stations and will be simulcast on the CBS News 24/7 streaming channel.

“Now, it won’t look or feel exactly like the first two hours. Yes, the talent will be a little different and the name will be a little different, but it will still be the smart and engaging content everyone expects from the CBS Mornings family, Thomas said.

Thomas noted that CBS Mornings has posted a few job openings to staff the new hour. That comes at a time when parent company Paramount Global is in the process of cutting 15% of its U.S. workforce.

“The expansion of CBS Mornings shows a commitment to the brand and the idea that there is a possibility of some growth at a challenging time. So, let's do this together and make another hour of tv/digital video/content we can be proud of,” Thomas said.

Also at CBS News, Anne-Marie Green is joining 48 Hours as a full-time correspondent.

Green, who has been an anchor on CBS News 24/7 and on the overnight show CBS News Mornings, joins Peter Van Sant, Erin Moriarty and Natalie Morales on the show, along with some other contributors.

“Anne-Marie is already a big part of the 48 Hours family — she’s the host of our successful Post Mortem podcast, and has worked with us as a 48 Hours contributor in the past,” 48 Hours executive producer Judy Tygard said in a staff memo. “In fact, Anne-Marie’s episode, ‘The Death of an Officer’s Wife‘ was one of the top-rated shows of the last two seasons. She’s also the face and voice of Case Watch.”

“The addition of Anne-Marie Green and the launch of the 48 Hours FAST Channel this week underlines the importance of the 48 Hours franchise,” Tygard said. “Now even more people will see the great work that you do.”

48 Hours, the true-crime series once imprisoned on Saturday nights, continues to spread its wings with the launch Wednesday of a 48 Hours 24-hour free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel.

With the exploding popularity of the genre, the long-running CBS News series now appears on multiple cable networks, in broadcast syndication, in streaming and on social media. It has also spawned multiple podcasts. 

The FAST channel is available on CBSNews.com and the CBS News app as well as Paramount Plus and Pluto TV, rolling out on partner channels today.

Next week, the rollout will continue across other distribution platforms. 

The added exposure for the show will mean “more work but more reward,” 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty told B+C.

At a time when people talk about how the networks are losing their reach, “we are in so many places where a whole new group of people — often younger — get to hear the stories we tell,” Moriarty said.

“I can’t tell you how exciting this is for us,” added 48 Hours executive producer Judy Tygard.

“This expansion is like oxygen for us because for years we were on Saturday night, the loneliest night of the week, and it was very hard for us to compete with other broadcasts,” Tygard said.

“Everywhere we put 48 Hours it explodes,“ she said. “We’ve always believed in the quality of the episodes that we do and now when we see how people respond to it, wherever we put it, it’s very gratifying for our team.”

The 48 Hours FAST channel will have access to nearly 600 episodes of the series. Those episodes are constantly being updated.

Legally Sound

“They’re not like episodes of Law & Order that we can pull off the shelf, blow off the dust and put them on TV,” Tygard said. “We have to make sure that everything’s legally sound. With the length of time that we've been on the air, things change. Convictions can be overturned or appeals can be heard. So we are constantly having to maintain that vast archive which might be the biggest true crime archive in the world.”

Across linear and streaming platforms, 48 Hours has garnered 36.3 billion minutes of viewing during the 2023-24 season, making it one of the most popular programs in America. Compared to the previous year, 48 Hours total minutes are up 23% on linear, 31% on streaming and 25% overall.

Now in its 36th season, 48 Hours has been Saturday’s No. 1 non-sports primetime program for 18 consecutive years.

Full episodes of 48 Hours on YouTube generate strong viewership, with some notching more than 10 million views, CBS News said.

48 Hours also started two podcasts in 2022 and now has four podcasts running.

“Clearly, 48 Hours has tremendous appeal to millions of viewers and is delivering remarkable growth in its 36th season. It truly is the iron horse of the true crime genre and continues to gain steam as we find new ways to create ubiquitous distribution for the show,” said Wendy McMahon, president and CEO, CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures. “We are excited to launch 48 Hours and package episodes in ways that will appeal to both longtime fans, as well as viewers who have just discovered this powerhouse series.”

With so many episodes, the 48 Hours FAST channel won’t repeat an episode during its first seven days.

The channel will also feature blocks of episodes with themes including “Crimes of Passion,” “Serial and Spree Killings,” “Criminal Blunders,” “Evil in the Family,” “Love Gone Wrong,” “Wrongful Convictions,” “Women Who Kill,” “Houses of Horror,” “Money Kills,” “Missing People,” “Cold Cases,” “Survival Stories” and “Hollywood Mysteries.”

Moriarty said she is amazed at the growing and enduring popularity of the true crime genre.

“I had to do a panel at Crimecon in Nashville,” she said. “The number of people who came to my panel was shocking and scary and exciting all at the same time.”

Moriarty believes that while people can’t talk about politics without getting angry, everyone wants to talk about true crime.

48 Hours approaches the genre by focusing on the victims’ humanity and showing empathy for their families, the investigators and even those accused — sometimes wrongly.

“One of the reasons why I’ve stayed on this as long as I have is because I’m a lawyer and I felt that I can bring perspective to these cases,” Moriarty said.

The show’s expansion means people don’t need a TV to hear the stories.

