Warning system
In 1989, the station developed First Alert, the first automated weather warning system for television use (which was based on the manual-input First Warning system developed by KWTV around that time); it also assembled crews of storm chasing units, the "First Alert Storm Teams" (or "F.A.S.T. units"), which utilized custom vehicles equipped with video cameras and pioneering technology that enabled still photographs to be transmitted over cellular telephone using a dash-mounted computer combined with photo compression codecs. Developed in conjunction with station engineers, chief photographer Chris Lee (who joined KOCO in 1977) and Cellular One, "First Pix" was unveiled on April 9, 1992 to transmit photographs of a tornado. ("First Pix" as well as "First Alert" would earn the station a Regional News Emmy Award in 1991.) Morgan—who was later sued for breach of contract and accusations of taking storm-related videotapes, computer programs and forecasting equipment without the station's permission—left KOCO to become chief meteorologist at KFOR-TV in August 1992, and was later briefly replaced by former Weather Channel severe weather expert Vince Miller. During Miller's brief tenure, in April 1993, the station became the first in the United States to disseminate live storm footage utilizing night vision technology. (This concept was later revived in 2015 as a feature of the "First Alert Storm Command," a mobile storm tracking unit that contains a roof-mounted 360° camera and a large monitor that is occasionally used to provide real-time radar data from the field.)