The station replaced its weekday morning and 10:00 p.m. newscasts with syndicated programming, with its early-evening newscasts on weeknights being replaced by "Talk of the Town", a local infotainment program—hosted by former WIBW-AM-FM radio host Betty Lou Pardue – featuring a mix of interviews, community event, sports, weather and entertainment segments. In addition, the station continued to produce short weather updates each weeknight at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. Due to low ratings (registering its lowest viewership by the May 2003 sweeps period with a 0 share), "Talk of the Town" was cancelled on July 11, 2003, resulting in the layoffs of six full-time and two part-time employees and the reassignment of two other production employees to channel 49's promotion and marketing department (the program was replaced by "Extra" and reruns of "That 70's Show", respectively, at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m.); "The Locker Room Show" was also placed on hiatus before it was eventually cancelled that fall. Locally produced weather updates were dropped on July 31, 2003, when the contract of meteorologist Dave Relihan (one of the few holdovers from the former news department, who joined KTKA in July 2000 after a Shawnee County District Court judge settled a non-compete clause dispute between Relihan and his former longtime employer WIBW-TV) was not renewed. In September 2003, the station began airing local weather cut-ins on weekday evenings, which were produced by WeatherVision out of its headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi.