ABSTRACT
All-news, twenty-four-hour television channels may be taken for granted today, but in 1980, when the Cable News Network (CNN) pioneered the first all-news service, it profoundly changed the character of American TV news. Executives at the traditional networks tended not to say that at the time, perhaps because CNN’s effects were not so obvious at first. Allnews television’s influence, moreover, went far beyond its ratings, which were-and remain today-only a small fraction of the ratings of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox.
