to a smaller company, aging of its news team, and general programming mistakes) at WKBW-TV in the mid-1990s. Most notably, it snagged local rights to The Oprah Winfrey Show from WKBW-TV in 1995. By 2000, after the retirement of WKBW-TV's longtime anchorman Irv Weinstein and weather anchor Tom Jolls – the last of the traditional "Irv, Rick and Tom" team at channel 7 – and Nielsen's adoption of market metering in Buffalo at the same time, WIVB-TV had taken over the number-one spot for the first time in over a quarter century. It remained number one for the next decade until a series of budget cuts, a retransmission consent dispute with Time Warner Cable, and the slow response to replace departing news anchors pushed most of its newscasts to second, behind WGRZ, who has since also come under ownership of a major national media company. By 2013, WIVB-TV, despite producing the most hours of news content, had the smallest news staff of any of the three stations in the market, after WKBW-TV went on a hiring spree to boost its staff. WIVB has long been considered to favor older viewers, even dating back to the 1970s when its rivals were promoting flashier, more sensational approaches to the news. Jacquie Walker, the station's lead co-anchor, has been with the station since 1984, the longest continuous run of any news anchor in the history of Buffalo television. The station frequently places significant emphasis on its weather operation. Don Paul spent nearly 30 years as WIVB's chief meteorologist before he was pushed into retirement in 2016; after a stint at WKBW, Nexstar reversed its decision and invited Paul back in a part-time position. The station's current chief meteorologist is Todd Santos, a former personality on The Weather Channel and NBC Weather Plus; another prominent meteorologist on the staff is Mike Cejka, who has been with WIVB since 1983. The station has also typically differed in its approach to hiring meteorologists in that none of them are Western New York natives (whereas WKBW and WGRZ hired mostly local personalities); Kaylee Wendt, the last meteorologist to have lived in western New York before arriving at WIVB, left the station in February 2019. The news operation at WIVB-TV has historically favored a straight newscast, as opposed to the more activist approach of WGRZ (WIVB-TV highlighted this in an advertising campaign in the mid-2000s, when it used