ABC World News Tonight
ABC World News Tonight (titled ABC World News Tonight with David Muir for its weeknight broadcasts since September 2014) is the flagship daily evening television news program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network in the United States. It is currently the most watched network newscast in the United States, with an average of 2 million more than its nearest rival, NBC Nightly News. Since 2014, the program's weekday broadcasts have been anchored by David Muir.[2] As of February 6–7, 2021, Whit Johnson and Linsey Davis anchor the Saturday and Sunday editions of the newscast respectively.
ABC World News Tonight
- News and Views
(1948–1951) - After The Deadlines
(1951–1952) - All-Star News
(1952–1953) - John Daly and the News
(1953–1960) - ABC Evening Report
(1960–1965) - Peter Jennings with the News
(1965–1967) - ABC News (1967–1970)
- ABC Evening News
(1970–1978) - World News Tonight
(1978–1983) - World News Tonight with Peter Jennings
(1983–2005) - World News Tonight with Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas
(2006) - World News Tonight with Charles Gibson
(2006) - World News with Charles Gibson
(2006–2009) - ABC World News with Diane Sawyer
(2009–2014) - ABC World News Tonight with David Muir
(2014–present)
- Rob Vint
- Ron Halper
- David Distinti
- Paul Verciglio
- David Muir
- Saturdays:
- Whit Johnson
- Sundays:
- Linsey Davis
- (See former anchors)
JJ Surma
- Bob Israel (1978–1990)
- Score Productions (1990–1996)
- Edd Kalehoff (1996–2012; 2020–present)
- Hans Zimmer (2012–2020)
Edd Kalehoff (2020–present)
United States
English
- Almin Karamehmedovic (2014–present)[1]
- ABC News Headquarters
- New York City
- 15 minutes (1953–1967)
- 30 minutes (1967–present)
January 13, 1948 –
present
The program has been anchored at various times by a number of other presenters since its debut in 1948. It also has used various titles, including ABC Evening News from 1970 to 1978, World News Tonight from 1978 to 2006, World News from 2006 to 2009, and ABC World News from 2009 to 2014. Since 2014, the program has been called ABC World News Tonight. The weeknight edition of ABC World News Tonight airs live at 6:30 p.m. in the Eastern and 5:30 p.m. in the Central Time Zones. However ABC affiliates KGNS, KNOE-2, WEEK-2, and WNCF air ABC World News Tonight half-an-hour later on delay.[3][4][5][6] WSB also airs it on a delay, the only ABC station in the Eastern Time Zone to do so.[7]
Weekend newscasts[edit]
ABC first attempted an early evening weekend newscast in July 1975, when it debuted a Saturday bulletin that was anchored by Ted Koppel and taken over by Tom Jarriel and Sylvia Chase in 1977. The broadcast, however, was not carried by many stations, and was cancelled in January 1979.
Following the Saturday news cancellation, and after the flagship weeknight broadcast became World News Tonight, the program premiered World News Sunday on January 28, 1979, and expanded to a full seven days with the restoration of a Saturday newscast (World News Saturday) on January 5, 1985, years after NBC and CBS had each launched their own weekend evening news programs. These editions added the word "Tonight" to the program title in the mid-1990s, further unifying it with the weekday editions, and in the mid-2000s, their respective names were shortened uniformly to World News Tonight to correspond with those broadcasts. However, the original names were restored on July 19, 2006, concurrent with the retitling of the weekday broadcasts, but the opening title sequence displayed the name as World News for both the Saturday and Sunday editions.
Prior to 1975, the only network newscasts that ABC stations broadcast on weekends were 15-minute late-night updates on Saturdays and Sundays, known as ABC Weekend News and later, ABC News Weekend Report. The programs were fed to affiliates at 11:00 pm Eastern/10:00 pm Central and were seen in tandem with the stations' own late newscasts, although some stations opted to tape-delay the network updates until immediately before their regular sign-off time (rival CBS also offered a 15-minute Sunday night bulletin during the 1970s until 1997). Because of declining affiliate interest (in part because of the proliferation of 24-hour cable news channels such as CNN) and low viewership, ABC discontinued the late-night weekend reports in September 1991.
