a branch studio there in 1956. It also launched a low-powered repeater on UHF channel 23 to serve the Kanawha Valley in 1995. While Charleston and its close-in suburbs receive the main WSAZ signal very well, it was marginal at best in much of the Kanawha Valley due to the area's rugged terrain. The translator was moved to channel 16 in 2003. News operation Largely because of its pioneering status in the state, WSAZ is one of the country's most dominant television stations. It has been the far-and-away market leader for most of the time since records have been kept, usually boasting some of the highest-rated newscasts in the country. WCHS and WOWK have rarely come close. The station came in a close second to WCHS for a short period in late 2009–early 2010 due to lower lead-in numbers originated by The Jay Leno Show. It is one of the few times in memory that WSAZ has lost any timeslot. WSAZ has since regained first place in all timeslots. In May 2012, WSAZ had the highest rated nightly news at 6:00 p.m. of any station in the top 100 television markets in the United States, with its 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. newscasts ranking number-two among the Top 100. The station has always devoted significant resources to its news department, resulting in a higher-quality product than conventional wisdom would suggest for what has always been a small-to-medium market. Since 1956, WSAZ's newscasts have featured two anchors, one based at the main studios in Huntington and the other in Charleston. NBC studied the format and used it as the basis for The Huntley-Brinkley Report anchored by Chet Huntley in New York City and David Brinkley in Washington, D.C. All of the big three networks have used this approach at one time or another since then. From 1995 to 2017, WSAZ used W16CE to provide viewers with a "split" newscast. Weeknights at 5:30, 6 and 11, the two anchors appeared together on screen until a certain point (usually 10–15 minutes into the newscast) when the show "split." For the last 20 minutes of the newscast, W16CE viewers and Suddenlink subscribers in the 28 counties of the Kanawha Valley saw a newscast targeted specifically to them. The main station's viewers, cable subscribers in the other 33 counties, and satellite viewers across the market, saw a newscast featuring coverage from Kentucky and Ohio as