KTVT - News Operation

News Operation

KTVT broadcasts a total of 28 hours of local news a week (five hours each weekday, one hour on Saturdays and two hours on Sundays). In addition, the station produces two sports programs on Sunday nights after the 10 p.m. newscast, the sports wrap-up show The Score and the football highlight program Blitz: Cowboys/Desperados Report, both hosted by sports director Babe Laufenberg.

During its years as an independent station, On August 20, 1990, KTVT was the first station in Dallas to offer a primetime newscast, airing at 9 p.m. (KDFW did not launch a 9 p.m. newscast until it switched from CBS to Fox in 1995, and KDAF did not air a 9 p.m. newscast until that station regained a news department in 1999). After switching to a CBS affiliation in 1995, KTVT added morning (6-7 a.m.), 6 p.m., and 10 p.m. newscasts. During the first few years of its CBS affiliation, KTVT used the "11 on Eleven" title for its 10 p.m. newscast, used to emphasize that the day's top headlines and the first weather forecast would be aired in the first 11 minutes of the newscast, before the first commercial break. In 1996, the station added noon and 5 p.m. newscasts to their lineup.

Since affiliating with CBS, the only newscasts to be dropped were the weekday noon (which debuted in 1996) and weekend morning newscasts (the latter of which were cut during budget cutbacks imposed by CBS Corporation in 2006, and as such KTVT is the only one of the Big Four stations in the market without a weekend morning newscast). On January 11, 2010 KTVT expanded its 4 p.m. newscast from a half-hour to a full hour leading into the 5 p.m. newscast; even though the newscast itself debuted in 2000, was dropped in 2002, returned as an hour-long newscast in 2004, was cut to a half-hour in 2005, and finally re-expanded to an hour in 2010.

In 2010, KTVT switched to the new CBS O&O uniform graphics package, originally used by WCBS-TV in New York City and KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, and began using the CBS Enforcer News Music Collection by Frank Gari as its news theme. In June 2011, when a thunderstorm knocked CBS 11 off the air during the 5 p.m. newscast, meteorologist Larry Mowry decided to try to tweet his forecast instead.