News Operation
WTXF broadcasts a total of 42½ hours of local news a week (8½ hours on weekdays, and two hours each on Saturdays and Sundays), currently the most news of any major network affiliate in the Philadelphia market.
Throughout the early 1980s, WTAF aired the syndicated Independent Network News, produced by Tribune-owned WPIX in New York City. This lasted until 29 began its own in-house news department. In the spring of 1986, Taft Broadcasting opened WTAF-TV's news department with a nightly 10:00 p.m. newscast. It was the second attempt at a primetime newscast in the market, after WKBS-TV ran a short-lived program in the late 1970s. Channel 29's effort has been longest-running, and the most successful. On April 1, 1996, shortly after channel 29 became a Fox-owned station, morning children's programming was dropped in favor of a weekday morning newscast, Good Day Philadelphia.
In areas of central New Jersey where the Philadelphia and New York City markets overlap, WTXF shares resources with New York sister stations WNYW and WWOR-TV. The stations share reporters for stories occurring in New Jersey.
On January 22, 2007, WTXF-TV overhauled its on-air look, adopting a logo, graphics & music similar to that of the Fox News Channel. Many other Fox-owned stations have made similar imaging changes. Channel 29 also expanded its facilities to include a new studio for its newscasts, and started to broadcast its local newscast in High-definition. With the new imaging, WTXF-TV has also expanded its news coverage.
On October 9, 2006, WTXF added a half-hour newscast at 11:00 a.m. On January 22, 2007, a new hour-long program at 5:00 p.m. debuted, enabling channel 29 to go head-to-head with two of the three other network-owned stations. On October 6, 2007, WTXF launched hour-long 6 p.m. newscasts on Saturday and Sunday evenings. From September 1, 2008 and running through November 3, 2008, WTXF aired a 2008 election-themed 11 p.m. newscast, called The Last Word, anchored by 5 p.m. anchor Kerri-Lee Halkett. On September 7, 2009, WTXF added a weekday half-hour 6 p.m. newscast. It is co-anchored by Kerri-Lee Halkett and Thomas Drayton, with John Bolaris forecasting the weather.
On November 13, 2008, Fox Television Stations and NBC Local Media reached news deal in Philadelphia to test a system that will allow Fox-owned stations and NBC-owned stations to pool their news resources ranging from shared video to any aerial video from a helicopter. WTXF and WCAU were the first affiliates in the nation to undertake the plan as an effective way to deal with the difficulties in costs in news operations. Good Day Philadelphia expanded to five hours on September 7, 2009. The station also announced that former Good Day Philadelphia co-anchor (and former co-host of The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet) Mike Jerrick would return to the show to anchor from 7 to 10 a.m. starting July 27, 2009. On March 29, 2010, WTXF expanded Good Day to start at 4:30 a.m. That brings the station's weekdaily news production to 8½ hours a day.
Beginning on September 8, 2010, Anchor Kerri-Lee Halkett went on a personal leave. A WTXF representative said that Halkett would once again return to her job in mid-October. However, on September 23, 2010, it was announced that Halkett had decided to leave the station to move to Connecticut where her husband was living allowing Halkett to accept a job as an anchor for NBC affiliate WVIT (channel 30) in Hartford, Connecticut. WTXF replaced Halkett with Lauren Cohn who took over Halkett's co-anchoring jobs with Thomas Drayton at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. on weeknights. Cohn was replaced one year later by freelance reporter Kerry Barrett.
In 2011, WTXF switched its newscasts from the 4:3 picture format to the 16:9 letterbox format (similar to what has been done recently by Fox News Channel, HLN and CNN); as a result, both the standard definition and high definition feed feature the newscasts in the 16:9 format. The standard definition channel now has black bars on the top and bottom of the screen while the high definition channel is full-screen.
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