TV News Stations

BBC News is the BBC's 24 hour rolling Tv News channel in the United Kingdom. The channel began as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 17:30 as part of the BBC's sortie into digital domestic television channels, becoming the first competitor to Sky News which had been running since 1989. Since then, with several relaunches, an increase in funding and resources from the BBC and improvements in digital television technology, the channel has been able to diversify content, with two minute looped bulletins available to view via BBCi, BBC News Online and the BBC's mobile website, alongside individual weather and sport bulletins. In May 2007 the channel became available for UK viewers to view through the BBC News website through a live stream. In April 2008 "BBC News 24" became "BBC News" as part of a £550,000 rebranding of the BBC's news output. The rebrand included new idents and a new studio/set. BBC World also had its name changed to "BBC World News". As a major part of the BBC News department, the channel is based at and broadcast from the News Centre within BBC Television Centre in West London. The channel was named RTS News Channel of the Year in 2006, a first for the channel after five years.

BBC News 24 was originally accessible only to analogue cable television subscribers. To this day it and BBC Parliament remain the only BBC "digital" channels which are made available to analogue cable subscribers. This coverage was improved in 1998 with the advent of digital television in the United Kingdom allowing satellite and digital terrestrial television viewers to also view the service. Initially it was difficult to obtain a digital satellite or terrestrial receiver without a subscription to Sky or ONdigital respectively, but now the channel forms an significant part of the Freeview package of channels. The BBC had run the international news channel BBC World for two and a half years prior to the launch of BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997. Sky News had had a free hand with domestic news for over eight years (since 8 February 1989) and being owned by News International their papers were used to criticise the BBC for extending its news output.

Sky News objected to the breaking of its monopoly, complaining about the costs associated with running a channel that only a minority could view from the licence fee. Sky News claimed that a number of British cable operators had been incentivised to carry News 24 (which, as a licence-fee funded channel was made available to such operators for free) in preference to the commercial Sky News. However, in September 1999 the European Commission ruled not in favor of a complaint made by Sky News that the publicly funded channel was unfair and illegal under EU law. The Commission ruled that the licence fee should be considered state aid but that such aid was justified due to the public service remit of the BBC and that it did not go over actual costs.

News 24 was one of the first BBC channels to make extensive use of new computerised broadcast technology, which was responsible for a considerable number of on-air gaffes and presentation errors in its early years. The channel's journalistic output has been overseen by Controller of the channel, Kevin Bakhurst, since 16 December 2005. This was a return to having a dedicated Controller for the channel in the same way as the rest of the BBC's domestic television channels. At launch, Tim Orchard was Controller of News 24 from 1997 until 2000. Editorial decisions were then overseen by Rachel Atwell in her capacity as Deputy Head of television news. Her deputy Mark Popescu became responsible for editorial content in 2004, a role he continued in until the appointment of Bakhurst as Controller in 2005.

A further announcement by Head of television news Peter Horrocks came at the same time as Bakhurst's appointment in which he outlined his plan to provide more funding and resources for the channel and shift the corporation's emphasis regarding news away from the traditional BBC One bulletins and across to the rolling news channel. The introduction of simulcasts of the main bulletins on the channel was to allow the news bulletins to pool resources rather than work against each other at key times in the face of competition particularly from Sky News.

The BBC Governors' annual report for 2005/2006 reported that average audience figures for fifteen minute periods had reached 8.6% in multichannel homes, up from 7.8% in 2004/2005. The 2004 report claimed that the channel outperformed Sky News in both weekly and monthly reach in multichannel homes for the January 2004 period, and for the first time in two years moved ahead of Sky News in being perceived as the channel best for news.

On 22 February 2006, the channel was chosen and entitled as News Channel of the Year at the Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards for the first time in its history. The judges remarked that this was the year that the channel had "really come into its own."

On 21 April 2008 BBC News 24 was renamed BBC News on the channel itself - but is denoted as the BBC News Channel on other BBC services. This is part of the creative futures plan, launched in 2006, to bring all BBC News output under the single brand name. News 24 relocated from the Studio N8 set to what was the home of the national news in Studio N6, allowing the news channel to share its set with the BBC News at One and the BBC News at Ten - with other bulletins moving to studio TC7.

Fox News Channel (FNC) is a United States-based cable and satellite news channel. Its owner is the Fox Entertainment Group, and is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. As of January 2005, it is available to 85 million households in the U.S. and additionally to viewers from other World countries, broadcasting mainly out of its New York City studios.

