Nightline
Nightline is a late-night
hard news program broadcast by
ABC in the
United States, and has a franchised formula to other networks and stations elsewhere in the world. It airs five nights a week (weeknights), usually for 30 minutes.
Ted Koppel served as main anchor from March 1980 until his departure from the program in November 2005.
The program had its beginnings on
November 8,
1979, just 4 days after the
Iran hostage crisis started.
ABC News president
Roone Arledge felt the best way to compete against
NBC's
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was to update Americans on the latest news from Iran. At that time, the show was called: "The Iran Crisisâ€"America Held Hostage: Day
xxx" where
xxx represented each day Iranians held hostage the occupants of the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran,
Iran. Originally,
World News Tonight lead anchor
Frank Reynolds hosted the special report. Shortly after its creation, Reynolds stopped hosting the program.
Ted Koppel, then ABC News's State Department Correspondent, took on the hosting duties.
At the end of the hostage crisis in 1981,
Nightline had entrenched itself on the ABC programming schedule, and made Koppel a national figure. The program has prided itself on providing a mix of investigative journalism and extended interviews which would look out of place on
World News Tonight. Thanks to a video sharing agreement with the
BBC,
Nightline also repackages some of the BBC's output for an American audience.
Nightline broadcasts also reappear in a condensed form on the overnight program
World News Now.
The program aired four nights a week until 1982, when the sketch comedy program
Fridays was shifted to air after
Nightline. In 1983, there was an unsuccessful attempt to change the format of the show to multi-topics and an hour as opposed to a single topic in a half hour. This switch proved to be unsuccessful, and after a few months, the old program was restored.
The program remains unique in American media, considering its nightly broadcasts. Most other similar shows only air once a week, though usually in a
prime-time slot for a full hour.
Nightline is usually less
sensationalistic than the weekly
newsmagazines (which often emphasize
soft news programming), though the program has caused controversy on occasion.
Perhaps the most infamous episode of
Nightline occurred on
April 15,
1987. During the episode, longtime
Los Angeles Dodgers executive
Al Campanis made
racially insensitive comments. When Ted Koppel asked Campanis about why there weren't that many
black field or general managers in
Major League Baseball, Campanis responded by saying that blacks may lack the "necessities." What soon followed was what many observers believed was Campanis coming off worse and worse despite the numerous chances from Koppel to clarify himself. Shortly after the interview, the Dodgers fired Campanis, who would be haunted by the
Nightline appearance until his death in 1998.
On
April 30,
2004, Koppel read the names of the members of the
United States Armed Forces who were killed in
Iraq. This prompted controversy from
conservatives who believed Koppel was making a political statement and from
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which felt that ABC was undermining the war effort in Iraq. Others, most notably the
Washington Post television columnist, thought it was a
ratings stunt for
sweeps, and indeed
Nightline was the highest rated program during that time period, and had about 30% more viewers than other
Nightline programs that week. Sinclair stations did not air the program.
Koppel has repeated the format on
May 28, 2004, reading the names of service members killed in Afghanistan, and on
May 30,
2005, reading the names of all service members killed in Afghanistan or Iraq between the last program and the preparation of the program. This time, Sinclair stations aired the program as scheduled.
Threats of cancellation
Rumors have spread for many years about the show's cancellation. Many believe that a talk-show format would receive better ratings for the network, which has struggled in late-night ratings over the past few years. However, this was not always the case. During the so-called "late show wars" of 1993, when
The Late Show with David Letterman and
The Tonight Show were battling it out for viewers,
Nightline would often place second and occasionally be in first place.
In 2002, ABC attempted to hire
David Letterman from
CBS, a move that would likely have forced
Nightline's cancellation. However, Letterman opted to re-sign with CBS. (When ABC added
Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2003, it was placed at the 12:05 timeslot instead of the 11:35 slot of
Nightline, again preventing cancellation.)
Although his contract ended in December, Koppel actually anchored his final
Nightline broadcast on
November 22,
2005. He had announced that March that he was leaving the show at the end of his contract. Koppel had considerably reduced his hosting duties at the show beginning in 2002.
On November 28, 2005, Koppel was replaced by a three-anchor team:
Martin Bashir and
Cynthia McFadden at
Times Square Studios in
New York City and
Terry Moran in
Washington, D.C. Along with the new anchors,
Nightline that now is live every night, has a multi-topic format--that is, it covers multiple stories in each broadcast. There are many critics of the multi-topic format due to the fact that it is more difficult to focus on a subject in depth when there is much less time devoted to the subject, and that more stories seem to be focusing on popular culture, rather than news events.
On July 11, 2006, Ted Koppel made a surprise appearance on
Nightline to discuss with co-Anchor Terry Moran the prisoner situation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and to discuss his upcoming series for the Discovery network. It was his first appearance on the broadcast since leaving the show in November 2005.
As of August 7, 2006 ABC moved Nightline's New York operations from Times Square to ABC News Headquarters in Lincoln Square, citing high production costs and logistical problems.
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Nightline website*
ABC Medianet Website
