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- Duration: 2:16
- Published: 08 Jul 2011
- Uploaded: 08 Jul 2011
- Author: MyHeartDoc
Show name | ABC World News |
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Caption | The title card for ABC World News with Diane Sawyer |
Format | News |
Runtime | 30 minutes |
Picture format | 480i ( SDTV)720p (HDTV) |
Creator | Roone Arledge |
Executive producer | Jon Banner |
Presenter | Bob Young (1967–1968)Howard K. Smith (1969–1976)Harry Reasoner (1970–1978)Barbara Walters (1976–1978)Frank Reynolds (1968–1970, 1978–1983)Max Robinson (1978–1983)Peter Jennings (1965–1967; 1978–2005)Bob Woodruff (2006)Elizabeth Vargas (2006)Charles Gibson (2006–2009)Diane Sawyer (2009–present)Weekends:David Muir (2011–present) |
Country | United States |
Network | ABC |
First aired | 1953 (as John Charles Daly and the News),1965 (as Peter Jennings with the News),1970 (as ABC Evening News),July 10, 1978 (as World News Tonight),July 19, 2006 (as World News),December 21, 2009 (as ABC World News) |
Last aired | present |
Website | http://abcnews.com/wn |
ABC World News is the flagship daily evening program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company television network in the United States. Currently, the weekday editions are anchored by Diane Sawyer and the weekend editions are anchored by David Muir. The program has been anchored at various times by a number of other people since its debut in 1953. It also has used various titles, including ABC Evening News from 1970 to 1978 and World News Tonight from 1978 to 2006.
In 1967, the inexperienced Jennings left the anchor chair and was reassigned as an international correspondent for the news program. ABC News was hosted, in succession, by Bob Young (October 1967 to May 1968), Frank Reynolds (May 1968 to May 1969), and, eventually, Reynolds and Howard K. Smith (May 1969 to December 1970). The program did not expand from fifteen to thirty minutes until January 1967, almost four years after both CBS and NBC had expanded their evening news programs.
Starting in 1973, before the advent of closed captioning, PBS would air an open captioned version of ABC News five hour after its broadcast on ABC; the practice continued until 1982.
By 1982, when nearly all of the nation was served by full-time ABC affiliates and the evening newscast began winning the ratings, the network discontinued the practice and started feeding the news to stations at the conventional time of 6:30 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific)/5:30 p.m. (Central/Mountain) on weeknights. However, the weekend editions still air live at 6 p.m./5 p.m.
Also during this time, World News Tonight aired an open-captioned version on various public television stations throughout the U.S., produced by Boston, Massachusetts, station WGBH-TV. In place of commercials, WGBH inserted additional news stories, some of which were of special interest to deaf people, as well as late-news developments, weather forecasts, and sports scores. This version aired mostly in late-night hours, several hours after the original newscast.
In September 1984, the program was renamed World News Tonight with Peter Jennings in order to reflect its sole anchor and senior editor. Robinson left ABC News in 1984, after stints of hosting news briefs and anchoring weekend editions of World News Tonight; he died from complications of AIDS in 1988.
With Jennings as lead anchor, World News Tonight was the most-watched national newscast from February 27, 1989, to November 1, 1996, but from then until February 2007, it was in second place behind its main rival, NBC Nightly News.
In April 2005, Jennings announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and, as before, other ABC News anchors, mostly consisting of 20/20 co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas and Good Morning America co-anchor Gibson, filled in for him. Jennings died of lung cancer on August 7, 2005, at his apartment in New York City, at age 67.
The August 8, 2005, edition of the program was dedicated to Jennings's memory and four-decade career in news. His death ended the era of the so-called Big Three anchors: Jennings, NBC's Tom Brokaw, and CBS's Dan Rather. During his career, Jennings had reported from every major world capital and war zone, and from all fifty U.S. states, according to the network. Jennings was known for his ability to calmly portray events as they were happening and for his coverage of many major world events.
As a tribute to its late anchor, ABC continued to introduce the broadcast as World News Tonight with Peter Jennings in the week following his death. Charles Gibson anchored the broadcast the first part of the week. Bob Woodruff anchored the final edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings on August 12, 2005. That night's broadcast ended with one of Jennings's favorite pieces of music instead of the traditional theme music. Beginning August 15, 2005, the broadcast was introduced simply as World News Tonight and stayed that way until January 2006.
