WBAL-TV - News Operation

News Operation

For many years, WBAL-TV had waged a spirited battle for first place in the ratings with WJZ-TV. For example, In 1974, WBAL introduced the Action News format to Baltimore. Characterized by short, usually 90 second, news "packages" and upbeat introductory news themes, Baltimore's Action News briefly replaced Channel 13 as the number one news station in Baltimore during the mid-seventies. The architect of the success was news director Ron Kershaw, who had come to Baltimore from Texas and was considered somewhat ahead of his time. He brought in talented anchors like Sue Simmons and Spencer Christian and streamlined the news operation. Kershaw later brought other innovations to WNBC-TV in New York and WBBM-TV in Chicago as news director at those stations. Since the late 1980s, it has been branded News 11, WBAL-TV 11 News, or just simply 11 News.

From the early 1960s through the 1970s, WBAL-TV was the ratings leader in Baltimore. WJZ-TV took the lead in the 1970s and held it for 30 years, but WBAL-TV was a strong runner-up for most of that time. In recent years, WBAL-TV's newscasts placed first at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. However, in the November 2009 Nielsen ratings sweeps period—the first since the debut of The Jay Leno Show - WBAL's 11 p.m. newscast fell precipitously from first to a distant second behind WJZ. (By contrast, the 11 p.m. newscast on WRC-TV in nearby Washington, D.C. was one of the least affected late-night newscasts of any NBC affiliate or O&O in the country; it continued to dominate its competitors). WBAL still continued to lead at 5 and 6 p.m. until the November 2011 Nielsen Ratings sweeps period. Since NBC took Leno off of prime-time in February 2010, the 11 o'clock newscast has often come close to the WJZ newscast. However, since the November 2011 sweeps period, WJZ's newscasts took the lead in nearly all time slots but WBAL is still a strong second.

WBAL-TV lent then-meteorologist Sandra Shaw to Hearst-Argyle sister station WDSU-TV in New Orleans on September 1, 2008, to assist with the Louisiana station's coverage of Hurricane Gustav.

On January 3, 2009, WBAL-TV became the second station in Baltimore (behind WBFF-TV) to launch local news and weather in high definition. Only the in-studio cameras and the stations' helicopter were in HD at the time of the switch. For over a year, most field reports were still in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition. Most field reports are currently being switched from 16:9 widescreen enhanced definition to 16:9 high definition in March 2012. On March 5, 2012, WBAL debuted a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast on its WBAL Plus digital subchannel, which competes against an hour-long newscast on WBFF.