ABC World News - Weekend Newscasts

Weekend Newscasts

ABC's first attempt at an early evening weekend newscast took place in July 1975, with a Saturday bulletin anchored by Ted Koppel. The broadcast, however, did not have many stations carrying it, and it was cancelled about one year later.

Three years afterward, WNT expanded to six nights a week with World News Sunday on January 28, 1979, and to a full seven days with the return to Saturdays on January 5, 1985, years after the two other historical networks had added weekend newscasts.

These editions added the word "Tonight" in the mid-1990s, and in the mid-2000s (decade), their respective names were shortened to simply World News Tonight to correspond with the weekday editions. However, the original names were restored on July 19, 2006, to go along with the weekday broadcast's name change, but the title card reads World News for both days.

Prior to 1975, the only network newscasts ABC stations broadcast on weekends were fifteen-minute late-night updates on Saturdays and Sundays, seen on many affiliates in tandem with the local 11 p.m. Eastern/10 p.m. Central newscasts, although some stations opted to tape-delay them until immediately before sign-off time; rival CBS also offered a fifteen-minute Sunday night bulletin during the 1970s and 1980s. Because of declining affiliate interest from low viewership (in part because of the proliferation of twenty-four-hour cable news channels such as CNN), ABC discontinued the late-night weekend reports in September 1991.

Also, starting in 1973, weeknight co-anchor Reasoner hosted The Reasoner Report, a half-hour topical look at important stories (especially breaking developments in the Watergate scandal) in the vein of CBS's 60 Minutes, which Reasoner himself co-moderated at two different times. Affiliates usually carried the program on Saturday evenings in the time slots where the main newscast aired on weeknights. The program, which had affiliate clearance problems and was thus unsuccessful in terms of ratings, ended in 1975, replaced by the network's inaugural Saturday newscast (see above).

Some former anchors of the weekend news include Sam Donaldson (World News Sunday, 1979–1989), Kathleen Sullivan (World News Saturday, 1985–1987), Forrest Sawyer (World News Saturday, 1987–1993), Carole Simpson (World News Sunday, 1989–2003), Aaron Brown (World News Saturday, 1993–1997), Vargas (World News Saturday, 1997–2003) & (World News Sunday, 2003–2004), Terry Moran (World News Saturday, (2004–2005) Bob Woodruff (World News Sunday, 2004–2005) and Dan Harris (World News Sunday, 2006–2011). Since David Muir, who had taken over World News Saturday in 2007, took over the Sunday broadcast in 2011, ABC has renamed both broadcasts to ABC World News with David Muir.

Some ABC affiliates in the Central and Mountain Time Zones air the Sunday edition at 6 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Central — one half-hour earlier than the rest of the week's broadcasts — in which case, the ABC affiliate airs its local early-evening newscast after the network newscast (this is the same with CBS, which airs the Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News on all of its affiliates at 6 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Central). Some ABC affiliates, however (e.g., WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth, WSB in Atlanta), do not carry the Sunday edition of World News at all; weekend news clearances have always been a problem for the three historic networks. During the fall months, the Saturday broadcast is usually pre-empted by ABC's College Football coverage.