WCCO launches "The 4," our new 4 p.m. newscast Monday

One of the features that we're happy to launch with The 4 are stories that represent the best of all our community has to offer. Photojournalist Tony Peterson will be turning in reports highlighting inspirational people and activities each week.

Today, his story showed how an ambitious recent graduate of the Hudson school district worked with the district's assistant director of teaching and learning for technology to replace hundreds upon hundreds of outdated phones. And in doing so, they saved the district a lot of money!

Click here to read the full story, or watch it below.

A team of people work together here at WCCO to make our newscasts go smoothly. But despite all efforts, mistakes do happen, and there was one that happened yesterday.

The failure of a live feed that caused an interruption in Esme Murphy's interview with Gubernatorial Candidate Dr. Scott Jensen.

Because one of our goals for The 4 is to debrief reporters to add more context and pull back the curtain on how we know what we know, we brought Esme Murphy back to break down what happened in that moment.

Esme also shared takeaways now that she's interviewed both Gov. Tim Walz and Jensen in recent weeks.

"My biggest takeaway is that these two men really care about the state of Minnesota and they have completely different ideas of what government and how should it work," Murphy said. "They have different view on public safety, education and education funding, abortion, gun control taxes, the handling of the COVID pandemic. They couldn't be more different, and that is what this election is about -- a chance to make a decision."

Here are the two interview segments:

St. Paul Central High School principal Cherise Ayers and teacher Stephanie McCleerey joined Erin and Jeff to talk about what changes students can expect this school year, the efforts to bolster staffing and the opportunities they see ahead for their students.

There's also a virtual hiring fair on Thursday. Click here to learn more about it!

In case you missed it at the top of the hour, here's the first segment of the first episode of The 4!

Our team is at their stations in the studio and in the control room, ready for the final rehearsal before we officially launch The 4 in less than an hour!

While we get everything put into place on our show rundown, Erin and Jeff have a preview of what to expect today ... along with a first-ever look at the show's brand-new set!

You may or may not have seen this yet, but we're inviting representatives from St. Paul schools live in today's edition of The 4.

Additionally. we've got stories that impact family budgets, your communities, and more.

If you watched our WCCO Live at the State Fair shows over the last dozen days, you saw a sneak peak at our new interactive games! They're easy, and all you have to do to play along at home is aim your phone at a QR code we'll be flashing up during the show, or simply head over to wcco.com/connect during The 4!

Here's a clip from the game from last week!

Executive producer Tracy Perlman and show producer Annie Kelby arrive at 4, ready to make the first edition of "The 4."

They've got a few things up their sleeve already, including an interview with St. Paul Central High School principal Cherise Ayers and teacher Stephanie McCleerey.

We're also going to have WCCO's Esme Murphy on to discuss the technical issues that interrupted the Sunday morning news show in the middle of an interview with Republican gubernatorial candidate Dr. Scott Jensen.

And, we're going to continue playing live interactive trivia games as we did during the State Fair shows last week!

In TV news terms, a show rundown is where news show producers keep track of all the elements that are going into the broadcast -- from scripts to video elements to graphics to audio. This morning we're getting ready to put everything together for Monday's debut!