KUSA (TV) - News Operation

News Operation

KUSA presently broadcasts a total of 34½ hours of locally-produced newscasts each week (with 5½ hours on weekdays, three hours on Saturdays and four hours on Sundays). KUSA also provides daily weather forecasts for the Denver Post and Fort Collins Coloradoan newspapers and local weather updates for four radio stations owned by Entercom: KALC, KEZW, KQMT and KOSI; this partnership began on January 1, 2008, after the station's agreement to provide forecasts for KOA radio ended. Weather segments during the station's newscasts are typically presented in the "9 Back Yard", a courtyard outside the Speer Boulevard studios that features a chroma key wall and robotic camera (local weather inserts for The Today Show and updates for 9 NEWS Weather Plus are done from a chroma key wall inside the weather center.

In addition to its main studios in downtown Denver, KUSA operates a "Northern Newsroom" that based out of the Fort Collins Coloradoan offices in Fort Collins, the bureau employs a rotating staff of reporters and photojournalists out of Denver. The station also operates a "Mountain Newsroom" based in Silverthorne. The station's weather radar is presented on-air as "HD-Doppler 9", a DWSR-10001C radar model supplied by Enterprise Electronics Corporation that is located east of Elizabeth and operates at a radiated power of 1 million watts. KUSA brands its websites and sister television properties under the "9NEWS Networks" banner (described by KUSA as its three websites: 9News.com, m.9News.com and HighSchoolSports.net; KTVD and its website; the 9NEWS Now digital subchannel; Metromix; Telemundo owned-and-operated station KDEN-TV (whose Spanish-language newscasts are produced by KUSA) and the "9NEWS Weather Call" weather alert service).

For over 30 years, KUSA's newscasts (currently titled as 9NEWS) have dominated Denver's local news ratings. In February 1976, Ed Sardella and John Rayburn anchored the 10 p.m. newscast on weeknights, helping that program overtake longtime leader KMGH-TV for the top ratings spot; Rayburn was succeeded by Mike Landess in 1977, who would remain paired with Sardella as one of Denver's top anchor teams for 16 years until leaving for KUSA's Atlanta sister station WXIA-TV in late 1993. Sardella retired from the anchor desk in 2000, but returned briefly to replace Jim Benemann, who left for KCNC-TV. Landess, after anchoring at WTTG/Washington, D.C., returned to Denver on rival KMGH-TV in 2002.

The KUSA News Package (created by Third Street Music) was commissioned by KUSA in 1995. On October 15, 2008, KUSA debuted a standardized graphics package for the Gannett stations created by the Gannett Graphics Group, along a standardized music package composed by Rampage Music New York. The closing cut of the previous theme was last used on February 6, 2009, though the remastered talent bumper cut is still being used (Minneapolis sister station KARE continues to use its own custom theme composed in 1996 by Third Street Music called the KARE 11 News Theme to this day). KUSA formerly rebroadcast its weeknight 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts on KPXC-TV as part of an agreement between NBC and Pax TV to provide news rebroadcasts from the network's stations on Pax's owned-and-operated stations nationally, which ended in 2005 upon that network's rebrand to I: Independent Television.

In April 2004, KUSA became Denver's first television station, the first Gannett-owned station and the second U.S. television station to begin producing its locally-produced newscasts in high definition. On September 5, 2006, KUSA began to produce a daily half-hour primetime newscast at 9 p.m. on sister station KTVD, coinciding with that station's affiliation switch from UPN to MyNetworkTV; this expanded on December 5, 2006 to include a two-hour extension of KUSA's weekday morning newscast from 7 to 9 a.m. and later to weekend morning newscasts at 6 a.m. on KTVD. During the November 2007 sweeps period, KCNC's newscasts surged over KUSA in the 5 p.m. timeslot for the first time in over a decade, that station also overtook KUSA in overall sign-on to sign-off numbers (this is partially due to KCNC's shift towards investigative reports and human interest stories, though the strength of CBS' primetime lineup and viewership declines for NBC primetime also played a factor). Overall, KUSA remains the highest-rated local news outlet in the market despite a very close ratings battle between it, KCNC-TV and KMGH-TV.

On March 6, 2009, KUSA began streaming its noon newscast on the station's website with a live chat room (it now steams all newscasts seen on KUSA and KTVD). In June 2010, KUSA expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours with the addition of a half-hour at 4:30 a.m., the KUSA-produced 9 p.m. newscast on KTVD also expanded to one hour that month. On February 20, 2012, KUSA updated its HD-ready set constructed in 2004 to feature a new backdrop for its daytime newscasts that is a variant of its evening backdrop photograph in a daytime setting. On June 3 of that year, KUSA's newscasts were relocated to a temporary set in "Studio B" for two weeks while their primary news set received updated duratrans.