a news department under Tribune ownership later in the 1990s as part of corporate efforts to launch in-house newscasts on the group's WB network affiliates, similar to commitments made by those of the Fox network earlier in the decade. In January 1999, the station began producing a half-hour prime time newscast at 9:00 p.m. on weeknights, the WB 33 News @ Nine. It was first anchored by Patrick Greenlaw and Crystal Thornton, alongside chief meteorologist Steve LaNore and sports director Bob Irzyk. The program was expanded to seven days a week, including Saturdays and Sundays, one year later in January 2000, with Dawn Tongish appointed as the program's weekend anchor; the Monday through Friday editions were then expanded to a full hour the year after that in January 2001, with the weekend newscasts following suit by 2003. The KDAF 9:00 p.m. newscast continually placed a distant second behind KDFW's established hour-long prime time newscast, which had grown to become the ratings leader in that time slot since its debut in mid-1995 upon that station's switch to Fox; in May 2001, it drew half the viewers of the KDFW offering. In late February 2009, anchors Tom Crespo and Terri Chappell–who had served as main anchors of the program since 2004 and 2003, respectively–were replaced on the weeknight newscasts by existing general assignment reporter Amanda Salinas (later Fitzpatrick) and Walt Maciborski, who joined from WFTS-TV in Tampa. On September 21, 2009, KDAF debuted a nightly half-hour newscast at 5:30 pm, also anchored by Salinas and Maciborski; this later moved to 5pm. On October 31, 2011, KDAF began airing the Tribune-distributed morning news program EyeOpener, which had originally premiered six months earlier on May 9 as a test concept on Houston sister station KIAH. Initially airing only on weekday mornings (for three hours starting at 5:00 am), before expanding to include hour-long weekend editions in April 2015, the program's hybrid format was billed as a "provocative and unpredictable" combination of daily news, lifestyle, entertainment, and opinion segments. The program's national segments were produced at KDAF. Tribune gradually began syndicating the program to some of its other CW and independent stations as well as a non-Tribune station in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, all of which provided local news and weather segments during the program. During the summer of 2012, KDAF's news department underwent a series of staff departures: following ratings declines during his tenure,