WBRC-TV in Birmingham-Tuscaloosa-Anniston presently broadcasts 64½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 11 hour each weekday, 4½ hours on Saturdays and 5 hours on Sundays). WBRC-TV's news operation began with the launch of the station on July 1, 1949, originally consisting five-minute-long newscasts at sign-on and sign-off that were originally anchored by operations manager M.D. Smith III, who read wired copies of local news headlines over a slide of the station's logo. In September 1950, at which time newscasts were expanded to 15 minutes, anchor segments began to be conducted in-studio after it acquired camera equipment to recorded live programming; kinescopes of 16-mm film footage shot by a photographer for local stories and still photographs for illustration of national and international stories were used for story content. The station launched a full-scale news department in 1952, when it began operating from the former studios of the original WBRC-FM. Several members of the news department staff in the early years started at WBRC radio including news anchors Harry Mabry (who joined the station in 1958 and left in 1969) and Joe Langston (who first joined the station in 1963 before he would take on a management role as its director of news and editorial policy), and sports anchor Tom York (who joined the station in 1957). In August 1969, former WSGN radio anchor Bill Bolen joined WBRC-TV as co-anchor of the 5:30 p.m. weekday evening news and sole anchor of the 10 p.m. weeknight news. In 1978, WBRC became the first television station in the Birmingham market to acquire a microwave truck for electronic news-gathering purposes, and became the first to provide live breaking news coverage on-scene.