those plans had been put on hold due to the possibility of relocating its studio facilities. The station planned to begin producing its newscasts in widescreen standard definition as early as July 2009. With the launch of the Hawaii News Now operation on October 26, 2009, KGMB began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. KGMB and KHNL began to jointly produce and simulcast weeknight 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts, while KHNL moved its 6 p.m. newscast to 5:30. KGMB continues to have its own weeknight 6 p.m. newscast. The only times when KGMB and KHNL do not simulcast news programming are on weekdays during the 7 a.m. hour when KHNL airs NBC's Today, at 5:30 p.m. when KGMB airs the CBS Evening News and at 6 p.m. when KHNL airs NBC Nightly News. Weekday morning and weekend shows are simulcast on the two stations but are subject to preemption on one of the stations due to network obligations. The local news schedule on KFVE remains unchanged. There is no weekday midday news on either station. While the merged operation is based at KHNL's old studio, most of the on-air personalities are holdovers from KGMB; all but four of KHNL's reporters were fired after the merger. Notable former on-air staff Larry Beil – sports anchor (formerly at ESPN, now at KGO-TV in San Francisco) Carter Evans (now Los Angeles correspondent for CBS News) Neil Everett – sports anchor (now at ESPN) Russ Francis – sports anchor Joe Moore – sports anchor (now at KHON-TV) Technical information Subchannels The station's digital signal is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion KGMB discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, on January 15, 2009, the date in which full-power television stations in Hawaii transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts (almost five months earlier than the June 12 transition date for stations on the U.S. mainland). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 23, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 9. Following the channel swap with KFVE, the station's digital channel switched to UHF channel 23 and its virtual channel to 5. At the same time, KGMD's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 8 to its former analog-era VHF channel 9, while KGMV's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 24 (using its former analog channel 3 as its virtual