News operation
WATE-TV broadcasts 42 1/2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6 1/2 hours each weekday and five hours each on Saturdays and Sundays).
Although WATE may not have always been a ratings powerhouse in east Tennessee, it has been the leader in other areas. In the late-1960s, it assembled the popular on-air team of news anchor Pete Gardener, weathercaster Margie Ison, and Sports Director Mike Thurman. This move resulted in the station making inroads into the ratings-dominant WBIR which led the market ratings at the time. In the early-1970s, Sam Brown joined WATE as news anchor and the group of "Sam, Mike, and Margie" subsequently became the most well known on-air personality team in Knoxville.
By the mid-1970s after the previous changes had been in place for a while, all of the station's newscasts were ranked number one in their respective time periods. Also at this point, it was the first outlet to update its newsroom technology with a switch from film to videotape (i.e. electronic journalism) as well as own-and-operating a live microwave truck to assist in newsgathering purposes.
The station was Knoxville's first to utilize a helicopter (known as "Sky Eye 6") for on-air coverage. In 1977, WATE debuted the market's first local newscasts seen on Saturday evenings featuring anchor Art Powell, Kay Elliott providing weather forecasts, and Calvin Sneed with sports. This was followed in 1978 by the launch of Knoxville's first noon newscast with Sneed adding the show to his anchoring duties. In 1979, he would be promoted to weekend news anchor in order to welcome the area's first local newscasts seen on Sunday nights. In 1980, WATE promoted Sneed to become the first African-American to co-anchor weeknight main news broadcasts in East Tennessee,[8][9] which included Chattanooga, Knoxville and Tri-Cities.
During the early 1980s, the unofficial goal of the weeknight news crew was to regularly scoop the Knoxville Journal (a morning newspaper) which was in the process of gaining circulation over the Knoxville News Sentinel (published in the afternoons). The stories seen on-air served as fodder for the next day's coverage assignments pioneering the "follow-up" concept of reporting in modern-day journalism. WATE also hired the market's first AMS-certified meteorologist in Knoxville and Eastern Tennessee in 1979 when Mark Mancuso joined the team.
In 1998, a news share agreement was established with Fox affiliate WTNZ (owned by Raycom Media). This resulted in Knoxville's original prime time newscast to debut. Branded as Fox 43 Ten O'Clock News, the nightly thirty-minute show featured a similar format to broadcasts seen on this station except for WTNZ's logo being present in the graphics. In 2002, it began to compete with another nightly newscast seen at 10 on then-WB (now CW) affiliate WBXX-TV. Produced by WBIR, this production offered as an alternative to WTNZ only aired for twelve minutes in an abbreviated format featuring the day's top stories along with an updated weather forecast. In early-March 2011, WTNZ terminated its outsourcing arrangement with WATE after entering into another contract with WBIR.
As a result, the latter station stopped producing the nightly update for WBXX. WBIR/WTNZ became the second news operation to upgrade to high definition on June 1 while WVLT was the first back on January 9, 2011. WATE's weekday noon show was cancelled on January 31, 2008, making the station Knoxville's only outlet without a newscast seen in the time period. On August 1, 2011, the station returned to the prime time newscast race with a new nightly 35 minute broadcast on WBXX (then owned by the Lockwood Broadcast Group) through an outsourcing agreement, under the branding The CW 20 News at 10.[10][11][12]
On October 17, 2011, starting with their 5 p.m. newscast, WATE became the final station in the Knoxville market to broadcast in high definition. Along with the switch to HD, the station unveiled a new logo, new graphics, new studio set, and new news music: "Locals Only" by Stephen Arnold Music. The newscast on WBXX was initially not included in the upgrade as that station lacked a high definition-capable master control at its separate studios to transmit the newscast in HD. In early April 2012, that channel finally upgraded its master control to allow the WATE newscast and some other local and syndicated programming to be broadcast in HD.
On December 31, 2016, WATE-TV broadcast its final newscast on WBXX-TV, now owned by Gray Television. Co-owned Gray station WVLT-TV began producing newscasts on WBXX-TV the following day.
