Newscasts
The station had a one-hour primetime newscast called The 9 O'Clock Nightly News starting in 1989, which featured anchors Liz Talbot and Duane Gay. Previously the station aired news and weather in a capsule format of two-to-five-minute segments in between programming. Shortly after entering into a local marketing agreement with WCGV in 1994, WVTV was discontinued the 9 p.m. newscast. Duane Gay would then move on to WISN (Channel 12), where he continued on as a reporter, even after being diagnosed with a vicious form of soft tissue cancer in 1997; Gay would continue to work for Channel 12 in any capacity he physically could, and spoke well of his time at WVTV until he died on April 26, 2005.
The station resumed airing a newscast in August 2003 under the title of WB18 News at 9, a mix of local news from WVTV's facility, and Sinclair's News Central programming from its Baltimore, Maryland studios, with the local segments on weeknights anchored by Lisa Fielding, and Tami Hughes usually doing weekends. The program was reduced to a half-hour in September 2005 due to ratings concerns, and was eventually discontinued on March 31, 2006 due to cutbacks in Sinclair's news operations companywide. Fielding currently anchors and reports at various times on Chicago news radio station WBBM-AM (780), while Hughes is now on WITI as a general assignment reporter.
Though some rumors indicated Channel 18 would resume a newscast which would be produced by another station in the market, there has not been any interest by Milwaukee's Big Four network stations.
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