News Programming
Since the station signed on as an independent, KIAH (when it was KHTV) aired hourly news updates during commercial breaks between programming. In August 1990, the station began producing newscasts at 7 and 11 p.m. entitled Houston TV News, later simply called 39 News. The move was made to fill a gap that KRIV had left open, as it had previously aired news at 7 p.m., but had moved it to 9 p.m. in 1989 as the Fox network had developed a primetime schedule. The 11 p.m. newscast was supposed to cater to people who had missed the traditional 10 p.m. newscasts, though both proved unsuccessful and the news department was ultimately disbanded in May 1992.
KHWB did not attempt to go back into news programming until 1999, when Tribune Broadcasting decided to call for the introduction of news programming on all of its then-The WB affiliated stations, which served as de facto owned-and-operated stations as Tribune owned a partial stake in The WB; in 2000, the station launched a half-hour newscast, WB 39 News at Nine (later renamed Houston's WB News at Nine) to compete with KRIV. For a brief time in 2006, it was also known as Channel 39 News due to the upcoming affiliation change from The WB to The CW; it then became CW 39 News at Nine. The station's Chief Meteorologist, Keith Monahan, has won numerous awards for his weather reports including several Texas Lone Star Awards and multiple first place finishes in Texas AP judging, and was honored with a Lone Star Emmy in 2006 and a Lone Star Emmy nomination in 2007 for the Best Weathercast in Texas.
The station permanently expanded the newscast to an hour on June 30, 2008 (previously it had been expanded to the full hour on breaking news occasions), and contemplated launching a morning newscast in 2010, along with plans to unveil a new set and begin to broadcast its news in high definition (the morning newscast ultimately never launched). Additionally on August 29, 2008, the station rebranded the newscast to simply 39 News at Nine.
On September 28, 2009, KIAH launched an hour-long 5 p.m. newscast, which competes against 5 p.m. newscasts on KPRC-TV, KHOU, KTRK-TV, and KRIV. On May 10, 2010, the station debuted a new set and began airing its newscasts in high definition. KIAH was technically the last English-language network-affiliated station in the Houston market to have made the upgrade. However, like most Tribune-owned stations with in-house originated high-definition newscasts, the locally-originated live field reports are also in HD. (KTRK also uses some HD field footage in its newscasts.) By contrast, KPRC, KHOU, and KRIV still use 16:9 widescreen standard definition for live field video.
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