hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 11½ hours each weekday, four hours on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays, and five hours of Real Milwaukee on each weekday; this does not count 90 minutes of news replays in overnights); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest newscast output among Milwaukee's broadcast television stations, and in the state of Wisconsin overall. In addition, the station produces the Fox 6 Blitz, a Green Bay Packers wrap-up program that airs Sundays during the NFL season at 10:35 p.m. and also serves as a post-game show following Milwaukee Brewers Fox broadcasts. In 2018 and 2019, to tie into high-profile Packer games ending in prime time Sunday nights, the station delayed The Simpsons to air in late night to carry extended local postgame coverage. The practice was temporarily suspended in the 2020 and 2021 seasons due to the league's COVID media restrictions making a live postgame from the game site impossible and resumed in 2022. WITI's newscasts overall have typically finished in third place, behind WTMJ-TV and WISN-TV, although, in the main demographic ratings that advertisers use, the three stations are much closer with any three placing first in selected newscast, and like most Fox affiliate newscasts in prime time, the 9 p.m. newscasts often can outrate the 10 p.m. newscasts on Milwaukee's other three stations, along with WITI (in addition to the 9 p.m. shows from WDJT on WMLW-TV, and WISN's newscast on their True Crime Network subchannel). The station's morning newscast, Fox 6 Wake Up News, usually places first in the 4:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. time period against the national morning programs airing on WTMJ, WISN and WDJT during the 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. slot, whereas WITI's newscast serves as a local alternative to those programs; it competes with a WDJT-produced newscast on WMLW-TV. News department history Channel 6's news department began with the launch of the station in 1956, its newscast was then known as Milwaukee Newsreel. When WITI became a Fox affiliate in 1994, the station adopted a news-intensive schedule, increasing its news programming output from about 25 hours a week to nearly 45 hours. It maintained a news schedule similar to its latter days as a CBS affiliate. All of its existing newscasts were retained. However, it expanded its weekday morning newscast from two hours to three (with an