TV news closes chapter
April 1, 2005
The heyday of the broadcast networks’ traditional television news broadcasts may well be quickly coming to a close.
Coming virtually on the heels of the retirements of Tom Brokaw at NBC and Dan Rather at CBS, Ted Koppel, longtime host of ABC’s Nightline has announced that he is leaving both the show and the network at the end of the year.
While ABC News has said they are committed to maintaining the Nightline broadcast in some for in it’s usual time slot, advertisers’ preference for younger audiences could spell the end of the in-depth news program that began in 1980 as a nightly update on the Iran hostage crisis.
Ratings have fallen in recent years, and Nightline was nearly cancelled three years ago. Criticism that ABC was more interested in profits than in informing the public saved it then. It is unclear whether this will be the case when Koppel leaves.