BATON ROUGE – WBRZ will expand its newscasts offerings this year, with the newest time periods of live, local news hitting the air next week.

WBRZ will expand both its six and ten o'clock newscasts to an hour on the new cable news channel, WBRZ+ (WBRZ Plus). The channel is available, free, over-the-air, with a traditional antenna and Cox cable channels 11 or 1011 and Eatel 2. In addition, the channel is available on streaming services such as Roku and WBRZ.com.

Beginning Monday, WBRZ News 2 at 6:30 will expand the 6 o'clock news to a full hour. The first 30-minutes will be seen on both the traditional WBRZ and WBRZ+. WBRZ News 2 at 6:30 will be available on the cable news channel and streaming sites.

     > WATCH LIVE: All WBRZ newscasts, news repeats and live, breaking news at any time HERE

Also Monday, WBRZ News 2 at 10:00 expands to a full hour, continuing for a full hour after 10:30 on those same channels.

The expanding news will not impact television shows seen during those time periods on the traditional WBRZ station, which also carries ABC programming.

Michael Shingleton and Sylvia Weatherspoon will anchor both hours of local news.  Pat Shingleton, a staple of Baton Rouge television, and long-time sports director Michael Cauble will also be featured in the broadcasts along with WBRZ's Chief Investigator Chris Nakamoto. 

WBRZ has hired additional staff as it creates these two newscasts and looks toward additional expansion later in 2018.  

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