primary studio. The station moved into what was renamed "19 Broadcast Plaza" in December 1995; at the same time, it dropped its "19XIX" moniker used for a decade and became known as "Fox 19". Between 1992 and the launch of a morning newscast in 1996, WXIX-TV's staff swelled from 63 to 141 employees. In 1998, Raycom Media purchased Malrite Communications and its five stations, three of them in Ohio. Under Raycom, the station made a series of news expansions and analyzed leaving 19 Broadcast Plaza for a larger building that could be owned rather than leased. Sale to Gray Television On June 25, 2018, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced that it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets (consisting of Raycom's 63 existing owned-and/or-operated television stations, including WXIX-TV, and Gray's 93 television stations) under Gray's corporate umbrella in a cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion. The sale was approved on December 20 of that year and was completed on January 2, 2019. News operation While channel 19 studied the introduction of local news in 1978, began airing prime time news updates in 1985, and entertained expanding its news presence in 1989, it was not until the early 1990s that a full-on local newscast started at WXIX-TV. In 1993, Stu Powell of Chicago's WFLD hired that station's news director, Greg Caputo, to start a local newsroom for WXIX-TV. After a $2 million investment, WXIX's news department—the first new TV newsroom in Cincinnati since 1958—debuted on October 18, 1993. Initially, channel 19 produced a half-hour Ten O'Clock News and the short-lived Midnight News, an unusual attempt at a late-night local newscast; both programs were originally anchored by Jack Atherton and Phyllis Watson alongside chief meteorologist Rich Apuzzo and sports director Greg Hoard, the latter the only on-air talent poached from another station. In addition, Tricia Macke was brought on as a contributor—later going full-time after the station requested she stop her other modeling job—and Kevin Frazier, now the co-host of Entertainment Tonight, was the weekend sports anchor. After channel 19 moved into the former Stowe School, several expansions of news at WXIX were carried out. The first was the extension of the 10 p.m. news to a full hour in January 1996. That fall, 19 in the Morning, a three-hour morning news program, debuted. 19 News Midday, a half-hour at 11:30 a.m., followed in May 1997. Even