It features national and international news headlines, live reports from Washington, D.C., national weather and airport impact forecasts, a short SportsCenter update from the late night Los Angeles-based anchors of the ESPN show to account for West Coast scores, and a regular business news segment called "America's Money".

ET for 60 minutes immediately prior to Good Morning America and was repeated on tape delay for western time zones.

It was initially anchored by Steve Bell and Kathleen Sullivan at the network's Washington, D.C. newsroom-studio (as was most ABC News programming at the time).

Production of the program was moved to ABC's headquarters in the Lincoln Square, Manhattan district of New York City on July 11, 1988, when Forrest Sawyer and Paula Zahn debuted as co-anchors.

From the cable network's launch in 1996 until almost all original programming was discontinued due to cost-cutting measures made by ESPN on June 13, 2013, the program's sports update was provided by the overnight anchors of ESPNews, and later on, the Highlight Express; later that year, production of the sports segments was turned over to the Los Angeles-based production and anchor staff for the overnight editions of ESPN's SportsCenter.

With the rebranding, the program also began to align itself with the branding and on-air presentation of Good Morning America, although it has otherwise remained under the auspices of the World News Now staff.

[2] Some ABC stations (such as WTVC in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which still does not air it today at all) were forced to pre-empt the program when they implemented it less than two months earlier.