News Operation
Currently, WISN-TV broadcasts a total of 31½ hours of local news per week (with 4½ hours each weekday, 4½ hours on Saturdays and Sundays); unlike most ABC affiliates in the Central and Mountain time zones, WISN does not carry a newscast in the weekday midday timeslot, though it offers a lunchtime news capsule segment on their website. WISN has added more newscasts to its schedule since 2007, and is unusual in programming hour-long newscasts Saturday at 6 p.m., and Sunday at 10 p.m. On July 30, 2010, WISN, like most of its Hearst-owned ABC affiliate sister stations did on that date, added a one-hour extension of its weekend morning newscast from 8-9 a.m., which competes directly against the weekend morning newscast on NBC affiliate WTMJ-TV (channel 4). On September 6, 2010 WISN expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, now airing from 4:30-7 a.m.
Longtime anchor Jerry Taff retired in May 2005, and WISN's newscasts began to climb in the ratings. Its success stems from hiring popular local anchors and reporters released from other stations, a stronger ABC schedule, and a period of change at rival WTMJ due to weaker NBC ratings and newsroom changes. The station's biggest acquisition from WTMJ was the dean of Milwaukee television journalism, Mike Gousha in late 2007, a year after he retired as the anchor of WTMJ's main newscasts in order to focus on a new position as a distinguished fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University. Gousha currently analyzes political events for the station with other political experts, and hosts UpFront with Mike Gousha, a Sunday morning program which is a mix of the interview segments familiar to viewers of his former WTMJ program Sunday Night, and local political analysis. The show has been syndicated to other stations statewide by Hearst, and in August 2010 all of the stations involved (along with MPTV, which provided technical assistance with HD production) broadcast a Gousha-moderated forum for the Republican candidates for Wisconsin governor called the " UpFront Town Hall Challenge" from Marquette's new law building, which was purposefully structured to avoid classification as a traditional debate where either candidate could use the format to "sell" themselves. The format was repeated in October 2010 between the Democratic and Republican nominees for governor and US Senate.
While WISN was still broadcasting its newscasts in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition, the station deliberately implemented 16:9 graphical elements such as weather banners, news tickers and logo bugs slowly as it learned from the launches of WTMJ and WITI's operations in the format, with the only HD segments until late June 2011 airing during newscasts on the day of the Summerfest "Big Bang" fireworks show in late June, usually scenic and human interest pieces, along with MPTV co-productions.
On April 21, 2009, the station transitioned to the Hearst HD graphics package and a permanent pillarbox with the station logo in the left pillar and calls in the right for standard definition programming. In March 2010 the station unveiled 16:9-optimized weather graphics to allow the station to continue to show programming in HD rather than force a downscale to a modified 4:3 mode where the program was displayed in 3:3 (to much viewer complaint over the years, especially with ABC primetime programming), with the weather warnings taking up the remainder of the screen. On October 10, 2010, WISN-TV converted its newscast presentation to 16:9 widescreen, though remaining in standard definition for all aspects at the time, and also removing the decorative pillarboxes. Then on June 28, 2011, WISN-TV became the third station in Milwaukee (behind WTMJ-TV and WITI-TV) to air its newscasts in high definition. While the station's studio shots are in HD, its live field reports and video footage are still in 16:9 widescreen standard definition.
On January 24, 2011, WISN-TV expanded its 10 p.m. newscast to one hour in length, becoming the third Hearst-owned station with an hour-long late local newscast (Albuquerque sister station KOAT and Honolulu sister station KITV also carry hour-long newscasts after ABC primetime). A consequence of this was WISN choosing to moving longtime 10:30 p.m. slotholder Access Hollywood to 12:30 a.m., and program producer NBCUniversal Television Distribution asking for an early release from their contract so that the show could move to 6:30 p.m. on WTMJ as of April 11, 2011.
WISN also hosts its video stories on YouTube as part of a content agreement between Hearst-Argyle and YouTube, and in April 2010 unveiled an iPhone application in the iTunes App Store., followed by an Android Market app in 2011.
On September 11, 2012, the station instituted the new standard Hearst graphics and musical package on their newscasts.
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