On October 27, 2010, beginning with the 5:00 p.m. newscast, KWQC became the first television station in the Quad Cities market and the first station owned by Young Broadcasting to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. A high definition-ready news set was constructed for the newscasts (a "compact" news desk was temporarily placed in the newsroom during the construction phase so that only three on-air staffers could be seen at a given time). Logos, call signs and on-air graphics were changed as well to refer to its newscasts as "KWQC-HD News". The station returned to their original "KWQC-TV 6 News" branding in 2012 after all the market's stations converted to high definition news operations.