newscast had inched up to second place and the 10 p.m. newscast into a tie for first. While KDBC-TV remained the news leader in El Paso, the three stations engaged in fierce competition throughout the 1980s for viewers. In 1988, KVIA-TV broke through and began a run as the number-one station in early and late evening news, and five years later, KDBC-TV anchor Estela Casas left that station to become the new main female anchor on KVIA's newscasts, joining channel 7 mainstay Gary Warner. However, the 1990s would eventually belong to a revitalized KTSM-TV in the news ratings. In 1991, several employees defected to channel 9, where they reunited with Richard Pearson, a former KVIA general manager who departed to head up KTSM radio and television. The two stations traded ratings wins for much of the decade, but by 1998, channel 9 had emerged as the clear leader in the market. The Casas–Warner tandem continued on the air until 2008, when Warner retired after a 34-year association with the station dating to 1974 (preceded by a year at KELP radio), only interrupted by a brief stint with CNN. By 2012, KVIA-TV had returned to being the news ratings leader in the market among English-language stations. Notable former on-air staff Tom Costello (now at NBC News) Patricio G. Espinoza (now at KXLN-DT in Houston) Indra Petersons (now with NBC News) Art Rascon (later with CBS News and at KTRK-TV in Houston) Technical information Subchannels The station's digital channel is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion KVIA-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, at 12:30 p.m. on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 17 to VHF channel 7 for post-transition operations. Due to reports of reception issues with its signal, KVIA was granted permission by the Federal Communications Commission to operate a secondary signal on its former UHF digital channel 17 under special temporary authorization on July 23, 2009. Tests were conducted of signal strength from the VHF and UHF transmitters. KVIA later filed a petition to the FCC to permanently operate its digital signal exclusively on UHF channel 17, which the commission approved in 2011. The license to operate on channel 17 was issued on October 10, 2014. Translators KVIA-TV maintains three translators that