mid-1980s, airing during the station's syndicated programming. The station also produced a sports discussion program called the Hometown Sports Page during its latter years as an independent in the early 1990s. WGNO began developing a full-scale news department shortly after taking the ABC affiliation; the news department launched on March 18, 1996, with the debut of half-hour newscasts at 5:00 p.m. each weeknight and seven nights a week at 10:00 p.m. The station added an additional half-hour early evening newscast at 6:00 p.m. on September 21, 1998 (prior to that point, the station continued to air syndicated programming during the 6:00 p.m. half-hour). During the mid-to-late 2000s, the station was known for its "Wheel of Justice" series, which featured a bounty hunter named Tat-2, capturing local criminals with arrest warrants. On May 1, 2006, WGNO began producing a half-hour prime time newscast at 9:00 p.m. weeknights for WNOL, designed as a competitor to the longer established hour-long newscast on Fox affiliate WVUE that had been airing in that same timeslot since the 1996 switch; the program ended on June 4, 2010, due to declining ratings (three days later on June 7, WNOL moved The CW's prime time schedule from the recommended 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. slot for the network's Central Time Zone affiliates, to 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. on tape delay). For many years after joining ABC, WGNO had the distinction of being one of the largest major network affiliates by market size that did not produce a weekday morning or midday newscast; this changed on September 8, 2008, when the station debuted a half-hour newscast at 11:00 a.m.; this was followed on September 29 by the launch of a two-hour morning newscast, Good Morning New Orleans, running from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m. On April 20, 2009, WGNO moved its 6:00 p.m. newscast to the 6:30 timeslot, in order to reach viewers whose work commutes prevented them from arriving home in time to watch a 6:00 p.m. newscast; syndicated programming filled the program's former timeslot. The program did not attract significant viewership, and fell to last place in the evening news ratings within a year of its launch; the following year, the station reinstated its 6:00 p.m. newscast, creating the New Orleans market's only hour-long news block during that hour. On January 31, 2011, WGNO reformatted the 6:00 p.m. newscast as News with a Twist, a newsmagazine format that focuses