“I was checking into a hotel in Missouri and one of the agents recognized my voice from the podcast,” she said. “He said ‘Oh, you’re Erin Moriarty.’ He had no idea what I look like, but he knew my voice.”

48 Hours, CBS News’s long-running crime and justice series, is launching in weekday syndication this fall, CBS News said Monday.

The series is being repackaged as a syndicated strip with 48 Hours contributors Jericka Duncan and Jonathan Vigliotti anchoring the episodes, all of which have been updated with current information about the cases involved. CBS News has nearly 600 episodes to offer to TV stations.

“We wanted to do two things: distinguish the library shows that are going to syndication and distinguish from brand-new fresh content that then makes its way downstream,” executive producer Judy Tygard said. “We added Jericka and Jon because they can give the shows the additional content that’s needed.” 

Duncan and Vigliotti are providing new information in each case, giving them more content, including opens, mid-joins and transitions. 

“This is a very talented group of journalists and the fact-checking that goes into making sure that these stories are updated with fresh information is phenomenal,” Duncan said.

“The amount of work and care put into updating each episode has been unbelievable,” Vigliotti said. “True crime can be a bit tabloid so what’s been so incredible is 48 Hours’s legacy of truly paying tribute to victims and their families. It’s so heartfelt and you always see their names front and center. 48 Hours holds feet to the fire in investigations that have either stalled or gone cold.”

The show is cleared on an all-barter basis in more than 97% of the country in 190 markets with the 15 CBS-owned stations serving as the launch group. It’s sold to stations in the Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair, Fox Television Stations, Gray Television, Cox Media Group, Tegna and E.W. Scripps station groups. 

48 Hours has been undergoing a brand expansion over the last several years. The show airs on CBS on Saturday nights but also has broadcast, cable and streaming windows on the CBS News Streaming Network, CBSNews.com, Paramount Plus, YouTube, Fave TV, Pop TV and domestically and internationally on Paramount-owned FAST platform Pluto TV. It’s also licensed to networks in dozens of countries across the globe. The show also produces a podcast, and correspondent Erin Moriarty has her own podcast, titled My Life of Crime.

“The reason I fell in love with 48 Hours and went to it full time was because honestly I have never been able to do such a variety of reporting and be so immersed in the story,” Moriarty said. “We really focus on the heroes of the story — the cops who solve the cases, the parents or husbands or wives who fight so hard for justice. That’s where my focus has always been.”

Repackaging library episodes of long-running programs has become a trend in syndication, where TV stations need budget-friendly programming that performs. 48 Hours is not the first newsmagazine to be repackaged for syndication: NBCUniversal has been airing a syndicated version of Dateline for the past six years. Dateline, which kicks off season seven on September 18, is averaging a 1.1 live-plus-same-day national household rating, according to Nielsen, and 1.6 million average daily viewers. 

48 Hours is distributed in syndication by CBS Media Ventures. 

Natalie Morales makes her debut on 48 Hours Saturday, November 19 on CBS. She joined CBS News as a correspondent November 1, working on 48 Hours, CBS Mornings, CBS Sunday Morning and other CBS programs.

Morales will focus on an investigation into the murders of two women, Annette Schnee, 21, and Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer, 29, back in 1982, near the ski town of Breckenridge, Colorado. Detectives were initially able to link the murders through a sock found near Oberholtzer’s crime scene and a matching one found on Schnee. The case went cold until investigators ran DNA recovered from evidence through a public genealogy database and got a match. “In a bizarre turn of events, investigators would learn that the killer had been rescued by a local fire chief from a snow-covered mountain pass the very same night he dumped the bodies of the two women,” said CBS.

“The 48 Hours team is at the top of their game and the best in the business of true-crime reporting,” Morales said. “It has been a dream being immersed into the 48 Hours family and to work on this story, which has so many unusual twists and turns.”

Morales continues to host CBS daytime show The Talk. She used to be a host on Access. She started at NBC News in 2006, working as a national correspondent on Today, and was also news anchor and co-host of Today’s third hour.

48 Hours: Last Seen in Breckenridge is produced by Chris Young Ritzen, Elena DiFiore, Jamie Stolz, Paul LaRosa, Betsy Shuller and Judy Rybak. Judy Tygard is the executive producer. ■

Non-football fans and pigskin aficionados sick of seeing the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl will have a bevy of other viewing choices before and during Sunday's big game.

In the hours prior to the 6 p.m. start of the Patriots/Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl LIII game on CBS, pet lovers will once again get to choose between watching playful and adoptable adults cats during Hallmark Channel’s 1st Annual Cat Bowl -- which follows the network’s Kitten Bowl VI-- or viewing adorable and adoptable baby canines during Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl XV.

[embed]https://vimeo.com/308444073[/embed]

During the game, viewers can pick up the remote and choose between marathons of such TV shows as The Office (Comedy Central), Planet Earth: Blue Planet (BBC America), Botched (E!), Ridiculousness (MTV), 48 Hours (Investigation Discovery) and The Simpsons (FXX).

The WWE will step into the counterprogramming ring in an effort to draw wrestling fans away from Maroon 5’s Super Bowl halftime performance. The WWE will offer a live, tag-team wrestling performance on its WWE Network subscription streaming service, marking the first time in 20 years the pro wrestling outfit has offered a live match during halftime of a Super Bowl event.

Super Bowl LIII is projected to draw more than 100 million viewers, but there are plenty other viewing choices for the millions of people looking to pass on the big game.