17. The twenty-four-hour channels expand
After CNN introduced the concept of news available and repeating twenty-four hours a day the concept expanded to the topics often covered by local news channels; weather, sports, and business. The national networks joined in the rush for round the clock coverage, and networks such as MSNBC, NBCSN, CBS Sports Net, ESPN and its rash of sister networks, Fox News, the Weather Channel, and countless more emerged. Where up to the 1970s most stations signed off overnight, and those that didn’t usually relied on old programming overnight, by the middle of the decade overnight broadcasting was the norm. By the end of the twentieth century few channels signed off, and the test pattern was relegated to history.
News reporting on the 24 hour channels was replaced in many instances with opinion programs interlaced with occasional reports of breaking news by news correspondents, or reduced to a crawler at the bottom or top of the screen, which gave updates on current stories while the on-air personality opined on one subject or another. Nearly all news channels deservedly developed a reputation for political slant, created by the stars of the network, and television news began to become distrusted, other than that of the network which presented an opinion favorable to that of the viewer. Where once the networks were required to clearly announce when they were expressing an opinion, rather than a fact, whole programs appeared as news where the material presented was not factually supported.