segments seen on KCTV's evening newscasts seven nights a week, as well as sports specials and Kansas City Chiefs-related programs produced for the station. Sports anchors William Jackson and Leif Lisec and sports reporter Neal Jones were terminated by KCTV after sports production transferred to Metro Sports on February 9, 2004. Though Kirk Black cited research that indicated that most news viewers were not interested in sports, the move was criticized by many local sports radio hosts, who thought that Black's decision to shutter the sports department showed his lack of understanding the market's rabid sports fanbase, and by the station's union, as the non-union Metro Sports replaced KCTV's own employees. The Metro Sports arrangement ended in 2009 and was supplanted by a deal with Kansas City sports radio station WHB. The outsourcing of sports ended in 2010, when KCTV reestablished a sports department by hiring Lawrence, Kansas, native Michael Coleman as sports director; he remained at the station until 2017. The station's change in direction saw several additional talent exits, and newsroom turnover was heavy. In addition to veterans Stan Cramer, Anschutz, and others who were among 170 company employees to take voluntary retirement packages in 2001, several veteran reporters, including 23-year employee Reed Black and 29-year reporter Geri Gosa, departed in 2002; while anchor Russell Kinsaul had his contract not renewed in 2004 and was hired at KMOV in St. Louis, KCTV saw its news ratings increase. There were also controversies around the newsroom, some caused by the station's investigative reports. A series of reports conducted in partnership with Perverted Justice in the style of the later NBC series To Catch a Predator created legals issues: of the 16 people lured by KCTV's sting, none could be arrested, but three filed defamation complaints and another sued Meredith and Perverted Justice alleging entrapment. The Columbia Journalism Review chided reporter Dave Helling for a 2004 report in which he misrepresented the type of ammonium nitrate he bought in a report about illegal sales of the fertilizer in Kansas, KCTV was enjoined by Kansas courts from using information it had obtained about patients of a plastic surgeon in Mission Hills, Kansas, who had discarded a computer containing private patient data only for it to be found by a scavenger and the data turned over to the station; however, it did broadcast a report featuring one anonymous patient, and the doctor faced