In addition, starting in 1973, weeknight co-anchor Harry Reasoner hosted The Reasoner Report, a half-hour topical analysis of 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 broadcasts include Sam Donaldson (Sunday edition, 1979–1989), Kathleen Sullivan (Saturday edition, 1985–1987), Barry Serafin (Saturday edition, 1987–1988), Forrest Sawyer (Sunday edition, 1989–1993), Carole Simpson (Saturday edition, 1988–1993; Sunday edition, 1993–2003), Elizabeth Vargas (Saturday edition, 1997–2003; Sunday edition, 2003–2004), Jim Avila (Saturday edition, 2006–2007), Terry Moran (Saturday edition, 2004–2005), Bob Woodruff (Sunday edition, 2004–2005), Dan Harris (Sunday edition, 2006–2011) and David Muir (Saturday edition, 2007–2011; Saturday and Sunday editions, 2011–2014). Muir, who had taken over World News Saturday in 2007, took over the Sunday broadcast in 2011, ending the practice of using separate anchors for the Saturday and Sunday editions of the program, with ABC renaming both broadcasts as ABC World News with David Muir as a result. David Muir anchored the weekend program until he took over the weekday broadcast in September 2014. The program returned to using separate anchors for the weekend broadcasts afterward, with Cecilia Vega being named anchor of the Saturday broadcast and Tom Llamas named anchor of the Sunday edition in February 2015. After Vega was named senior White House correspondent, Llamas was named sole weekend anchor in January 2017, as the practice of using separate anchors for the Saturday and Sunday editions ended once again. Llamas subsequently left in January 2021, to join NBC News. In February 2021, Whit Johnson and Linsey Davis were announced as anchors of the weekend edition, with Johnson anchoring on Saturday and Davis anchoring on Sunday.[44]
Some ABC affiliates air the Saturday and Sunday editions of World News Tonight at 6:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time (5:00 p.m. Central and Mountain)—one half-hour earlier than the weekday broadcasts. The weekend editions of World News Tonight may periodically be abbreviated or preempted outright due to sports telecasts that overrun into its timeslot or occasionally air immediately following the program (the latter preemption situation commonly affects stations in the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones); this is particularly common during fall, as the Saturday broadcast does not air at all from September through mid December due to ABC's college football coverage and during the winter and spring, when the Sunday broadcast is sometimes delayed or preempted due to overruns of the network's NBA telecasts.
International newscasts[edit]
ABC News programs, including ABC World News Tonight, are shown for several hours a day on the 24-hour news network OSN News in MENA Region.
Various cable companies in the Caribbean simulcast ABC World News Tonight from Miami-based WPLG. Similarly, cable companies in Canada simulcast the program with most airing from either Seattle-based KOMO, Boston-based WCVB, or Detroit-based WXYZ which operate as timeshift channels.
In the United Kingdom, the program was shown Tuesday through Fridays at 1:30 a.m. on BBC News, a channel that is frequently simulcast by BBC One at this time, meaning the program was broadcast on analogue terrestrial television in many parts of that country until the digital transition. The newscast was aired on a delay, in part because of the need to remove commercial advertisements, as the BBC's domestic channels operate as commercial-free services via a television license fee, replacing them with promotions for different BBC News special programs. The program was replaced by Asia Business Report and Sport Today on June 14, 2011, but later returned to the channel on August 20, 2012. It was also available on the BBC's on-demand service BBC iPlayer for 28 days after its domestic broadcast. The program was replaced again by Asia Business Report and Sport Today on March 30, 2015.[45]
In Australia, WNT was aired every morning at 10:30 am. AET on Sky News Australia until it was moved to SBS and SBS Viceland in July 2019.[46] WNT previously broadcast on New Zealand-based TVNZ Duke.[47][48]
In Hong Kong, the program was broadcast live on TVB Pearl daily at 07:30 until 08:00 HKT until May 31, 2009, when it was replaced by NBC Nightly News. In Japan, it airs on NHK BS 1 as part of the weekday morning program Catch! Sekai no Top News (Catch the Global Top News)[49] and later on World News,[50] and in clip form during the English language educational program Kōryaku! ABC News Eigo (Strategies! ABC News English) until its end in March 2021.[51]
In Belize, Great Belize Television carries all editions of World News Tonight each weekday at 8:00 p.m. and weekends at 7:00 p.m.
