1994 and 1996. The existing 10 p.m. newscast was moved one hour earlier to 9 p.m. and was expanded to one hour; however, ten months later in October 1996, it was split into separate half-hour newscasts at 9 and 10 p.m., with off-network syndicated sitcoms filling the 9:30 p.m. timeslot. This scheduling for the late evening newscasts continued until 2001, when the weeknight 9 p.m. newscast reverted to an hour-long broadcast, and the 10 p.m. newscast was dropped for a second time due to the lack of a strong program lead-in. Even after the weeknight broadcast expanded to one hour, atypical for most Fox stations that produce their newscasts in-house, the Saturday and Sunday editions of WVUE's 9 p.m. newscast remained a half-hour in length; until those editions were expanded to one hour in 2012, WVUE had been among the largest Fox affiliates by market size to air its prime time newscast in such a fashion. Even after becoming a Fox affiliate, the station did not carry a newscast on weekday mornings throughout the 1990s; this changed in 2002, when WVUE debuted what was originally a two-hour morning newscast, airing from 6 to 8 a.m. (which by 2005, expanded to three hours with the addition of an 8 a.m. hour of the broadcast). In 2005, WVUE canceled its weeknight 6 p.m. newscast and expanded its 5 p.m. newscast to one hour; this was in concert with the station's acquisition of the popular Sony-distributed game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, which the station chose to air together in an hour-long block during the 6:00 hour (news-producing stations in the Eastern and Pacific time zones commonly schedule syndicated programs such as Jeopardy! and Wheel in the hour before network prime time, 7 to 8 p.m. in those areas, though this is not very common with such stations in the Central and Mountain time zones). WVUE's news ratings slowly increased throughout the 2000s (particularly following the station's purchase by the Louisiana Media Company). By the middle of the decade, the station overtook WDSU for the #2 position in the local news ratings, placing behind WWL-TV in the 5 p.m. timeslot. The station remained in second place through 2008 and a see-saw period followed. In May 2011, the station again ranked third in the 5 p.m. time period. The station has consistently ranked third among the market's morning and afternoon newscasts with three