WTTO and WDBB have both aired local news programming during their respective histories. The Tuscaloosa station, WDBB, operated its own local news department at two different periods in its early years. Its first news operation debuted on the evening it signed on the air on October 8, 1984, when channel 17 premiered a nightly half-hour prime time newscast at 9:00 p.m.; the program, "Alabama's Nine O'Clock News", was the first attempt at a prime time newscast by an Alabama television station (predating the launch of WBRC's current 9:00 p.m. newscast by twelve years). By 1986, the station added early-evening newscasts at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. Monday through Fridays, at which point, its newscasts were retitled "NewsCenter 17"; the newscasts also began to be simulcast on WNAL-TV when that station signed on the same year. Throughout the four-year run of WDBB's first news department, its newscasts regularly trailed then-CBS affiliate WCFT-TV (which, incidentally, had been original WTTO owner Chapman's flagship station when it founded WCFT in 1965) for viewership among West Alabama residents; as such, Dubose Broadcasting shut down channel 17's initial news department in 1988.