anchors Brenda Ladun and Linda Mays, sports anchor Mike Raita, and meteorologists James Spann and Mark Prater, all of whom had previously worked at rival WBRC during the latter years of its ABC affiliation, and former WVTM-TV news personalities Pam Huff and Tracy Haynes, who were later hired to anchor the station's morning newscasts. On September 11, 2006, the station moved its midday newscast to 11:00 a.m. and expanded it into an hour-long broadcast, as a result of the move of All My Children into the newscast's former timeslot. Although it is a recent entrant in the Birmingham ratings (even though WCFT and WJSU had already established news departments prior to becoming satellites of WBMA-LD), WBMA+'s newscasts have fared much better than those of other upstart news departments created following affiliation deals resulting from the Fox-New World agreement, especially considering WBMA+ is more dependent on cable and satellite than the market’s other major stations. Its news department quickly established itself as formidable competition to those of its rivals in the Birmingham market, differing from other stations that became Big Three affiliates resulting from affiliation switches spurred by Fox's acquisition of the NFL rights. Many of these fledgling newscasts have continued to place last in the ratings to this day. The station spent much of the late 1990s and 2000s in a spirited battle with WVTM for second place in the market behind longtime leader WBRC. In recent years, WBMA+ has regularly traded the runner-up spot in the market with a resurgent WIAT after viewership for WVTM's newscasts gradually dropped to fourth place following NBC's 2006 sale of the station to Media General. Much of the early success it achieved with its newscasts was due to the hirings of well-known talent as well as its extensive coverage of severe weather events affecting its viewing area. On January 31, 2010, WBMA+ became the third television news operation in the Birmingham-Tuscaloosa-Anniston market to begin broadcasting their local newscasts in high definition (after WVTM, which upgraded on October 17, 2007, and WBRC, which upgraded on October 26, 2009; WIAT upgraded to the format three months after WBMA+'s conversion, on April 9, 2010). On September 12, 2011, the station debuted an hour-long late-afternoon newscast, Focus @ 4:00, which replaced The Oprah Winfrey Show (which had been airing on WBMA+ from the assumption of the ABC affiliation until it ended its syndication run on September 9,