News operation
WGXA began producing local newscasts, branded News 24, on October 18, 1982.[36] This brought the market back to two full-service television newsrooms; WCWB had, the month before, dropped its full-length newscasts to produce inserts into CNN Headline News.[37] Nearly immediately, the station made a more credible showing than WCWB, attracting about half the audience of the dominant WMAZ.[38]
In conjunction with the switch to Fox, the station expanded its local news programming with new weekend newscasts and invested in improved equipment as Gocom sought to make the station more competitive against WMAZ.[39][40] A morning newscast, News A.M., debuted in August 1997.[41] Viewership grew among youth audiences for the newscasts.[42] The station retained its early evening newscast at 5:30 p.m. until 2001, when it consolidated it with the 10 p.m. newscast as an hourlong program.[43]
On March 1, 2010, an expansion of the WGXA newsroom began with a new 5:30 p.m. broadcast for the Fox subchannel and dedicated 7 and 11 p.m. newscasts on the ABC subchannel; the combined brand "NewsCentral" was adopted.[44] From 2010 to 2012, the station aired a morning radio-television simulcast with WMAC (940 AM), featuring the same people that had been producing a similar show for WPGA radio and television.[45]
In 2019, WGXA morning news anchor Rick Devens competed on the CBS reality show Survivor: Edge of Extinction.[46]
WGXA handled production of a weeknight hour-long 10 p.m. newscast for sister station WFXL in Albany. Local reporters in the Albany area covered that region's news, which was presented from Macon. The WGXA news director also held that title for WFXL,[47] and in 2022, WGXA was added to the portfolio of the general manager of WFXL and WACH-TV in Columbia, South Carolina.[48] In March 2023, several newscasts were cut back at WGXA and replaced with Sinclair's national news program, The National Desk, accompanying a round of layoffs.[49]