The broadcast was produced live three times per day — the regular Eastern/Central Time Zones live broadcast, plus separate broadcasts for the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones. In addition, a live webcast, World News Now, with a newsbrief and a preview of that evening's broadcast, was added. The webcast currently airs live at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com and can be viewed throughout the rest of the day after 4 p.m. Eastern Time.
On January 29, 2006, Woodruff and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were injured by a road-side bomb while riding in an Iraqi military convoy. Both underwent surgery at a U.S. military hospital in Balad (fifty miles north of Baghdad, Iraq). It was reported that both men suffered head injuries, even though they were both wearing body armor and helmets. Both men were then evacuated to a U.S military hospital in Germany. Woodruff and Vogt were later transferred to Bethesda Naval Hospital in the U.S. for further treatment and released for outpatient treatment.
Within a few months after Woodruff's accident, ABC News announced that Vargas was pregnant and due to give birth in late summer.
For about a month, Good Morning America co-hosts Gibson and Sawyer had taken turns co-anchoring the newscast with Vargas. During the spring of 2006, Vargas mostly anchored the broadcast alone, becoming the first de facto solo female evening news anchor. At the time, it was unknown what ABC News planned to do until Woodruff returned to the anchor chair, which appeared to be nowhere in the near future, and when Vargas began her maternity leave. Rumors flew that Sawyer wanted to become the sole anchor of WNT in order to beat Katie Couric's switch to the CBS anchor chair. However, the New York Post's Cindy Adams reported that Gibson would become Woodruff's "temporary permanent replacement".
Also starting that spring (2006), the West Coast editions of World News Tonight were scaled back because Vargas anchored the broadcast on her own at the time.
Woodruff, although still recovering from his injuries, returned to World News Tonight as a correspondent on February 28, 2007.
While the 3 p.m. World News Now webcast remains, the separate Mountain and Pacific Time Zone editions have been scrapped. Gibson continued to update the newscast as warranted for these time zones, but the entire newscast was not be presented live, as was previously the case.
Some media analysts found the reasons for the change to be merely a cover for ABC News's real intentions to bring stability to its flagship news program that had been slipping in the ratings, and to attract some older viewers away from the CBS Evening News with interim anchor Bob Schieffer. Indeed, the advertising campaign focused on Gibson's experience, calling Gibson "Your Trusted Source", similar to a campaign for Jennings, "Trust Is Earned", in the wake of the Killian documents controversy at CBS and Brian Williams's assumption of the NBC anchor chair.
On July 19, 2006, ABC News announced that World News Tonight would have its name officially changed to World News With Charles Gibson. The network chose to make the small name change in order to reflect the program's availability twenty-four hours a day through its webcast and through ABCNews.com.
In the February 2007 sweeps, World News with Charles Gibson achieved the number-one spot in the Nielsen ratings for nightly news broadcasts, overtaking NBC Nightly News. This was ABC News's first victory since the week Jennings died in August 2005.
Starting in April 2007, Gibson announced that Monday broadcasts of World News would be expanded editions allowing only one commercial interruption to feature extended special segments on global warming.
World News With Charles Gibson won the May 2007 sweeps period decisively over NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, marking Gibson's second consecutive sweep win and widening his lead in the evening-news race. That was the first time World News had won consecutive sweeps since 1996, the year ABC News ceded the ratings crown to NBC News's Brokaw. NBC was back on top in the December 2007 sweeps and the two programs remained in a tight race until the fall of 2008, when the NBC program established a consistent lead.
When Gibson was away or on assignment, substitute anchors included Harris, Muir, Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos, and Vargas, with Sawyer being the primary substitute.
On December 31, 2007, World News with Charles Gibson debuted a new high-definition-ready set, featuring the ABC News logo prominently carved out of wood in front with logo's colors, a rear-projection screen, and plasma screens. It began broadcasting in high definition on August 25, 2008, during its coverage of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The graphics were updated. News theme is unchanged.
On September 2, 2009, ABC News announced that Gibson would retire from ABC News altogether on December 18, 2009, and that Sawyer would assume the anchor desk on December 21, 2009. Gibson's final broadcast ended with a video tribute that included all of the living ex-U.S. Presidents, former ABC anchors, actors and actresses, singers, comedians, Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog, athletes, the commander of the International Space Station, competitors Couric and Williams, and, lastly, U.S. President Barack Obama.
