KTVU-TV Newscasts
Debut: March 03, 1958

KTVU-TV in Oakland-San Jose-San Francisco presently broadcasts 67 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 11½ hours on weekdays, 4½ hours on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays). KTVU's news department began operations along with the station on March 3, 1958, with the launch of its weeknight newscast: The 10 O'Clock News, in which for years had been the market's only local television newscast at 10:00 p.m., airing for a half-hour on Monday through Friday Nights, the program was originally anchored by Les Nichols (who served as the station's managing editor) and Al Helmso (who served as the station's first news director). Nichols and Helmso stepped down in the early 1960s, and was replaced by Gary Park (who would later remain at KTVU until 1987) and Stan Atkinson as the station's main anchors. The program was reformatted in 1971 as The Tuck-Fortner Report, with Mike Tuck and Ron Fortner at the helm; they were replaced by Marcia Brandwynne and George Reading in 1974 (Reading would be later replaced by Atkinson and eventually, Judd Hambrick). In 1975, the weeknight editions of The 10 O'Clock News expanded to one hour. In September 1979, the hour-long weekend editions of The 10 O'Clock News were launched, which were first anchored by Elaine Corral. In 1976, assignment reporter Dennis Richmond (who joined the station on April 23, 1968) was appointed as the station's lead anchor by becoming one of the first African-Americans to become chief anchor of a major-market television newscast and became known among local viewers for his straightforward and interpersonal, but calm and unopinioned delivery in his reporting. Richmond's co-anchors throughout his tenure were Judd Hambrick (1976-1977), Andy Park (1978-1979), Barbara Simpson (1979-1986), Elaine Corral (1986-1998, who would later abruptly resigning on-air in March 1998), Leslie Griffith (1998-2006, who joined the station in 1986 and later left in 2006) and finally Julie Haener, who became weeknight co-anchor in May 2007 and remains in that capacity as of 2016. Richmond anchored The 10 O'Clock News for 32 of his 40 years at KTVU until his retirement on May 26, 2008, on his 65th birthday. Replacing Richmond was Frank Somerville (who joined the station in 1991), joining Haener as lead anchor of the 10 p.m. weeknight newscast. Another mainstay of KTVU's prime time newscast was Pat McCormick, who served as a weather anchor on-and-off from 1969 until his retirement on May 26, 1995 (replacing Bob Wilkins as chief meteorologist in 1974); his successor Bill Martin, who joined KTVU in 1996, was the first television meteorologist in the Bay Area to provide six-day weather forecasts. Bob MacKenzie (who joined the station in 1978 until his retirement in 2010, a year before he died) was also a fixture for many years as a feature reporter, and also did occasional topical commentary pieces. For more than 40 years, The 10 O'Clock News has been the ratings leader in the San Francisco Bay Area at 10:00 p.m., with or without news competition in the arena, under the helm of longtime news director Fred Zehnder (who originally joined the station as an assistant news director, before being promoted to head the news department after the firing of his predecessor Ted Kavanau in 1978). From 1987 to 2005, KTVU's The 10 O'Clock News was referenced in its title sequence and some news promotions as "the #1 primetime newscast in the country". Throughout its run as an independent station, The 10 O'Clock News was the only news program on KTVU. The station first began programming news outside its established 10:00 p.m. slot in September 1986, when it debuted 2 At Noon, the hour-long midday news-talk program, which was originally anchored by Barbara Simpson and Bob MacKenzie. The program was reformatted into a more traditional newscast in 1990, as The Noon News, at which time it was shortened to a half-hour (the newscast would eventually revert to an hour on April 7, 2016). In September 1989, the station debuted a half-hour 6:00 p.m. weeknight newscast, The 6:00 News, which lasted until cancellation in 1991. KTVU eventually decided to shirt towards a news-intensive format to compete with KRON-TV, KPIX-TV, KGO-TV and KNTV-TV that took the course of several years to take effect, so KTVU went on to air more local news programming. On January 2, 1991, the station debut its original weekday morning newscast, Mornings on 2 as a two-hour broadcast from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. (the program would expand to three hours on