Newscasts
Currently, WWOR-TV and sister station WNYW both operate news departments that are technically separate. However, the two stations share a fairly significant amount in regards to news coverage, including the use of reporters, with some staffers having switched from one station to the other. Both stations maintain their own primary on-air personalities (such as news anchors and reporters) that only appear on one station. WWOR operates its news department from the station's Secaucus studios, while WNYW runs theirs from the Fox Television Center in Manhattan, allowing the two stations to maintain their own on-air identities and offer individual local news programs simultaneously, as opposed to the model of most television station duopolies.
As most of New York's independent stations were during the 1960s and 1970s, WOR-TV was a very minor player in the area of local news. Before 1971, the station did not carry any live news programming, but had an early morning audio-only newscast read by the duty staff announcer over the station logo. Then in 1971, WOR-TV launched its first live newscast, News at Noon, which was also the first midday newscast from any New York station and would be so until WPIX attempted a local broadcast at 12:30 p.m. in 1981. In 1983, following the move to New Jersey, channel 9 launched News 9: Primetime, which aired nightly at 8:00 p.m. After the MCA takeover in 1987, the 8:00 newscast was moved to the later time period of 10:00 p.m., and expanded to an hour. The Noon program, which was later merged into 9 Broadcast Plaza, ended in 1993 and was replaced with syndicated programming.
Despite the presence of its sister station WNYW's long-running and successful news program at 10:00 p.m., WWOR was able to compete at 10:00 simply because both stations use separate studios. The WWOR newscast also has a larger focus on New Jersey issues, a condition the station has adhered to since its license was transferred from New York City to Secaucus.
On July 13, 2009, the 10:00 p.m. newscast was moved to 11:00 p.m. and was shortened to 30 minutes due to budget cuts. In addition, weekend newscasts and a Sunday night sports highlight program were eliminated. On June 27, 2011, WWOR returned the newscast to its previous 10 p.m. timeslot; the newscast, renamed The 10 O'Clock News, will remain a half-hour in length and air on weeknights only.
In areas of central New Jersey where the New York and Philadelphia markets overlap, both WWOR and WNYW share resources with their Philadelphia sister station WTXF-TV. The stations share reporters for stories occurring in New Jersey counties served by both markets.
WWOR was the only English-language network owned-and-operated station (O&O) that had in-house news operations still producing local newscasts entirely in 4:3 standard definition until September 10, 2012, when it finally upgraded the production to high definition. Before the switch to HD, it was one of only three remaining English-language stations with in-house news departments in the top 20 Nielsen markets airing their local newscasts in standard definition; the other two are fellow MyNetworkTV affiliate KRON-TV in San Francisco, California and ABC affiliate KOMO-TV in Seattle, Washington (both of which air their newscasts in 16:9 widescreen).
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