Portland TV station WCSH (Ch. 6) has moved its 10 p.m. news to its digital subchannel.

WCSH, an NBC affiliate, has been producing a 10 p.m. newscast and selling it to Portland station WPXT (Ch. 51), a CW affiliate, since 2002. But the program never brought in much advertising revenue while being aired on WPXT, said Doug Finck, the station's general manager.

"The contract expired and there wasn't enough advertising support to make it profitable for us," said Finck. "So we decided to stop carrying it."

Finck said competition from the 10 p.m. news produced by CBS-affiliate WGME (Ch. 13) and aired on Fox affiliate WPFO (Ch. 23) was not a factor. He said the news on WPXT was "on the wrong side of the economic scale" even before WGME's newscast on WPFO was launched last year.

The last WCSH newscast on WPXT was Nov. 9. The next day WCSH moved its 10 p.m. news to its digital subchannel, WCSH-DT 6.2. The newscast can also be seen on WLBZ-DT 2.2 out of Bangor, which is the subchannel of WCSH's sister station WLBZ (Ch. 2).

Both channels can be received free, over the air, by equipment that accepts a digital signal.

WCSH's digital subchannel is also available on the digital cable. In the Portland area, WCSH's subchannel airing the 10 p.m. news can be seen on Time Warner digital channel 166.

Digital broadcasting, because of how data can be compressed, allows TV stations to have subchannels in addition to their primary channels.

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