ABC World News - History

History

ABC first began a nightly newscast in fall 1953 with John Charles Daly as anchor of the then-fifteen-minute John Charles Daly and the News. Daly, who also hosted the CBS game show What's My Line? contemporaneously, anchored the news until 1960 with multiple hosts and formats succeeding him. Anchors during the early 1960s included Alex Dreier, John Secondari, Fendall Winston Yerxa, Al Mann, Bill Shadel, John Cameron Swayze (formerly of NBC), Bill Laurence, and Bill Sheehan. In 1962, Ron Cochran was made full-time anchor, serving until 1965. Then, in 1965, a twenty-six-year-old Canadian, Peter Jennings, was named anchor of Peter Jennings with the News.

In 1967, the inexperienced Jennings left the anchor chair and was reassigned as an international correspondent for the news program. ABC News was hosted, in succession, by Bob Young (October 1967 to May 1968), Frank Reynolds (May 1968 to May 1969), and, eventually, Reynolds and Howard K. Smith (May 1969 to December 1970). The program did not expand from fifteen to thirty minutes until January 1967, almost four years after both CBS and NBC had expanded their evening news programs.