WKMG-TV

WKMG-TV presently broadcasts 44 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 7½ hours each weekday, three hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays). From the late 1980s until 2001, the station was almost always in last place in the ratings. At the same time, WESH and WFTV battled for first place in the Orlando market, and basically continued to do so into the early 2000s; however, in the past few years, WFTV has become the dominant station (though channel 6 claimed first place at 11 p.m. in the May 2006 ratings period). Management changes at WKMG had a number of general managers on the treadmill with Mike Schweitzer, Kathleen Keefe, Jeff Sales and Henry Maldonado all taking a turn at the top. News and sales departments had similar turnover, with at least five news directors taking the chair between 2000 and 2008.

Currently, despite the strength of CBS prime time programming, WKMG has been trading second and third place with WESH in the evening newscast ratings except at 11 p.m., where until recently it waged a spirited battle with WFTV for first. From late 2007 to March 2009, WKMG's 11 p.m. newscast was in second place behind WFTV. Continuing its ratings slide, the May 2009 sweeps found WKMG's newscasts finishing in third place in all timeslots, behind WFTV and WESH. In fact, despite being number one in prime time WKMG's late night newscast has failed to hold on to its lead-in audience for the most part. The siphoning off in news audience share appears to have held in the November 2009 sweeps period, when WKMG remained in a distant third place weekday evenings while its morning and late night newscasts improved slightly although still in a distant second place.

In 2008, WKMG-TV began broadcasting its local newscasts in widescreen standard definition. On May 1, 2009, the station's 4, 5 and 5:30 p.m. newscasts were dropped, with the 5-6 p.m. news block replaced by Dr. Phil, which had aired in the 5 p.m. slot to compete against newscasts on WFTV, WESH and WOFL, and a new hour-long newscast at 6:00 debuted. It was the market's first and only full hour of news at 6 p.m. and pushed the CBS Evening News to 7 p.m. However, on January 3, 2011, the Evening News returned to the 6:30 half-hour, and a new half-hour 7 p.m. newscast took its place. In September 2011, WKMG relaunched a half-hour 5 p.m. newscast, with syndicated entertainment newsmagazine The Insider following it at 5:30 p.m., replacing Dr. Phil which ended up moving to WOFL.[7]

For the February 2012 sweeps period, WKMG took first place in the 25-to-54 demographic at 11 p.m., beating WESH by 5,000 viewers and WFTV by 5,700 viewers.[8] On June 2, 2012, WKMG became the last major television station in the Orlando market, as well as the last Post-Newsweek owned station, to upgrade its newscasts to full high definition.

On August 28, 2015, WKMG dropped the "Local" branding from their name and began calling themselves News 6. On September 7, 2015, WKMG relaunched their 4 p.m. newscast with Julie Broughton as anchor.

On April 6, 2020, WKMG began its expanded weekday morning newscast with an extra half-hour starting at 4:30 a.m., thus becoming the last of the four major television stations in the market to start in that same time slot.

• Lisa Colagrossi (later worked at WABC-TV in New York City; deceased)
• Mark McEwen (formerly of CBS News, later with Black News Channel)
• Trace Gallagher (has been at Fox News Channel since its inception in 1996)
• Jerry Hodak (retired from WXYZ-TV in Detroit)
• Shepard Smith (worked at Fox News Channel from 1996 to 2019, was most recently at CNBC)
• Tom Terry (now chief meteorologist at WFTV)

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

WKMG's 6.2 subchannel was originally affiliated with LATV, and (along with three other Post-Newsweek stations) was among the network's launch affiliates on April 23, 2007.[10] In addition to LATV, during the Casey Anthony trial, the subchannel was used to carry CBS Daytime and syndicated programming from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., to accommodate trial coverage on WKMG's primary channel at the time;[11] it had earlier planned to air trial coverage in full on 6.2 to minimize disruption to WKMG's main schedule.[12] The LATV affiliation ended on April 2, 2012; at that time, the 6.2 subchannel became an affiliate of the Retro Television Network.[13] RTV was previously seen in Orlando on a subchannel of WRDQ. Live Well Network began airing on 6.3 on April 1, 2013.[14] The 6.2 subchannel again carried WKMG's daytime schedule during the station's coverage of the George Zimmerman trial.[15]

On January 26, 2014, Retro TV's sister network Heartland was added to 6.3 and Live Well Network moved to 6.2, with Retro TV entirely discontinued.[16]

On November 11, 2014, WKMG dropped Live Well in favor of Cozi TV. In December 2018, WKMG activated 6.4 to serve as Orlando's affiliate of Start TV. Later, WKMG added Dabl to 6.2, replacing Cozi TV, which moved to 6.3. Decades, which was on 6.3, moved to 6.5 at the same time.[17]

WKMG-TV shut down its analog signal, on VHF channel 6, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[18] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 26. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers continues to display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 6.1. WKMG's audio signal was formerly available at 87.75 MHz on the FM band in Orlando, Daytona Beach and surrounding areas, though at a slightly lower volume than FM radio stations due to TV modulation standards. The transition to digital broadcasting also ended reception of the station's audio signal at 87.75 MHz.

WKMG was one of three stations in the Orlando area (along with WKCF and WOFL) to participate in the "Analog Nightlight" program, until WKMG's analog transmitter was shut down permanently on July 12, 2009.[19]

WKMG-TV operates a translator station serving Ocala and northern parts of the broadcast market. Originally W29AB (channel 29), it operated as a translator for WTOG in St. Petersburg until 1995.[20] The station became W42DJ-D (channel 42) in 2010. On November 5, 2019, the translator changed its call sign for a third time to W21DX-D and started broadcasting on channel 21; it became WKMG-LD on July 23, 2020.[21]