CW-affiliated sister station KCWE (consisting of a two-hour weekday morning broadcast at 7 a.m., hour-long midday newscast at noon timeslot on weekdays and hour-long 9 p.m. newscast that airs seven nights a week). News department history During the late 1970s and into the 1980s, KMBC had the highest-rated local television newscasts in the Kansas City market. However, the station faced stiff competition during this period from KCTV, which ascended to first in late news with the success of main anchors Anne Peterson and Wendall Anschutz. In 1968, assignment reporter Larry Moore was appointed as the station's lead anchor; Moore's co-anchors during much of his tenure included Laurie Everett (1985–2001), Kelly Eckerman (2001–2013, as Moore's co-anchor on the 6 p.m. newscast) and Lara Moritz (2001–2011, as his co-anchor on the 10 p.m. newscast; Moore and Eckerman remain weekday evening co-anchors at the station as of 2016). Moore helmed KMBC's weekday evening newscasts in some capacity for 37 of his 41 years at KMBC-TV—with a four-year break from 1978 to 1983, while Moore took short-lived anchor jobs at ABC owned-and-operated station WLS-TV in Chicago and, later, CBS affiliate KPIX-TV in San Francisco—until his retirement from regular broadcasting on November 27, 2013, when he transitioned into an anchor emeritus role in which he contributed to special projects reports. In 1966, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson became the station's sports director, a post he would hold until his death in 2022. He stepped back from regular anchor duties in 2009, though he filled in when main anchors Len Jennings (weekdays) and Karen Kornacki (weekends) are on leave. Dawson, also anchored HBO's Inside the NFL from 1980 to 2001 and served as an analyst for NBC and the Chiefs' radio network. In December 1980, KMBC-TV hired Christine Craft to serve as co-anchor for its 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts. Although ratings for KMBC's newscasts had ascended to first place in the market during this time, a focus group recruited by station management to survey their opinion on its news product pilloried Craft—who was 36 at the time, five years older than her co-anchor Scott Feldman, then age 31—claiming that she was "too old, too unattractive and not deferential to men." Craft resigned from the station nine months later after rejecting a management-decided demotion to an assignment reporting position. She then filed a lawsuit against its then-owner Metromedia, accusing KMBC-TV management of both fraud and