Newscasts
KSAT-TV presently broadcasts 41 hours, 55 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6 hours, 35 minutes each weekday and 4 1/2 hours each on Saturdays and Sundays).
In 2002, weeknight co-anchor Leslie Mouton was diagnosed with breast cancer; Mouton courageously decided to anchor the evening newscasts without a wig while she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments that resulted in her going bald. Mouton chronicled her treatment and recovery on KSAT, earning accolades from local oncologists and cancer patients. Mouton recounted her battle with the disease in a 2004 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show (which aired on KSAT at the time), which included clips of Mouton's first anchoring appearance after she lost her hair, including the explanation she gave on-air of what she was going through at the time.
On February 5, 2009, KSAT became the second television station in the San Antonio market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. prior to the upgrade, only in-studio cameras recorded in HD, with video downconverted to widescreen standard definition; certain field cameras and other station camera feeds are in standard definition and upconverted to a 16:9 widescreen format in the control room, as some field reports still remain in upconverted 16:9 standard definition.
On May 26, 2011, KSAT debuted a half-hour late afternoon newscast at 4 p.m., titled First News At Four; the program (along with its lead-out Inside Edition) replaced The Oprah Winfrey Show, which ended its syndication run on May 25, 2011. First News At Four ended its run on September 5, 2014.
On September 12, 2011, in a move announced in May 2011, KSAT-TV became the first station in San Antonio to expand its 10 p.m. newscast to one hour; as a result, it was one of the few television stations affiliated with the Big Three networks that airs an hour-long late evening newscast. Also coinciding with the expanded newscast, Inside Edition was reduced from two daily airings to one, as the newscast took over that timeslot; Nightline remained in its timeslot at 11:05 (later occupied by Jimmy Kimmel Live! at 11:05 p.m. and Nightline at 12:05 a.m.). However, ABC's newest affiliation contract has required all its affiliates to carry Kimmel as scheduled at 10:35 p.m., and KSAT, along with several other ABC affiliates carrying extended newscasts, reduced their late newscasts to the traditional 35 minutes at the start of 2019.
In March 2012, KSAT expanded its weekday morning newscast Good Morning San Antonio to 2 1/2 hours, becoming the third station (behind WOAI and later KENS) to expand its morning newscast to the 4:30 a.m. timeslot. That month, the station also added Saturday and Sunday editions of Good Morning San Antonio, in the form of one-hour blocks (with the second half of the Saturday edition running two hours) surrounding the weekend editions of Good Morning America.
In February 2017, KSAT announced the launch of a new hour of programming in the 9 a.m. block, Good Morning San Antonio at 9.[19] In September 2018, the station launched a 9 p.m. newscast, though unusually, the program is exclusive to the station's app on the three major digital media player platforms.[20]
Death of Michelle Lima
Tragedy struck the station on March 26, 1999, when anchor/reporter and rising star Michelle Lima was killed while reporting live during a newscast from the scene of a search for a 9-year-old boy. As she was helping pack up for a future assignment, Lima was hit by a truck on a dark rural frontage road in southern Bexar County. Lima was airlifted to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead two days later. She was 30 years old.[21][22]
