then acquired KNXV's former building in 2001, allowing it to start producing its own local newscasts. (KDRX's first local news program was also produced at channel 15.) Scripps opted to centralize its advertising traffic operation at hubs in Phoenix and Tampa in 2009, choosing Phoenix as one of its westernmost properties at the time, allowing the traffic hub to stay open later. On July 27, 2007, two news helicopters leased to KNXV and KTVK collided while covering a police pursuit in downtown Phoenix. All four people on both helicopters were killed, including KNXV pilot Craig Smith and photographer Rick Krolak. KNXV-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 15, at 12:01 a.m. on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. At 2 a.m. on that date, the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 56, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era UHF channel 15. Scripps has since expanded its operations in Phoenix and the state. Its 2015 acquisition of Journal Communications included KGUN-TV and KWBA-TV, the ABC and CW affiliates in Tucson. On March 20, 2019, Scripps announced that it would acquire Phoenix's affiliate of The CW, KASW, and seven other stations from Nexstar Media Group as part of that company's proposed acquisition of Tribune Media. This would create a new duopoly between KNXV and KASW, the third in the Phoenix market after Fox Television Stations' KSAZ-TV/KUTP and Meredith Corporation's KPHO-TV/KTVK. The sale was approved by the FCC on September 16 and was completed on September 19, 2019. Local programming News operation In 1993, Scripps announced that it would start a local newscast for KNXV in 1994. It had already started a 9 p.m. local newscast for one of its other Fox affiliates, KSHB-TV in Kansas City, and the proposed newscast was intended to be unconventional to match the target demographic of Fox network programming. A news director had been hired in September 1993; the set was already under construction; and anchors and staff had reported to Phoenix in the first weeks of May 1994. However, the New World deal and consequent affiliation switch arrived late in the development of the newscast and forced a rethink of the product to go out