Today, viewers can watch local, regional and national news programming, in many different ways, any time of the day.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Ray Forrest, WNBT’s announcer, broke into the broadcast of the movie Millionaire Playboy with news of the attack.
WCBW executives convinced radio announcers and experts such as George Fielding Elliot and Linton Wells to come down to the Grand Central Station studios during the evening and give information and commentary on the attack.
As CBS wrote in a special report to the FCC, the unscheduled live news broadcast on December 7 “was unquestionably the most stimulating challenge and marked the greatest advance of any single problem faced up to that time.” Additional newscasts were scheduled in the early days of the war.
In May, 1944, as the war began to turn in favor of the Allies, WCBW reopened the studios and the newscasts returned, briefly anchored by Ned Calmer, and then by Everett Holles.
[3] After the war, expanded news programs appeared on the WCBW schedule—renamed WCBS-TV in 1946—first anchored by Milo Boulton, and later by Douglas Edwards.
There were irregularly scheduled, quasi-network newscasts originating from NBC's WNBT in New York City and reportedly fed to WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia and WRGB in Schenectady, NY prior to the regularly scheduled NBC Television Newsreel, such as Esso sponsored news features as well as The Face of War and The War As It Happens.
The show was succeeded by the Huntley-Brinkley Report in 1956, featuring a duo-anchor format with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.
Initially, NBC Nightly News was presented by two anchors from a rotating group of three: Brinkley, John Chancellor, and Frank McGee.
Chancellor moved to the role of commentator in 1982 and was succeeded by a team of Tom Brokaw in New York and Roger Mudd in Washington.
In 1962, Walter Cronkite landed the anchor seat, which he would hold until 1981, and the program's name was changed to CBS Evening News.
In the 1970s, CBS Evening News was the dominant newscast on American television, and Cronkite was often cited as the "most trusted man in America."
In 1976, Barbara Walters joined the program as Reasoner's co-anchor in New York, thus becoming the first woman to serve as a regular network news anchor.
From the early 1970s forward, females such as Lesley Stahl of CBS, Carole Simpson of ABC and Jessica Savitch of NBC began to appear in significant on-camera newscasting roles.
Jennings stepped away from the network anchor seat as well in April 2005, after he announced that he had lung cancer and would undergo chemotherapy.
Later that month, Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were injured in a roadside bomb attack while on assignment in Iraq.
[9] Glor would leave the CBS Evening News in May 2019, with Norah O'Donnell succeeding him as anchor in July of that year.
[12] Today, electronic news gathering has enabled reporters to capture video and audio at greater ease and edit the footage faster than when film was used.
KTLA in the Greater Los Angeles area offers 73 and 1/2 hours per week in newscasts (Most of any US Broadcast Station[citation needed]).
A mix of NBC, CBS, Fox, and The CW stations that air Live with Kelly and Ryan, especially in the east coast, tape-delay the hours preempted by this program.
News briefs, a two-minute segment with a basic rundown of the largest stories of the day, formerly aired much more frequently on all four networks, including primetime.
[14][15] All three shows air seven nights a week, but their titular hosts only appear on weeknights unless there is major breaking news during weekends.
ABC airs its eclectic World News Now from 2AM to 3:30AM, and many affiliates repeat a portion of it to fill time until America This Morning.
NBC airs a repeat of the fourth hour of Today and talk show encores in these time periods.
Cable news networks also increasingly utilize newspaper reporters, particularly those affiliated with the New York Times and Washington Post to provide more details and offer their insights on top political stories.
As the Internet becomes more prevalent in American lives, television news operations learn to adapt and embrace new technologies.
Some of them, including all the network and national cable news operations, post videos of the stories for visitors to their websites.
In recent years, these news outlets have also provided an avenue for amateurs with digital or mobile phone cameras to send video created by them to be used in the broadcast and website.
This format is retained by some stations, though usually in smaller markets or higher education broadcasting training departments where there are not an abundance of everyday news stories.
Mel Kampmann of WPVI and Irv Weinstein of WKBW-TV in Buffalo, both owned by Capital Cities Communications, are credited with developing the key tenets of the "Action News" format.