On January 4, 2008 WCMH became the second major Columbus station to begin broadcasting local newscasts in high definition. Prior to the opening of "NBC 4 on the Square" on May 27, channel 4 had planned to move its entire news operation to that facility. However, when those plans fell through, WCMH's main studio was upgraded to high definition. (Ultimately, "NBC 4 on the Square" was used only for some of the station's weekday morning shows.) Like most other stations with high-definition newscasts, WCMH relied mostly on upconverted widescreen standard definition footage for its remote field reports until the summer of 2014 where all remote field operations were upgrade to 1080i HD. On May 11, 2011, "NBC 4 on the Square" came to an end due to dismal ratings (it has remained a distant second to WBNS-TV on weekday mornings ever since "NBC4 on the Square" was founded), with the morning newscast productions returning to the main WCMH facility full-time, and the downtown space was soon leased to WBNS-TV.