A little bit of history.
Rupert Murdoch founded Fox News to fill what he saw as a niche in the market for news that was "fair and balanced". Murdoch's company, News Corp, had improved significant experience in the 24-hour news business when its BSkyB subsidiary started Europe's first 24 hour news channel, Sky News, in the United Kingdom back in 1989. In February 1996, after well-known former Republican political strategist Roger Ailes left America's Talking (now MSNBC), Murdoch called Ailes to start the Fox News Channel. A group of Ailes loyalists who followed him throughout the NBC empire joined him at Fox. From there, the CNBC expatriates, who joined a team already in place at Fox News, created the programming model and proceeded to select space in New York. Ailes worked individuals through five months of grueling 14-hour workdays and several weeks of rehearsal shows before launch, on October 6, 1996. At launch, only ten million households were able to watch Fox News, with none in the major media markets of New York City and Los Angeles. According to published reports, many media reviewers had to watch the first day's programming at Fox News studios because it was not readily available. The rolling news coverage during the day was made of 20-minute single topic shows like Fox on Crime or Fox on Politics enclosed by news headlines. Interviews had a variety of facts at the bottom of the screen about the topic or the guest. The flagship newscast at the time was called The Schneider Report, with Mike Schneider giving a fast paced delivery of the news. During the evening, Fox had opinion shows: The O'Reilly Factor, The Crier Report, and Hannity & Colmes. Fox News also created the "Fox News Alert," which interrupted regular programming when a breaking news story occurred.

To speed up its approval by cable companies, Fox News paid systems up to $11 per subscriber to distribute the network. This contrasted with the normal practice, in which cable operators paid stations carriage fees for the programming of channels. When Time Warner bought out Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting, a federal antitrust consent decree required Time Warner to hold a second all-news channel in addition to Time Warner's own CNN. Time Warner selected MSNBC as the secondary news network, instead of Fox News. Fox News claimed that this violated an agreement to carry Fox News, and Ailes used his connections to persuade Mayor Giuliani to carry Fox News and Bloomberg Television on two underutilized city-owned cable channels, which he did. New York City also threatened to revoke Time Warner's cable franchise for not carrying FOX News.

A court case was filed by Time Warner against the City of New York claiming undue interference and for inappropriate use of the city's educational channels for commercial programming. News Corporation countered with an antitrust lawsuit against Time Warner for unfairly protecting CNN. This led to an acrimonious battle between Murdoch and Turner, with Turner publicly comparing Murdoch to Adolf Hitler while Murdoch's New York Post ran an editorial questioning Turner's sanity. Giuliani's motives were also questioned, as his then-wife was a producer at Murdoch-owned WNYW-TV. In the end, Time Warner and News Corporation signed a settlement agreement to permit Fox News to be carried on New York City cable system beginning in October 1997, and to all of Time Warner's cable systems by 2001, though Time Warner still does not carry Fox News in all areas. In return, Time Warner was given some rights to News Corporation's satellites in Asia and Europe to distribute Time Warner programming, would receive the normal compensation per subscriber paid to cable operators, and News Corporation would not object to Atlanta Braves baseball games being carried on TBS.

Nowadays Fox News Channel presents a considerable assortment of programming with up to 15 hours of live programming per day, in addition to programming and content for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Most of the programs are broadcast from Fox News headquarters in New York City in their street-side studio on Sixth Avenue in the west extension of Rockefeller Center. Audio simulcasts of the channel are aired on XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. Like other news networks, Fox News Channel produces a news website featuring the latest coverage, including video clips from the network's television division, audio clips from Fox News Radio, in addition to columns from the network's assorted television, radio, and online personalities. With the growth of the Fox News Channel, the network introduced a radio division entitled Fox News Radio in 2003. Syndicated throughout the United States, the division provides short newscasts and talk radio programs, featuring personalities from both the television and radio divisions. In addition, the network has also introduced Fox News Talk in 2006, a satellite radio station which features programs syndicated by and featuring Fox News personalities.

Fox News currently leads the cable news market in the United States. The BBC reported that Fox News saw its profits double during the Iraq conflict. By some reports, at the height of the conflict they enjoyed as much as a 300 percent increase in viewership, averaging 3.3 million viewers daily.

In 2004, the gain in ratings became more obvious. In September, Fox News Channel's ratings for its broadcast of the Republican National Convention beat those of all three broadcast networks. During President Bush's address, Fox News notched 7.3 million viewers nationally, while NBC, CBS, and ABC scored ratings of 5.9, 5.0, and 5.1, respectively. In late 2005 and early 2006, Fox saw a brief decline in ratings. One of the most notable decline in ratings came in the second quarter of 2006, when compared to the previous quarter, Fox News had a loss in viewership for every single primetime program. One of the most noteworthy losses of viewership was that of Special Report with Brit Hume. The show's total viewership was down 19 percent compared to the previous quarter. However, several weeks later, in the wake of the North Korean Missile Crisis and the 2006 Lebanon War, Fox saw a surge in viewership and remained the #1 rated cable news channel. Fox still held eight of the ten most-watched nightly cable news shows, with The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes coming in first and second places, respectively. For the year 2007, Fox News was the number one rated cable news program. It was down 1 percent in total day-to-day viewers and down 3 percent in the 25-54 year old demographic. In comparison, CNN was up 1 percent and 3 percent respectively. Fox News finished 2007 as #6 rated overall cable network. In the United States, Fox News Channel is rated as the cable news network with the largest number of regular viewers, although CNN retains a larger number of unique viewers.

