KDNL aired hourly news cut-ins during regular programming for most of its first 25 years on the air. In 1994, around the time that Fox began pushing its affiliates to start airing newscasts, KDNL established a full-scale news department. Initially, KDNL offered a single newscast at 9:00 p.m. that debuted on January 1, 1995. The program's original anchors were Jim Wicks (who came to St. Louis from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) and Leslie Lyles (who had been anchoring in Charleston, South Carolina).