News operation
As of, KRBK presently broadcasts 17 1/2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 3 1/2 hours each weekday); the station does not presently produce newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays, opting to carry syndicated programming following Fox prime time programming on those days.
From 2010 to 2012, KRBK aired wraparound segments throughout its broadcast day featuring the "KRBK Street Team", who provided entertainment, sports and event-related stories. KRBK began offering conventional news programming in November 2012, consisting mainly of 90-second newsbriefs (originally titled the Fox KRBK News Break) that aired weeknights each hour between 5 and 10 p.m. during select commercial breaks within daytime and evening programs, featuring Associated Press wire reports and a short local weather forecast.
Full-scale newscasts on the station began in September 2013, with the launch of a full in-house news department; that month, KRBK debuted Fox KRBK News at 9:00, an abbreviated prime time newscast that began as a 10-minute broadcast leading into the tape-delayed MyNetworkTV prime time lineup. (As a result, the programming service's local ad time was largely taken up by the newscast.) The program—which has aired only on Monday through Friday nights since its premiere—directly competes against a half-hour prime time newscast in that timeslot produced by KOLR for its MyNetworkTV-affiliated sister KOZL-TV (which debuted in 2005, during that station's tenure as the Springfield market's original Fox affiliate, as the area's first local prime time news program), and an hour-long newscast produced by NBC affiliate KYTV (channel 3) for its CW-affiliated sister K15CZ (now primary ABC affiliate KSPR-LD, which continues to carry CW programming on its second subchannel) that premiered on August 22, 2011. The newscast was initially anchored by Janelle Brandom, alongside chief meteorologist David Koeller.[13]
In September 2015, the station expanded the 9 p.m. newscast—which, by then, had been retitled Fox 5 News at Nine—to a half-hour, an expansion which coincided with the transfer of the MyNetworkTV affiliation to KOZL-TV. Subsequently, in 2016, the 9 p.m. newscast was expanded to one hour, with the addition of a companion half-hour program at 9:30 p.m., Fox 5 News Edge at 9:30; the program—which is similar to the format of former Fox affiliate WCCB/Charlotte's weeknightly WCCB News Edge—maintains a mix of traditional news, entertainment and lifestyle segments.[14][15] The station began programming regular newscasts outside its established 9 p.m. slot in March 2018, when KRBK premiered a half-hour 6:30 p.m. newscast on Monday through Friday evenings.[16]
On October 22, 2018, KRBK rebranded its news operation as Ozarks Fox News. At the same time, the station debuted a two-hour weekday morning hybrid newscast/lifestyle talk show titled Ozarks Fox AM, airing from 7 to 9 a.m. and hosted by Jeremy Rabe and Kelly Smith. The station also began simulcasting the 6 a.m. hour of KOLR 10 News Daybreak and relaunched its 6:30 p.m. newscast as Ozarks Tonight. With the rebranded newscasts, KRBK began broadcasting its newscasts from KOLR's studios on East Division Street in Springfield.
