In 2005, HLN began to diverge from this format and air more personality-based programs, including a primetime block featuring pundits such as Glenn Beck and legal commentator Nancy Grace.

In December 2022, then-new CNN president Chris Licht announced that HLN would abandon original live news programming entirely as part of a reorganization, with the network now being overseen by ID's staff.

For contractual reasons, HLN continues to air news content daily through a simulcast of CNN's early morning programming.

[1] Since the mid-2000s, HLN has been available internationally on pay television providers in parts of Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, and Canada.

The channel's launch was simulcast nationwide on sister networks CNN and Superstation WTBS (now simply TBS), starting at 11:45 p.m. on December 31, 1981, as a preview for cable providers that had not yet reached agreements to carry CNN2.

In the channel's early years, a two-minute recap of the hour's top stories, the "CNN Headlines," would run after the sports segment.

At 9:45 a.m., anchor Don Harrison prepared to break the story, stating "This just in to CNN Headline News, and we say right off the bat, we have not confirmed this through any other sources..." Executive producer Roger Bahre, who was off-camera, immediately yelled "No!

This resulted in the layoffs of part of its staff, including such stalwart anchors as Lyn Vaughn, David Goodnow and Bob Losure, all of whom had been with Headline News for over 10 years.

On June 15, 1999, the network underwent a complete visual revamp, including an updated ticker (now dubbed the "Superticker"), a brand-new newsroom and studio, and a sectioning of the channel's schedule into four distinct dayparts, to convey the idea that, unlike CNN, which aired long-form programming such as discussion shows and documentaries, Headline News never stopped offering straight news coverage.

The centerpiece of the new format was the replacement of the network's ticker with a large pane across the bottom of the screen, which displayed headlines and other information (such as weather updates and sports news).

Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune explained that "the video portion of Headline News' subdivided screen occupies only about a third of the total real estate.

Never mind the old-school problem of trying to spot the hockey puck; people with smaller sets watching sports highlights here will have trouble finding a basketball.

Hammer, and an eponymous current affairs program hosted by legal commentator Nancy Grace, which featured news and analysis related to crime and court cases.

Both Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck brought major ratings gains to Headline News, especially within the key demographics, although its daytime programming only saw modest increases.

Exposed: The Extremist Agenda, a Glenn Beck special aired in November 2006, broke a million viewers and was the network's most-watched program of the year.

HLN reached an average audience of 982,000 viewers in June 2011, and Nancy Grace experienced an 80% increase in viewership—second only to The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News in its time slot.

[33] Later that year, HLN provided similar coverage for the trial of Conrad Murray, who was accused of prescribing the drugs that caused the death of Michael Jackson.

The move came in response to planned changes occurring at HLN, which sought to re-position the network as the "first TV home for the social media generation.

In June 2014, Time Warner made a bid to acquire a stake in Vice Media, with an intent for the company to take over and relaunch HLN.

[40][41] In late-May 2015, The Daily Share was cut from five hours to two, with the remainder of its timeslot filled by CNN original series and specials, followed by next-day encores of Nancy Grace and Dr. Drew On Call.

The memo outlined plans to restructure its daytime and overnight programming to more closely resemble CNN, including a focus on documentary films.

The network began to position its news content towards regional headlines, crime, and entertainment stories — leaving CNN to focus upon "in-depth" political coverage and world affairs.

[62] Prior to its reformulation as a true crime channel, HLN's weekday lineup consisted primarily of rolling news programming during the morning and early-afternoon hours.

The final original news programs that aired under this format were Morning Express, a morning news program hosted by Robin Meade with co-anchors Bob Van Dillen, Jennifer Westhoven and Hines Ward, and Saturday and Sunday equivalent Weekend Express, hosted by Susan Hendricks, both of which were canceled in December 2022.

The network has extensively aired reruns of the former Court TV series Forensic Files; as of April 2016, the program took up about 58% of the channel's weekly schedule.

[69] Alongside TruTV, HLN also aired encores of special episodes of TBS's late night talk show Conan set in Cuba and Armenia.

Most of them were commercial outlets, including both major network affiliates and independent stations (some like WSVN in Miami, following its January 1989 affiliation switch from NBC to Fox, even carried it as a stand-in evening network newscast), though a few public television stations (such as PBS member WTTW in Chicago) carried blocks of its newscasts into the late 1980s.

WTBS, initially to encourage its national viewers to ask their local cable provider to carry the network full-time, aired a half-hour simulcast of Headline News each morning at 5:30 a.m.

Abbreviated Headline News broadcasts would also occasionally serve as filler (bookended by the NewsWatch intro and outro) before the start of movie presentations or live sporting events.

The early 1990s saw the culmination of Headline News' supplemental syndication model as many commercial stations (particularly affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS) that were transitioning over to instituting 24-hour broadcasts began taking feeds of the channel's overnight programming, in lieu of scheduling syndicated entertainment programs, movies or infomercials to fill their previous nightly sign-off periods.