History
The initial anchors for the nightly program were Bill Jorgensen, Pat Harper and Steve Bosh, with Jerry Girard reporting on sports and Roberto Tirado (later replaced by Bob Harris) providing national weather forecasts. This group also served in the same capacities on WPIX's local newscasts, as did INN's reporting team. INN also used reports from its member stations, The Associated Press, United Press International, Visnews, and later on CNN to supplement its own coverage. WPIX transmitted the national show's live feed weeknights at 9:30 p.m. (Eastern).
As part of a midday expansion of INN starting in 1981, WPIX also experimented with a newscast at 12:30 p.m. co-anchored by Marvin Scott. During the decade, WPIX also offered INN affiliates The Wall Street Journal Report, a business-oriented show (still on the air today); and From the Editor's Desk, a Sunday newsmaker show hosted by Richard D. Heffner.
Bill Jorgensen left the program (and WPIX) in 1983. Bosh and Harper continued to anchor together for another year until Bosh departed in 1984 for a job at KDFW-TV in Dallas. Brad Holbrook, who joined the operation a year earlier, became co-anchor with Harper. Also in 1984 WPIX dropped its local Action News format and decided to brand both local and national news as INN: The Independent News, while the midday newscast was cancelled.
In January 1985, longtime CBS News correspondent Morton Dean replaced Holbrook as co-anchor, then became sole anchor of the program after Harper left for WNBC-TV four months later. In 1986 the national INN newscast was renamed USA Tonight. Dean left INN in 1988 and was succeeded by the anchor he replaced, Brad Holbrook, who remained for the show's duration.
INN was eventually cancelled in 1990 due to declining ratings and clearances by stations, perhaps caused by the advent of the Fox television network. Tribune Broadcasting retained some of staff to cover Washington events for the Tribune stations and affiliating their stations with CNN for national and world news, and adding the time periods to their local newscasts. On March 13, 2009, Tribune Broadcasting officially closed the Washington bureau, citing economic reasons.
Read more about this topic: Independent Network News (US)
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