upgrade its newscasts to HD on July 19, 2008. On October 26 of that year, several changes occurred to WZVN and WBBH's news programming in order to better compete with WINK-TV. WZVN dropped the first hour of its weekday morning newscast (as of 2012, that hour has since been restored) and a mid-morning newscast at 10 a.m. WBBH debuted a new hour-long midday broadcast at 11 a.m. while keeping its hour-long noon newscast. Meanwhile, WZVN added an hour-long weekday morning newscast at 9 a.m. On September 8, 2009, the station began producing a half-hour 7 p.m. newscast on weeknights to compete against WINK-TV's newscast airing in the same timeslot. On January 16, 2012, WZVN debuted an hour-long newscast at 5 p.m. weeknights, which incidentally directly competes with WBBH's own 5 p.m. newscast. In October 2014, WBBH moved into a brand new newsroom and studio facility, located behind the old facility. The NBC 2 newsroom backs up to the studio and a wall can be opened to show the working newsroom. This was done to give NBC 2 more room, because it produces more newscasts. As of May 2017, WBBH News has been led by Vice President News Darrel Lieze-Adams for 20 years, making him one of the longest serving news directors at a single station. Notable former on-air staff Gene Lavanchy (now at WFXT in Boston) John Muller (now at WPIX in New York) Shepard Smith (was at Fox News Channel until October 11, 2019; now at CNBC) Ukee Washington (now at KYW-TV in Philadelphia) Technical information Subchannels The station's digital signal is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion On October 31, 2002, WBBH-TV became the second station in the market to begin broadcasting a high definition digital signal. In September 2006, WBBH began offering NBC Weather Plus on a new second digital subchannel. In December 2008, after the national service folded, WBBH-DT2 switched formats and became a 24-hour local news and weather channel with branding "NBC 2 News Now". In May 2017, WBBH added Heroes & Icons to its DT2 subchannel. "NBC 2 News Now" now only airs weekdays from 7-8 a.m. and 12-1 p.m. while H&I airs at all other times. WBBH-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 20, on February 17, 2009, the original date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which