There wasn’t much in the way of big announcements, but CBC Radio One’s local afternoon show Homerun has been expanded to three hours from two. It’s now 3-6pm instead of 4-6pm, starting today (Sept. 1).

The expansion comes at the expense of national programming including Spark with Nora Young and Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald.

Fortunately, all these shows are available on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. You can see a full schedule here (PDF) (which hasn’t yet been updated with the extended Homerun).

The move is part of that big CBC “renewal” effort to focus more on local programming but with less money to do so.

In Quebec City and elsewhere in the province, the afternoon program Breakaway is unaffected yet. It continues from 4-6pm.

It’s also worth noting for those who haven’t tuned in in a while that Radio Noon, the province-wide call-in show, is one hour long when it used to be two hours. So this additional hour of Homerun simply brings the station back to the same amount of programming it had last year.