News operation
WCPO-TV presently broadcasts 43 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday and four hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). In recent years, WCPO and WKRC have been battling each other for first place in local news viewership, while NBC affiliate WLWT (channel 5) has been lagging behind in third or fourth place. Typically, WCPO leads the evening news race, while WKRC-TV leads in mornings and late evenings. Even after the affiliation switch in 1996 involving two of the strongest affiliates of their respective networks at the time, both stations have remained among the strongest affiliates of their current respective networks.
WCPO lacked a dedicated news department until 1959. Al Schottelkotte, a longtime columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer (which was then owned by Scripps along with the Post), joined the station as its first news director and anchorman—a post he held until 1986. Within a year, WCPO was the undisputed local news leader in the Cincinnati market, and remained the top-rated station for over 20 years. Partly because of his influence, the CBS Evening News was not cleared by WCPO for most of Walter Cronkite's tenure; Schottelkotte criticized the program for mostly focusing on world events and believed it "hardly covered anything west of Washington", adding: Everything you saw [on CBS' newscast] was an epic from Timbuktu. I was not interested in having the people of Cincinnati waste their time with that kind of news.[20]
Consumer reporter John Matarese's reports have been syndicated to nine other stations, five of which are Scripps-owned, since 2003. However, as of October 12, 2010, Matarese's consumer reports have been aired on eleven other stations, the majority of which are Scripps owned.[21]
WCPO began broadcasting its local newscasts in high-definition on August 19, 2007, beginning with the 6 p.m. newscast. Improvements around the station included upgraded weather graphics that match WCPO's upgraded graphics, new panel displays on set (to replace rear-projection CRT monitors on set and old plasma displays with obvious burn-in) and Scripps purchasing JVC HDPro equipment for WCPO.[22] In the summer of 2009, WCPO upgraded its field cameras to provide high definition video.
In December 2009, WCPO reached an agreement with local Fox affiliate WXIX-TV (channel 19) to pool videographers at press conferences.[23]
On October 1, 2012, WCPO-TV debuted the new Scripps-mandated standardized graphics and music package ("Inergy" by Stephen Arnold).
On February 3, 2020, WCPO debuted a new logo and an updated Scripps-mandated graphics and music package, while at the same time dropping the 9 On Your Side moniker in favor of simply WCPO 9 News.
9 First Warning Weather
Cincinnati's television stations have used their weather coverage as a selling point, especially since the Montgomery/Blue Ash tornado of 1999. WCPO brands its radars as "9 First Warning Doppler", "VIPIR 9" and "TrueView". The station runs its own radar located in Batavia, which has an average refresh time of ten seconds.
On July 1, 2003, WCPO began to operate a second Doppler weather radar out of the Clermont County Airport in Batavia. In combination with the radar located at WCPO's transmission tower site, both radars were named "Ultimate Doppler Radar", though the transmitter dome was eventually put out of service. The new radar operates at a height of 100 ft with its base 834 ft above sea level. Attenuation at the site leaves a radius around the radar blank.
In July 2007, WCPO launched a radar system with satellite imagery to allow fine street-level detail of weather events to specific locations. The TrueView system allows for local and nationwide radar sweeps. National Weather Service NEXRAD radars in Wilmington, Ohio (which covers Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus from a central point, as is done in several areas of the country with multiple major cities), Indianapolis and Louisville are used to provide full-market coverage of severe weather events. The VIPIR 9 technology also utilizes the NEXRAD radars and 9 First Warning Doppler to create its 3D images.
