In its early years, Nationwide broadcasts largely comprised regional stories from RTÉ's local news correspondents.
The original series studio came from the city of Waterford, as Micheal Ryan was RTÉ Regional correspondent in the 1990s.
[5] During its original run it was broadcast every second Sunday, pre-record in a room rented by Micheal Ryan from a Photographer in Waterford City, later it would move to RTÉ's Cork Studios.
By the end of the 1990s the series was being broadcast three nights a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – at 19:00 and the presentation of the show took place in local towns and cities across the country.
Ryan retired from Nationwide in 2011, with the announcement that Anne Cassin would replace him as co-presenter after the ending of her current role as presenter of a Dublin-based magazine series called Capital D.[6] As part of its 20th anniversary, RTÉ commissioned Brian Byrne to compose a new theme for Nationwide.