When the station switched to ABC eight months later on August 7, the station moved the 9:00 p.m. newscast to 10:00 p.m.; the late newscast remained the only local program on channel 30 at the time, as it continued to carry children's programs on weekday mornings (with an hour-long block of "World News This Morning" being added as a lead-in to "Good Morning America") and syndicated programming in midday and early-evening time slots. At the same time, the station fired Wicks and hired longtime KTVI anchor/reporter Don Marsh to join Leslie Lyles on the weeknight newscasts. In January 1996, KDNL expanded its news programming, adding early-evening newscasts at 5:00 p.m. daily and at 6:00 p.m. weeknights, along with weekday morning cut-ins during "GMA". Ratings for the station's news programming steadily plummeted over the next few years, and did not even approach those of KTVI during its latter tenure as an ABC affiliate; for the first Nielsen sweeps month after the affiliation switch, in November 1995, KDNL's 10:00 p.m. newscast averaged only a 2 rating and 5 share. KDNL's newscasts were never able to become competitive with KMOV, KSDK (both have garnered at least 20% viewership shares over the years), or even KTVI due to the fact that many of the station's on-air staffers came from outside the St. Louis market and were not familiar to viewers. In KDNL's defense, the station was not able to hire on-air talent away from competing stations within the market, as KSDK, KMOV and KTVI included either six-month or one-year non-compete clauses in the contracts of its anchors, reporters and meteorologists; Marsh was one of the few prominent staffers with any history in the market. The early weeknight newscast had its time slot fluctuate between 5:00 and 6:00, and was even canceled outright for a time. Turnover in the newsroom was very high and this showed in the ratings.