The bulk of the program consists of a CBC journalist, currently Nil Köksal since 2022,[1] conducting telephone interviews with newsmakers and other persons of interest.
However, in the summer months of July and August, the program is reduced to an hour in its regular time slot, which means the midnight edition airs all the content during that period.
Most summers, one of those summer series is As It Happened: The Archive Edition, a separate program which airs previously broadcast interviews from the main series[citation needed] The show was introduced in 1968 as a reverse call-in show: rather than having the public call in, the reporters at As It Happens called newsmakers and pundits for their opinions.
When the interviewer is absent, other CBC journalists typically sit in as substitute interviewers; when the announcer is absent, substitutes may include other CBC personalities, actors such as R. H. Thomson, or program staffers; Howden himself sometimes appeared on the program as a guest announcer before being named co-host effective January 6, 2020.
After Lloyd Robertson left CBC Television for CTV in 1976, the program conducted its own on-air auditions for his replacement as anchor of The National, eventually choosing Robert Stanfield as its nominee.
A frequently-cited example of the show's sometimes whimsical sense of humour relates to references to the UK town of Reading, Berkshire.
After almost any lighter news story or interview that emanates from any location in the UK, the As It Happens host will conclude the piece by straight-facedly noting how far the UK location is from Reading, frequently giving the distance in both miles and some other form of strange, non-standard measurement (e.g., 733,000 garden gnomes, lined up hat to hat).
It quickly became a running joke on the show to identify all places in the UK (even major centres like London) in relation to their proximity to the comparatively obscure borough of Reading.
[15] During the holiday season in late November and December each year, the show also maintains a tradition of airing one or more Christmas and Hanukkah themed stories narrated by past or present announcers.
The original opening and closing themes were "Curried Soul" and "Koff Drops" respectively, played by jazz musician Moe Koffman.
In September 2013, amidst much on-air fanfare, the decades-old "Curried Soul" opening theme was given a discreetly modernized remix by Socalled.
For example, on the December 5, 2013 episode marking the death of Nelson Mandela, the show opened and closed with Ladysmith Black Mambazo's recording of "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika"; on the October 22, 2014 episode covering the Parliament Hill shootings, the show opened with a montage of audio clips of the day's events, entirely skipping theme music; and on the November 11, 2016 episode following the death of Canadian musical and literary icon Leonard Cohen, the show opened with Cohen's "Bird on the Wire".