WBRC-FM. Several members of the news department staff in its early years started at WBRC radio including news anchors Harry Mabry and Joe Langston (the latter of whom would also take on a management role as its director of news and editorial policy in 1969), and sports anchor Tom York. In 1969, former WSGN radio anchor Bill Bolen joined WBRC to replace Harry Mabry as the station's main news anchor; Bolen would remain a fixture at channel 6 (eventually becoming anchor of the station's weekday morning newscast in 1990) for 42 years until his retirement in 2010. In 1978, WBRC became the first television station in the Birmingham market to acquire a microwave truck for electronic news-gathering purposes, and became the first to provide live breaking news coverage on-scene. The station would not begin producing half-hour evening newscasts until 1979, eleven years after ABC expanded its national evening newscast to 30 minutes. Station management declined ABC's insistence that WBRC expand its 6:00 p.m. newscast to match the length of the ABC Evening News; however, the 15-minute local newscast beat The Huntley-Brinkley Report on WAPI-TV/WVTM and the CBS Evening News on WBMG in the ratings. In 1979, channel 6 became the first television station in Alabama to acquire a helicopter for newsgathering, "Chopper 6". In 1983, Bev Montgomery made history as the first African American to anchor a newscast in the Birmingham market when he was appointed anchor of the station's weekend evening newscasts. In 1988, the station acquired satellite news-gathering vehicles, "Skylink 6", to conduct and beam live remote footage transmitted to the studio via satellite. After WBRC became a Fox station in September 1996, the station shifted its programming focus heavily towards local news, increasing its output from about 25 hours a week to around 40 hours. The station retained all of the newscasts that existed during its final years as an ABC affiliate, but expanded its weekday morning newscast from one to three hours (with the addition of a two-hour extension, known for most of its run as Good Day Alabama, from 7:00 to 9:00 am), and bridged the separate 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. newscasts on Monday through Friday nights to form a 90-minute early-evening news block (by adding a half-hour newscast at 5:30). Channel 6 also launched a prime time newscast at 9:00 p.m. to compensate for the lack of prime time programming provided by Fox during