news director David Duitch left the station in July to become website editor for The Dallas Morning News; that August saw the departures of chief meteorologist Bob Goosmann and sports reporter Chase Williams, the resignation of reporter Giselle Phelps and Walt MacIborski's departure for Fox-affiliated sister station WXIN in Indianapolis. On August 16 of that year, EyeOpener senior producer Larissa Hall was promoted to a director of content position to oversee the newscasts. Nightcap On September 4, 2012, KDAF management announced in a meeting with station staff that it would adopt a format similar to EyeOpener for the 5:00 and 9:00 pm newscasts, in order to reduce production and operation costs for the news department and to make the broadcast profitable. The evening newscasts were revamped under the Nightcap concept on November 1, 2012; the program made use of multimedia journalists (which require a single person to film, edit and report news stories) and incorporated humor within most of its story content, except for news items and feature pieces that warranted a more serious tone. New staff members were hired to anchor and report for the newscasts, while about half of the newsroom staff (including several employees that were with KDAF since the current news department's inception in 1999) were laid off. Even with the format switch, KDAF remained in last place among Dallas–Fort Worth's news-producing English-language stations, with viewership having declined to the point of registering "hashmarks" (indicating viewership too low to register a ratings point) on some nights during the initial switch to the Nightcap format. Ratings slowly increased over the next year-and-a-half while the format was instituted, particularly in the key age demographic of adults 25–54. Larissa Hall, who oversaw Nightcap's launch as KDAF's director of content, left the station at the end of 2012, shifting to other duties within the Tribune corporate umbrella and giving Nightcap only partial oversight. NewsFix and Morning Dose In November 2013, KDAF hired Steve Simon (a former weekend anchor-turned-producer at KIAH) as its news director. While in Houston, Simon helped launch NewsFix, a stylized news format that first launched in March 2011 on KIAH and de-emphasized on-camera anchors and reporters, using only an off-camera narrator for continuity and requiring fewer staff than most news programs. Many on-air members of the KDAF news staff departed in the months prior to the format change, including longtime reporter Barry Carpenter and anchor Amanda Fitzpatrick,