A new set for the program was launched on August 23.
Three years afterward, WNT expanded to six nights a week with World News Sunday on January 28, 1979, and to a full seven days with the return to Saturdays on January 5, 1985, years after the two other historical networks had added weekend newscasts.
These editions added the word "Tonight" in the mid-1990s, and in the mid-2000s, their respective names were shortened to simply World News Tonight to correspond with the weekday editions. However, the original names were restored on July 19, 2006, to go along with the weekday broadcast's name change, but the title card reads World News for both days.
Prior to 1975, the only network newscasts ABC stations broadcast on weekends were fifteen-minute late-night updates on Saturdays and Sundays, seen on many affiliates in tandem with the local 11 p.m. Eastern/10 p.m. Central newscasts, although some stations opted to tape-delay them until immediately before sign-off time; rival CBS also offered a fifteen-minute Sunday night bulletin during the 1970s and 1980s. Because of declining affiliate interest from low viewership (in part because of the proliferation of twenty-four-hour cable news channels such as CNN), ABC discontinued the late-night weekend reports in 1991.
Also, starting in 1973, weeknight co-anchor Reasoner hosted The Reasoner Report, a half-hour topical look at important stories (especially breaking developments in the Watergate scandal) in the vein of CBS's 60 Minutes, which Reasoner himself co-moderated at two different times. Affiliates usually carried the program on Saturday evenings in the time slots where the main newscast aired on weeknights. The program, which had affiliate clearance problems and was thus unsuccessful in terms of ratings, ended in 1975, replaced by the network's inaugural Saturday newscast (see above).
Some former anchors of the weekend news include Sam Donaldson (World News Sunday, 1979–1989), Kathleen Sullivan (World News Saturday, 1985–1987), Forrest Sawyer (World News Saturday, 1987–1993), Carole Simpson (World News Sunday, 1989–2003), Aaron Brown (World News Saturday, 1993–1997), Vargas (World News Saturday, 1997–2003) & (World News Sunday, 2003–2004), Terry Moran (World News Saturday, (2004–2005) Bob Woodruff (World News Sunday, 2004–2005) and Dan Harris (World News Sunday, 2006–2011). Since David Muir, who had taken over World News Saturday in 2007, took over the Sunday broadcast in 2011, ABC has renamed both broadcasts to ABC World News with David Muir.
Some ABC affiliates in the Central and Mountain Time Zones air the Sunday edition at 6 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Central — one half-hour earlier than the rest of the week's broadcasts — in which case, the ABC affiliate airs its local early-evening newscast after the network newscast (this is the same with CBS, which airs the Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News on all of its affiliates at 6 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Central). Some ABC affiliates, however (e.g., WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth), do not carry the Sunday edition of World News at all; weekend news clearances have always been a problem for the three historic networks. During the fall months, the Saturday broadcast is usually pre-empted by ABC's College Football coverage.
In the U.K., the program used to be shown at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday-Friday on BBC News. BBC News is frequently simulcast by BBC Two (and, less frequently, BBC One) at this time, meaning the program is broadcast terrestrially in many parts of the U.K. The newscast airs on delay in part because of the need to remove advertisements; the BBC's domestic channels are commercial-free.The show was replaced on 14th June 2011 by Asia Business Report and Sport Today.
In Australia, WNT airs every morning at 10:30 a.m. AET on Sky News Australia. In New Zealand, WNT is shown at 17:10 (5:10 p.m.) and 23:35 (11:35 p.m.) every evening on TVNZ 7. In Hong Kong, it was broadcast live on TVB Pearl daily at 7:30–8:00 a.m. Hong Kong time until May 31, 2009. In Japan it airs on NHK BS 1 as part of the weekday morning Ohayo Sekai (Wake Up To The World) program, and in clip form in the ABC News Shower English language education program.
Belize's Great Belize Television carries all editions of World News Tonight at 8:00 p.m. CST (Mon.-Fri.), 7:00 p.m. (Saturdays) and 7:00 p.m. (Sundays).
Category:ABC News Category:American Broadcasting Company network shows Category:American news television series Category:1953 television series debuts Category:1950s American television series Category:1960s American television series Category:1970s American television series Category:1980s American television series Category:1990s American television series Category:2000s American television series Category:2010s American television series
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