News operation
After more than a year of planning,[37] WDRB launched its news department on March 12, 1990, with the debut of a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast, originally titled The News at 10.[38] Several longtime news personalities in the Louisville market joined the new WDRB news staff when the station formed its news operation. The News at 10 was originally anchored by Lauretta Harris (who joined WDRB from WAVE), Jim Mitchell (who started in the market at WHAS-TV, before moving to WAVE), meteorologist Tammy Garrison, and sports anchor David Sullivan.[39] A weekend edition of The News at 10 debuted that October, pairing ex-WLKY staffer Bill Francis with Susan Sweeney, who prior to joining channel 41 had worked at WHAS radio.[40]
In 1995, the program was retitled as Fox News at 10 and expanded to one hour.[41] WDRB launched additional newscasts on its schedule as its ratings position in the market strengthened: the first news expansion outside its established 10 p.m. slot came on October 5, 1998, when WDRB premiered the three-hour-long Fox in the Morning and a half-hour midday newscast at 11:30 a.m. (originally titled Fox First News);[42] the latter program expanded to an hour on September 21, 2015, with the addition of a half-hour noon newscast.[43][44] This was later followed by the debut of an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast in September 2001[45] and weekly editorials by general manager Bill Lamb, the first on any Louisville station since the 1980s, in 2002.[46] The morning newscast was retooled in 2003 as a news-oriented program after ratings took a nosedive during the start of the Iraq War.[47]
Since 2011, WDRB has continued to fill out its newscast schedule, with evening newscasts at 6:30 p.m. in 2011,[48] 6 p.m. in 2014, and 5 p.m. news in 2019, the latter hosted by longtime WAVE anchor Scott Reynolds.[49] One expansion—a 7 p.m. newscast for WBKI-TV (channel 34), was broadcast from 2012 to 2015.[50] The station also has added morning newscasts, including weekend morning news in 2013[51][52] and a 9 a.m. weekday morning news extension in 2023.[53]
In June 2013, WDRB gained notice in the television industry when it debuted a promo criticizing the broad, constant and generalized use of the term "breaking news" by other news stations (both within the Louisville market and around the United States), stating that "breaking news" has been overused as a "marketing ploy" by other stations, who tend to apply the term to stories that are low in urgency and/or relevance. To coincide with the promo, WDRB posted on its website a "contract" outline of its journalism practices with its viewers and advertisers, with the former list promising to judiciously use "breaking news" (applying the term to stories that are "both 'breaking' and 'news'"), as well as a general promise to deliver news in a truthful, balanced and informative manner, and without overt hype and sensationalism.[54]
The station gained national attention in November 2019 for a sweeps interview with the founder of Papa John's Pizza, John Schnatter (who had been a controversial local figure since his July 2018 ouster over use of a racial slur on a conference call). Schnatter had made the claim to WDRB's Stephan Johnson that he had found the quality control of the chain had declined after saying he ordered forty pizzas to eat from it in a month-long period and warned of a 'day of reckoning' for company board member Mark Shapiro for participating in Schnatter's ouster from the company.[55]