September 14, 2005), becoming the fourth Fox affiliate television station in the U.S. to air a newscast on weekday mornings. This was followed on August 5, 1996, by the debut of an additional hour-long newscast at 6:00 a.m. (which would gradually expanded to three hours, now beginning at 4:00 a.m.). In 1999, Sal Castaneda joined the station as weekday morning traffic reporter. On March 27, 2000, early evening newscast returned to KTVU with the debut of a new half-hour 6:00 p.m. newscast (which expanded to an hour on April 25, 2016), followed by the addition of an hour-long 5:00 p.m. newscast on weekdays in April 2005 (an expansion of an existing weekend-only newscast that debuted in 1998). The May 1999 retirement of Zehnder brought changes to the newsroom. KTVU had used the 'KTVU News Theme' by Michael Randall as the primary theme music for its newscasts from 1987 (debuting alongside a custom title sequence for the 10:00 p.m. weeknight newscast that was updated in 1994 and used until 2001, featuring a CGI fly-over of the Bay Area showcasing the program's title logo gliding across the waters of the San Francisco Bay) until the package was replaced on June 23, 2010, by a new 615 Music-composed theme called "Icon News". In the 2000s, KTVU became the last news-producing English language television station in the Bay Area to begin utilizing a helicopter for newsgathering, with the introduction of News Chopper 2 (now known as SkyFox as part of the rebranding by Fox after its acquisition). On October 10, 2006, KTVU became the first television station in the Bay Area to begin broadcasting its local news in high definition; with the upgrade, the station debuted a new state-of-the-art studio designed for HD newscast production, which replaced the previous set that has been in use since 1986 (with updates in 1989, 1997 and 2005); video from remote and field equipment was initially broadcast in 480p standard definition following the transition; high definition cameras are now utilized for field reports. On January 21, 2008, KTVU began producing a half-hour newscast at 7:00 p.m. each weeknight on sister station KICU-TV. In 2010, the KTVU news department was honored with a Peaboy Award for its coverage of the June 2009 shooting of unarmed African-American male Oscar Grant in a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) terminal. On January 22, 2011, the station launched two-hour newscast on Saturdays and Sundays from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., becoming the largest Fox affiliate and the second-largest Fox station – behind the network's Dallas O&O KDFW – to carry newscasts on weekend mornings (the program later expanded to three hours until 10:00 a.m. in January 2014). Two days later, on January 24, 2011, KTVU expanded its weekday morning newscast to 4½ hours, with the addition of a half-hour at 4:30 a.m. In March 2014, KTVU began using the AFD #10 broadcast flag to present its newscasts in letterboxed widescreen for viewers watching on cable through 4:3 television sets. In January 2015, KTVU debut a new 9:00 a.m. weekday newscast called Mornings on 2: The Nine, which was anchored by Mike Milback (who joined the station in 2008), In February 2015, KTVU introduced a new graphic package, accompanied by the replacement of the "Icon News" package with OSI Music's "Fox Affiliate News Theme", matching with the imaging style of other Fox Television Station-owned outlets and implementing the "Fox 2" brand universally. On June 22, 2015, KTVU debuted an hour-long 4:00 p.m. newscast, marking the first time that a Fox owned-and-operated station would air a newscast during that hour. In September 2021, KTVU suspended long-time lead anchor Frank Somerville for disobedience after seeking to keep a "tag" concerning domestic violence and "missing white woman syndrome" in a story on the Gabby Petito case. Then, two months later (in November 2021), he said in an interview with the Bay Area New Group that the station had not contacted him that he would never going to anchor again. Then, on December 30, 2021, Somerville was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after an automobile colision. And in January 2022, Somerville's suspension from KTVU became permanent and his contract expired and decided now to re-sign him again for good. Four months later, on May 2, 2022, Mike Milbach was choosen to replace Somerville as the station's weeknight lead male anchor for the 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. weeknight newscasts alongside Julie Haener.

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