features (formatted similarly to that of Chicago sister station WGN-TV's morning newscast). On July 12, 2009, KFOR became the first station in the Oklahoma City market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition; the KAUT broadcasts were included in the upgrade, and were converted to HD on July 14. With the rebranding as "Freedom 43" in April 2012 (at which time the 9:00 newscast was retitled Freedom 43 News), production of KAUT's newscasts moved from KFOR's main news set to a secondary set—which was designed to resemble army barracks—at the Britton Road facility formerly shared by the two stations; the station also incorporated feature reports focused on Oklahoma's military community during its evening newscasts. KAUT moved production of the 9:00 p.m. newscast to KFOR's main news set in November 2016, when the program was reformatted as a more conventional prime time newscast (eventually restoring the NewsChannel 4 branding to the evening newscast in February 2017, and moving production of the broadcast to a section of KFOR's main news set after KFOR/KAUT moved to the duopoly's current Britton Road facility in August of that year). Local program hosts Flash Point Kevin Ogle – moderator; also reporter and fill-in anchor Todd Lamb – political commentator/Flash Point panelist Mike Turpen – political analyst/Flash Point panelist Notable former on-air news staff Bob Barry Jr. – sports director (1980–1981 and 2006–2015; deceased) Linda Cavanaugh – anchor/reporter (2006–2017) Technical information Subchannels The station's digital signal is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion and spectrum repack KAUT-TV launched a digital signal on UHF channel 40 in June 2005. The station originally planned to transmit on UHF channel 42 by the May 1, 2002 deadline for full-power television stations to sign on a digital signal; however, the assignment had also been given to then-fellow UPN affiliate KTFO (now KMYT-TV) in Tulsa, which led then-KAUT owner Viacom Television Stations Group to apply to relocate its digital channel assignment to UHF 40 in order to prevent co-channel interference with KTFO's digital feed. KAUT discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 43, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 40, using PSIP to display KAUT-TV's virtual channel as 43 on digital television receivers. As a part of the broadcast frequency repacking process following the 2016–2017 FCC incentive auction, KAUT-TV relocated