September 2013, placing it in direct competition with a half-hour newscast in that slot on KSLA). On October 15, 2008, KTBS began broadcasting its newscasts in 16:9 widescreen standard definition. On June 28, 2010, KTBS expanded its 6:00 p.m. newscast to one hour, becoming the first station in the market to carry an hour-long 6:00 p.m. newscast (CBS affiliate KSLA began broadcasting an hour-long 6:00 p.m. newscast a short time later); as a result, KTAL is the only Big Three affiliate in the market to carry syndicated programming during the 6:30 half-hour. In July 2010, KTBS expanded the weekend edition of its 10:00 p.m. newscast to one hour (again, KSLA quickly followed suit with an hour-long newscast at 10:00 p.m. on weekends). On August 30, 2010, KTBS expanded its weekday morning newscasts to 2½ hours, by moving its start time to 4:30 a.m. (one of the few stations in a non-Top 50 Nielsen market to begin their weekday morning newscast at 4:30). On October 14, 2010, beginning with the station's 5:00 p.m. newscast, KTBS became the first television station in the Shreveport–Texarkana market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (rival KSLA began producing its news programming in high definition the next morning). In December 2012, KTBS became ensnared over the controversial firing of meteorologist Rhonda Lee. The station claims that she (and another newscaster) were fired for violating the station's policy on responding to Facebook comments, while supporters of Lee claim that she was fired for her decision to respond to a racist and sexist comment. On August 22, 2016, KTBS began producing an hour-long weekday afternoon newscast at 4:00 p.m. for KPXJ (titled KTBS 3 News at 4:00 on KPXJ 21), making it the first television station in the market to offer a local newscast to air in that timeslot. (The program would soon gain a competitor when KSLA launched its own hour-long 4:00 p.m. newscast two weeks later on September 7.) Technical information Subchannels The station's digital signal is multiplexed: As part of the deployment of ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) in Shreveport on June 28, KPXJ was converted to 3.0 service, airing subchannels 3.1 through 3.3 and 21.1. In exchange, all four of KPXJ's subchannels moved to the KTBS-TV multiplex for continued ATSC 1.0 broadcast, for a total of eight. Analog-to-digital conversion KTBS-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, on