Cable News Network, commonly referred to by its initialism CNN, is a major news cable television network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. The network is now owned by Time Warner; the news network is a division of the Turner Broadcasting System. CNN introduced the idea of 24-hour television news coverage, celebrating its 25th anniversary on June 1, 2005.

In terms of cumulative Nielsen ratings or "unique viewers", CNN rates as America's number one cable news source. While the news network has numerous affiliates, CNN primarily broadcasts from its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta, the Time Warner Center in New York City, and studios in Washington, D.C. As of December 2004, the network is available in 88.2 million U.S. households and more than 890,000 American hotel rooms. The U.S version of their broadcast is also shown in Canada. Globally, CNN airs through CNN International and has combined branded networks and services that are available to more than 1.5 billion people in over 212 countries and territories.

History. The Cable News Network was launched at 5:00 p.m. EST on June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the first newscast. Since its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to a number of cable and satellite television networks, several web sites, specialized closed-circuit networks (such as CNN Airport Network), and two radio networks. The network has 36 bureaus (10 domestic, 26 international), more than 900 affiliated local stations, and several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The network's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for the Time Warner conglomerate's eventual acquisition of Turner Broadcasting. Despite its domestic standing, CNN remains a distant second in international news coverage, reaching just over half of the audience of the older BBC News. Unlike the BBC's network of reporters and bureaus, CNN International makes extensive use of affiliated reporters that are local to, and often directly affected by, the events they are reporting. The effect is a more immediate, less detached style of on-the-ground coverage. This has done little to stem criticism, largely from Middle Eastern nations, that CNN International reports news from a pro-American perspective. This is a marked contrast to domestic criticisms that often portray CNN as having a "liberal" or "anti-American" bias.

A companion network, Headline News (originally called CNN2) was launched in 1982 and featured a continuous 24-hour cycle of 30-minute news broadcasts. Headline News broke from its original format in 2006 with the addition of Headline Prime. Current programs feature confrontational personalities like radio talk-show host Glenn Beck and former Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Nancy Grace.

CNN HD was launched September 1, 2007, and was first nationally distributed by DirecTV on September 26, 2007.

The first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a watershed event for CNN that catapulted the network past the "big three" American networks for the first time in its history, largely due to an unprecedented, historical scoop: CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate outside Iraq during the initial hours of the American bombing campaign, with live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett. The Gulf War experience brought CNN some much sought-after legitimacy and made household names of previously obscure (and infamously low-paid) reporters. Many of these reporters now comprise CNN's "old guard." Bernard Shaw became CNN's chief anchor until his retirement in 2001. Others include then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer (now host of The Situation Room and Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer) and international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour's presence in Iraq was caricatured by actress Nora Dunn as the ruthless reporter "Adriana Cruz" in the film Three Kings (1999). Time Warner later produced a television movie, Live from Baghdad, about the network's coverage of the first Gulf War, which aired on HBO.

Coverage of the first Gulf War and other crises of the early 1990s (particularly the infamous Black Hawk Down Battle of Mogadishu) led officials at the Pentagon to coin the term "the CNN effect" to describe the perceived impact of real time, 24-hour news coverage on the decision-making processes of the American government.

CNN was the first network to have broken news of the September 11 attacks. Anchor Carol Lin was on the air to deliver the first public report of the event. She broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. ET and said: "This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center." Sean Murtagh, CNN vice-president for finance & administration, was the first network employee on the air in New York.

Experiments. CNN launched two specialty news channels for the American market which would later close amid competitive pressure: CNNSI shut down in 2002, and CNNfn shut down after nine years on the air in December 2004. CNN and Sports Illustrated's partnership continues today online at CNNSI.com. CNNfn's former website now redirects to money.cnn.com, a product of CNN's strategic partnership with Money magazine.

CNN debuted its news website CNN.com (then known as as CNN Interactive) on August 30, 1995. Initially an experiment, interest in CNN.com grew steadily over its first decade and today CNN.com is now one of the most popular news websites in the world. The wide-spread growth of blogs, social media and user-generated content have influenced the site, and blogs in particular have focused CNN's previously scattershot online offerings, most noticeably in the development and launch of CNN Pipeline in late 2005. CNN Pipeline was the name of a paid subscription service, its corresponding website, and a content delivery client that provided streams of live video from up to four sources (or "pipes"), on-demand access to CNN stories and reports, and optional pop-up "news alerts" to computer users.

As of early 2008, CNN maintains a free live broadcast. CNN International is broadcasted live, as part of the RealNetworks SuperPass subscription outside US. CNN also offers several RSS feeds and podcasts.