during its four-year tenure without a news department from 2002 to 2006) after that station signed on in 1983 as KLDH. In 1972, WIBW-TV acquired the first live weather radar in the Topeka market for broadcasting use. The station was also the first to bring several news-gathering and technical innovations in the market: it was the first television station to use microwave LNC live trucks (in 1982), and is the only Topeka station with a live truck for electronic news-gathering (having acquired such a vehicle in 1989). The station is noted for its coverage of a destructive EF5 tornado that killed 16 people and injured 450 others as it tracked northeast across Topeka on the early evening of June 8, 1966. A then-unknown Bill Kurtis – at the time, a 26-year-old balancing duties as a reporter for WIBW-TV while also a law student at Washburn University – wanted to get a message across to viewers watching the station's storm coverage to take shelter from the impending twister before it struck their particular area; ultimately, he advised viewers to get to safety by urging in a calm but stern manner, "for God's sake, take cover!" Channel 13 provided 24 consecutive hours of coverage beginning when the tornado struck Topeka, later transitioning to coverage of the storm's aftermath. In the days after the tornado hit the city, the station was flooded with viewer letters thanking Kurtis and channel 13 for the urgent warning. On November 11, 1998, WIBW announced that it would cancel its noon newscast (known for most of its history as Midday in Kansas) due to unspecified economic conditions, replacing the program with Martha Stewart Living; the move to cancel the program (at the time and presently, the only midday newscast among the Topeka market's television stations) after the November 25 broadcast, which would have resulted in the layoffs of 12 staffers, resulted in viewer letters protesting the move to convince then-WIBW vice president/general manager Gary Sotir "get creative" to save the highly rated program, which received its highest viewership among farmers and senior citizens, leading the station to reverse course on the decision. WIBW (along with former ABC-affiliated sister station KAKE-TV in Wichita) was one of two partners in Kansas Now 22, a cable channel available on fellow partner Cox Communications' systems throughout Kansas. WIBW and KAKE each produced five-minute pre-recorded news segments that ran on the channel in