The broadcasts are produced by PBS member station WETA-TV in Washington, D.C., and originates from its studio facilities in Arlington County, Virginia.

[2] The program is a collaboration between WETA-TV and PBS member station WNET in New York City, along with KQED in San Francisco, KETC in St. Louis, and WTTW in Chicago.

Production of the weekend broadcasts were solely produced by WNET,[3] before the New York City station transferred all of its PBS NewsHour involvement to WETA in April 2022.

[12] Most editions employed a two-anchor, two-city format, with MacNeil based in New York City and Lehrer at WETA's studios in Arlington, Virginia.

[20] Effective January 17, 2000, The NewsHour added "America Online Keyword: PBS" to its ending screen for a three-year agreement through April 22, 2003.

[26] On May 17, 2006, the program underwent its first major change in presentation in years, adopting a new graphics package and a reorchestrated version of its theme music (originally composed by Bernard Hoffer).

[33] In addition to increased integration between the NewsHour website and nightly broadcast, the updated production returned to a two-anchor format.

[38] For much of its history, the PBS NewsHour aired only Monday through Friday, but in March 2013, plans to expand the program to include Saturday and Sunday editions were under development.

[39] On June 17, 2013, PBS NewsHour announced that the weekend editions of the program would premiere on September 7, 2013, with Hari Sreenivasan serving as anchor.

[40][41] MacNeil/Lehrer Productions announced in a letter to the show's staffers on October 8, 2013, that it had offered to transfer ownership in the PBS NewsHour to WETA.

In the letter, Lehrer and MacNeil cited their reduced involvement with the program's production since their departures from anchoring, as well as "the probability of increasing our fundraising abilities.

Anchored by Stephanie Sy, the bureau produces its own news summary with up-to-date information on events that develop after the original broadcast.

[54] On April 2, 2022, WETA assumed production responsibilities for the NewsHour's Saturday and Sunday editions, which concurrently began originating from the studio at the station's Washington facility used for the weekday broadcasts.

[57] On May 13, 2022, Woodruff announced to NewsHour staffers that she would step down as anchor at the end of the year, though she intends to continue reporting longer pieces for the program while doing projects and specials for WETA through the 2024 United States presidential election at the earliest.

There are no interruptions for advertisements (though like most public television programs, there are "corporate image" advertisements at the beginning and end of each broadcast, as well as barker interruptions asking viewers to donate to their local PBS member station or member network during locally produced pledge drives, which are replaced by encore presentations of a selected story segment from the past year for stations that are not holding a drive during that time).

The program has a more deliberate pace than the news broadcasts of the commercial networks it competes against, allowing for deeper detail in its story packages and feature segments.

On Fridays, the program features political analysis and discussion between two regular contributors, one from each of the Republican and Democratic parties, and one host from among the senior correspondents.

[68] PBS NewsHour aired the final honor roll segment on August 30, 2021, after the end of War in Afghanistan.

Broadcasts of the PBS News Hour are also made available worldwide via satellites operated by various agencies such as the Voice of America.

These include the NJ PBS network in New Jersey (as WNET, which co-manages NJ PBS and WLIW, carries the program in the New York City area, the latter airing the program live, while WHYY-TV does so in the Philadelphia market); KVCR-DT in San Bernardino, California; KCET in Los Angeles (KOCE-TV in Huntington Beach, which shares ownership with KCET through parent Public Media Group of Southern California and is the primary PBS member in the region, serves as the program's carrier in the Los Angeles market); and WYIN in Gary, Indiana (WTTW, the primary PBS station for the Chicago DMA that includes WYIN's Northwest Indiana service area, serves as the program's carrier in the Chicago market).

Unusually for many years, the secondary station of Milwaukee PBS, WMVT, carried the program as part of an early-evening news block with the Nightly Business Report (which was the lead-in to News Hour on many member stations until that program ceased production in December 2019), and half-hour international newscasts from Deutsche Welle and BBC World News, due to an expanded schedule of PBS Kids and local-interest programming on WMVS; this has since been rectified with the launch of the all-hours PBS Kids subchannel network.

Archives of shows broadcast after February 7, 2000, are available in several streaming media formats (including full-motion video) at the program's website.

The News Hour was also livestreamed on Ustream until IBM Watson Media discontinued free livesteraming on the platform on September 17, 2018.

The News Hour has also provided livestreaming of special events, most notably streaming the January 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump on the program's Twitter account.

[85] PBS News Hour has received generally positive reviews from television critics and parents of young children.

Patrick Kevin Day of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff are making history on PBS.

FAIR found that the PBS News Hour's guest list from October 2005 to March 2006 had Republicans outnumbering Democrats 2–1, and minorities accounting for 15 percent of U.S.-based sources.

[96] The PBS News Hour partnered with NPR for the broadcast of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 2016, in a strategy to prepare for the election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.