the fast-paced news style was, according to him, "This looks like 'Headline News' gone local." The only on-air talent with longstanding roots in Birmingham was the two-person sports team of sports director Paul Finebaum and weekend sports anchor Sam Smith. Finebaum's established popularity from his highly opinionated column in the Birmingham Post-Herald and radio show on WERC (960 AM) sparked some interest from sports fans. However, his sportscasts were often seen as incomplete since he had only two minutes to convey the day's sports headlines and scores. Smith, the only holdover from the old WBMG, left the station after only a few months under the revamped news department. Even with the time constraints, WIAT was seen as making a more credible effort at news than ever before. Ratings for its newscasts increased immediately (the 10:00 p.m. newscast, in particular, had increased from a paltry 1/3 share in February 1997 to a 7 share in February 1998, partly due to having the Winter Olympics as a lead-in) but were still not enough to overtake the competition. Ratings also increased once Birmingham became a metered market, moving to 3 and 4 shares on most nights early in the fall of 1998. At that time, fellow CBS affiliate WNAL-TV in Gadsden – which did not create a news department of its own when it joined the network in September 1996 – entered into an agreement to air simulcasts of WBMG's newscasts, which aired on WNAL until it became an independent station in January 1999. Media General would later expand the Daily News format to fellow CBS affiliate WHLT in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. That same year, the station notched its first three Emmy Award nominations in its history, winning two; Keith Cate won "Best News Anchor", and the news department as a whole won for "Best Live Reporting". However, the station became embroiled in behind-the-scenes disputes with management and former on-air talent that were let go after Media General took over and Land decided to relaunch the news department; this led to a number of breach of contract, fraud and defamation of character and racial discrimination lawsuits against the station and/or Media General by former on-air and production employees, including former sports anchor Doug Bell and former longtime general manager Hoyle Broome (Land's direct predecessor, who had been with the then-WBMG since 1977), as well as a group of former African-American employees (calling themselves the