News operation
WPMT presently broadcasts 47 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with nine hours each weekday and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output of any television station in the Harrisburg–Lancaster–Lebanon–York market.
As a CBS affiliate, WSBA-TV ran a small news department branded as NewsWatch 43. In 1980, the station relaunched its news department as a much larger operation, and retitled its newscasts to TeleJournal News. The station's signal prevented the competitive newscast from being seen throughout the market, however, preventing it from adequately competing against the established news departments of the other local Big Three network affiliates in the Susquehanna Valley (including NBC affiliate and longtime market leader WGAL, ABC affiliate WHTM, fellow CBS affiliates WHP-TV and WLYH); as a result, the news department was discontinued in 1983.
With Fox preparing to heighten its profile once Fox took over the contractual rights to the National Football Conference television package in the fall of 1994 (as part of December 1993 contract deal with the NFL that transferred the NFC contract from CBS), Fox began urging management at owned-and-operated and affiliated stations that had limited to no local news presence to develop full-scale news departments. Renaissance Communications agreed to Fox's request and commenced development of a full-scale news department for Channel 43. Long-form newscasts would return to WPMT on September 12, 1994, when the station premiered its flagship prime time newscast, Fox 43 News at Ten. Originally airing Monday through Fridays for a half-hour, it was first anchored by Evan Forrester and Donya Archer, who were accompanied by weather anchor Susan Schrack and sports director Tom Werme. (As of 2021, the weeknight editions of the 10 p.m. broadcast compete with prime time newscasts on CW affiliate WHP-DT3 [channel 21.3], and MeTV affiliate WGAL-DT2 [channel 8.2].) Half-hour Saturday and Sunday editions of the newscast were subsequently added on January 7, 1995; this was followed by the expansion of the weeknight editions of the newscast to one hour on September 13, 1997, with the weekend editions following suit on January 9, 1999.
News programming on Channel 43 expanded on January 16, 2006, with the addition of the Fox 43 Morning News, an hour-long weekday morning newscast at 7 a.m.; the newscast, which was formatted to feature updated traffic and weather segments in 10-minute intervals, gradually expanded within the next decade: the Morning News added two additional hours (expanding it to run from 5 to 8 a.m.) by September 2007 and expanded to include an 8 a.m. hour in September 2008. On February 13, 2013, WPMT expanded the weekday morning newscast to five hours (moving its start time one hour early to 4 a.m.), becoming the first and only station in the market, and the fifth Tribune-owned station to begin its morning newscast at 4 a.m. (WGAL and WHTM start their morning newscasts at 4:30, while WHP's continues to start at 5 a.m.)[10] The weekday morning show later expanded to six hours (with the addition of a 9 a.m. block) on September 17, 2018.[11]
On September 4, 2009, WPMT began airing a local sports highlight program called High School Football Frenzy, that airs Fridays at 6 p.m. during the high school football season.[12] On September 21, 2009, the station debuted a half-hour weeknight newscast at 6:30, that competed against the national network newscasts on WHP, WGAL, and WHTM.[12][13] The station launched a weeknight 11 p.m. newscast on January 11, 2010.[14]
On January 15, 2011, WPMT became the first station in Central Pennsylvania and the last Tribune-owned Fox affiliate to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (rival WGAL was the first station in the market to offer local newscasts in the 16:9 format, albeit in enhanced definition widescreen in mid-December 2010; WGAL switched to full HD on August 29, 2011).[15] WPMT was the first television station in the market to provide news video from the field in true high definition, as it upgraded its ENG vehicles, satellite truck, studio and field cameras and other equipment in order to broadcast news footage from the field in high definition, in addition to segments broadcast from the main studio.
On January 9, 2012, WPMT expanded its early evening newscast to one hour with the addition of a half-hour at 6 p.m.[16] WPMT debuted two hour-long newscasts at 4 and 5 p.m. weekdays on August 5, 2013, while discontinuing its hour-long 6 p.m. newscast. The station's 11 p.m. newscast was discontinued the following month on September 6, and was replaced by the second incarnation of The Arsenio Hall Show (which was produced by Tribune) three days later.[17][18]
