Breaking News

Breaking News

Air date	October 24, 2026
Writer	Kris Straub
Director	Kris Straub
Episode guide
Next Blood of the Living Dawn

Breaking News is an episode of Local 58 that aired on AMC's horror-based streaming platform Shudder as opposed to the series' YouTube channel.

Production and Initial Release

Breaking News was in the works for many years before its debut, at least since 2020. It was part of a batch of six episodes that were under non-disclosure agreements, preventing Kris Straub from discussing them in much detail. Another of these episodes centered around a pandemic, but it was abandoned by Straub soon after, who couldn't bring himself to finish the video as the real world COVID-19 pandemic raged on.

A post was eventually made on Local 58's Instagram page on October 21, 2026 featuring a cryptic series of numbers in the caption, which turned out to be a Unix timestamp teasing a release on October 24, 2026 at 3:23 A.M. UTC. At that date and time, Breaking News aired during the intermission of Shudder's premiere of "Joe Bob's Halloween House Party," a Halloween special for the variety series "The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs." It played only during the initial airing of "Joe Bob's Halloween House Party," as rerun showings on Shudder omit the intermission.

Synopsis

Sometime in the late 1950s/early 1960s, Local 58 airs its News at Nine segment. The station's cameras pan around the studio set and graphics flash across the screen, but the set is completely abandoned. Objects like chairs and mugs are shown to be knocked over. The feed cuts to a sports report showing a recent college football game in which Maple Grove University defeated Lasker State, 41-25. When the feed cuts back to the studio, blood splatters on host Chuck Allen's desk and a bloody handprint on the wall appear, with green screen effects keying out the red in the blood and in the Local 58 logo on the desk. All the while, cameras keep being knocked over and bulbs in the lighting keep breaking in the studio. The subsequent weather segment is rendered illegible by keyed-out streaks overlaying the weather map graphic. The camera zooms back to reveal that these are streaks of blood running up the station walls. As the streaks grow more and more numerous, a Technical Difficulties splash screen appears, followed by the message, "We'll be right back."

Trivia

• This episode is the first one since the three episodes that constitute Season 1 to premiere somewhere outside of YouTube, as Weather Service, Contingency, and You Are On The Fastest Available Route debuted on a dedicated website from 2015 to 2016 before the series migrated over to YouTube.
  • This is also the first installment of Local 58 to premiere outside of any online platform.
• The 50s/60s era station ID used in this episode first appeared in a retrospective montage in Digital Transition, which also displayed it in a News at Nine segment.
• Maple Grove University, one of the college teams shown in the football game, was mentioned previously in Night Walk, and before that, in Kris Straub's short story, "Lemon Blossom Girl," from his 2009 short horror anthology, Ichor Falls: A Visitor's Guide.
  • Their rival in the game, Lasker State, is a college in Lasker City, one of the cities in Mason County that the Local 58 station broadcasts to, as seen in episodes like Weather Service and Night Walk.
• The phenomenon of streaks of blood defying gravity and running up a surface was first seen in A Look Back, where a black-and-white film clip showed a streak of blood running up the crack of a door.

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