[1] The World Tonight premiered on November 21, 1966, at 8:30 PM on ABS-CBN's DZXL-TV Channel 9 as the network's answer to ABC's The Big News.

Co-anchoring the newscast were Hal Bowie, a veteran radio announcer and TV news anchor, and Henry Halasan, a former ABS-CBN Cebu station manager who was transferred to the network's main offices in Manila as a sales executive.

The roster of field reporters for the newscast in its pre-Martial Law days included Orly Mercado, Jun Bautista, Antonio Seva, Tony Lozano, Boo Chanco, Philip Pigao, Lito Tacujan and Danny Hernandez.

Sanchez returned as an anchor but only on Saturdays along with Castro (or Bon Vibar as his substitute), Drilon, Castillejo with additional segments by Angelique Lazo (entertainment).

However, beginning in late 1998, the ratings of English late-night newscasts including The World Tonight started to decline when rival GMA introduced Filipino language late-night news with the relaunch of GMA Network News, anchored by Mike Enriquez and Vicky Morales; it debuted as an English newscast in 1992 and switched to Filipino with the relaunch, surging ahead of the ratings game in the process.

It was then replaced by the network's first Filipino-language late-night newscast, Pulso: Aksyon Balita anchored by Korina Sanchez and Ted Failon.

On January 12, 2015, 3 days before the Philippine visit of Pope Francis, The World Tonight reformatted as part of the "internationalization" of the ABS-CBN News Channel.

However, the production of the newscast's Sunday edition was halted on March 22, 2020, due to the enhanced community quarantine done to help control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines and was replaced by provisional programming from the ABS-CBN News Channel on the same date, as well as the extended edition of Documentary Hour from April 26, 2020, when the timesharing of programming between both DZMM TeleRadyo (now TeleRadyo Serbisyo) and ANC ended.

On May 18, 2020, Palma and Velasquez returned to anchor the newscast after 2 months of hiatus in lieu of ANC and DZMM (now Radyo 630)'s special coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic.

This follows ABS-CBN’s announcement that it will lay off another batch of employees, including some reporters and cameramen, due to financial difficulties caused by declining ad revenues.

[8] On January 4, 2021, ANC head Nadia Trinidad announced on Twitter that it would relaunch The World Tonight with Tony Velasquez and Karen Davila, who replaced Palma after 22 years,[9] while retaining the OBB, title card, theme music and other graphics including the lower third (a maroon-used color introduced in November 2020) and the news ticker graphics currently used by the channel.

As Palma "has retired from the daily grind", Trinidad said that she would have her own public affairs program launching "soon", which later debuted as Tina Monzon-Palma Reports in May 2021.

[11] From March 25 to April 7, 2022, The World Tonight temporarily suspended its delayed airing on Kapamilya Channel due to the special program of ABS-CBN News Harapan 2022, while it continued to broadcast on ANC.