News operation
WBND-LD currently broadcasts 31 hours of local newscasts each week (with 4 1/2 hours each on Mondays through Saturdays and four hours on Sundays); in addition to the newscasts seen on WBND, the station produces and airs 13 1/2 hours of news a week for CW affiliate WCWW-LD (with 2 1/2 hours each weekday and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). Unlike most ABC stations in the Eastern Time Zone, the station does not produce a midday newscast on weekdays. WBND-LD's news operation has no sports department.
The station ran an abbreviated 11-minute-long newscast at 11 p.m. from 2007 to April 2011,[8] using a form of the Eleven @ 11:00 news format, with The Insider filling out the timeslot following the newscast until 11:35 p.m. The newscast was produced and anchored by staff at WDJT, and featured emphasis on a weather forecast segment within the first ten minutes, under the "First Alert Weather" branding. WBND was the third Weigel station to carry a newscast produced by WDJT, the others being their Milwaukee sister stations WMLW-CA and WYTU-LD. Local news footage was shot by photographers in South Bend, and then transmitted to WDJT's studios in Milwaukee via satellite. WDJT's reporters and anchors then edited the video and added voiceovers, before sending the completed program back to South Bend.
In November 2010, Weigel began to seek applicants for reporting, anchoring and web content positions to be locally based in South Bend, suggesting the station was looking to start a standalone news operation.[9] On April 4, 2011, the station officially launched its news operation and began broadcasting locally produced daily newscasts at 6 a.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.[8] This made WBND one of the few low-powered television stations to operate an in-house news department. The newscasts air in high definition, though in downscaled 4:3 on its analog low-power signal until that channel went dark later that year.
In September 2011, WBND-LD added an additional hour to its weekday morning newscast at 5 a.m. and launched two half-hour newscasts: one at 7 p.m. on Monday through Saturday evenings and a newscast at 6 p.m. on Saturdays (replacing the 6:30 p.m. newscast previously seen on that night). The station launched an hour-long 5 p.m. newscast on September 10, 2012, simultaneously discontinuing the 7 p.m. newscast on weeknights (the station continued production of the Saturday edition of the 7 p.m. newscast).[10] In September 2014, the station expanded its weekday morning newscast by a half-hour to 4:30 a.m., and debuted a two-hour extension of the program from 7 to 9 a.m. on WCWW-LD; WBND also debuted three hours of newscasts on weekend mornings, with a two-hour block running from 6 to 8 a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, and an additional hour on Saturdays from 9 to 10 a.m. and on Sundays from 10 to 11 a.m.[11]
