This Week in Television History: March 2025 PART III

    

March 24, 1980

The late-night news program Nightline, anchored by Ted Koppel, airs for the first time on ABC.

The show that would become Nightline first aired during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, during which Iranians seized the U.S. embassy in Iran, taking 66 Americans hostage. To cover the story as it unfolded, ABC debuted a late-night news show called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, which was normally anchored by Fred Reynolds. When the crisis ended, the show became a more general news show called Nightline and Koppel, who had already worked for ABC News in various capacities since 1963, became its anchor.

Throughout its tenure on television, Nightline has aired five nights a week at 11:30 p.m., competing with NBC’s The Tonight Show and CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman for viewers during much of that time. Despite some threats of cancellation over the years, Koppel’s professionalism and the show’s unique mix of long-format interviews and investigative journalism kept the show popular with audiences. Nightline remains the only news show of its genre to air every weeknight.

In November 2005, Ted Koppel left Nightline; he was replaced by the three-anchor team of Martin Bashir, Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran. The program also introduced a new multi-topic format. In the past, each show had concentrated on a single topic.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa