The National (TV program)
The National is a Canadian national television news program which serves as the flagship broadcast for the English-language news division of CBC News by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It reports on major Canadian and international news stories, airing on CBC Television stations nationwide Sunday to Friday at 10:00 p.m. local time.
The program is also aired on CBC News Network; on weekdays, the initial version that airs live to Atlantic Canada on the main network is simulcast on CBC News Network at 9:00 p.m. ET, with several repeat broadcasts overnight. Until August 2005, The National was seen in the United States on the defunct Newsworld International channel; the program continues to be aired occasionally on C-SPAN when that network wants to provide coverage of a major Canadian news story, or a Canadian angle for a world or American event.
The National and other CBC newscasts, including CBC owned-and-operated stations' early-evening local newscasts, are streamed on the CBC website; those residing outside of Canada may not be able to view some content. The show is also aired in Australia on SBS and made available on SBS ON Demand.
The National's sister French-language newscast is Le Téléjournal, aired on the Radio-Canada TV network.
Format
The National used to run a news headlines segment for 20 to 25 minutes without commercial interruption. This format has been relaxed or reinstated at various points over the years. Subsequent segments would consist of documentaries or other feature reports, either in the form of a separate program or as additional segments of the main program.The opening segment generally runs 15 to 20 minutes, followed by additional segments of varying length featuring additional stories, features, or panel discussions. Long-form documentaries or feature reports are not as common as they were prior to 2009, but are featured from time to time, particularly during the Friday and Sunday editions. The broadcast contains some live inserts but some of the broadcast's segments are taped prior to the program's airtime. The anchor begins every broadcast by saying "Thanks for joining us" or "Thank you for joining us". Because of the length and the story count of the first two segments, the anchor concludes the first segment of the broadcast by saying "We're back in two" and the second segment of the broadcast by saying "The National breaks down the stories shaping our world, next" or "The National takes you deeper into the stories shaping our world, next". Since 2023, the news segment of the show has been followed by a segment called "The Breakdown". The anchor begins the segment by saying "Now it's time to dig deeper into the stories shaping our world." The program concludes with a final segment called "The Moment".
From October 2009 to September 2012, weekday airings on CBC O&Os ended at 10:55 p.m. with the anchor handing over to 10-minute local news bulletins that overlapped the normal 11:00 p.m. start time of the competing CTV National News. On CBC News Network, the weekday editions continued to run a full hour during this period; separate final segments, both pre-taped, were used for the 55- and 60-minute versions. Private affiliates, some of which had already been airing 11:00 p.m. local newscasts prior to the implementation of the 55-minute format, had the option of carrying either the 55- or 60-minute version. On September 17, 2012, with many CBC O&Os extending late local news to 30 minutes, The National reverted to a single 60-minute format on weeknights and Sundays.
From 2009 to 2017, a 30-minute Saturday edition of The National generally aired on CBC Television at 6:00 p.m. ET during the season of Hockey Night in Canada, and 6:00 local otherwise, with updated editions throughout the evening on CBC News Network. However, beginning in the early 2010s, most CBC stations in eastern Canada began to carry local newscasts in that timeslot instead, or used a local opt-out at 6:20 ET. Just before the fall 2017 relaunch, the Saturday edition was discontinued altogether in favour of additional segments of CBC News Network's rolling coverage, with the 6:00 p.m. ET segment, simulcast on CBC Television in western Canada, serving as the CBC's de facto network TV newscast of record on Saturdays.
History
The National began as The National News in 1954. Since 1952, there had been a five-minute national news bulletin on the fledgling CBC Television service - each bulletin would be read by a different reader, which the CBC's management realised resulted in a disjoined broadcast. Program director Mavor Moore decided to choose a single newsreader for the program in order to create continuity. He hired veteran radio newsman Larry Henderson to anchor the broadcast which soon expanded to a nightly thirteen-minute program airing at 11 pm. Henderson, who had hoped to become Canada's answer to Edward R. Murrow, had spent several years travelling the world with his Headliners radio broadcast. He proved a temperamental newsreader who would occasionally swear on the air, respond in anger to cues to speed up his reading, and once walked off the set when a filmed segment was not ready on cue.Henderson left the broadcast in 1959 and was succeeded by Earl Cameron, who had been presenter of the National News Bulletin on the CBC's main radio service, the Trans-Canada Network, since 1944. Changes in the philosophy of CBC News led to Cameron, a professional announcer rather than a journalist, being replaced by journalist Stanley Burke, in 1966.
Though journalists were now reading the news, union regulations required a journalist acting as news anchor to leave the journalists' union and join the announcers' union and thus prohibited the anchor from doing anything other than reading a script written by others. Burke anchored the show from 1966 until 1969 when he resigned in order to launch a public campaign on the Biafran civil war. Burke was replaced by Warren Davis, at which point the show was renamed The National and the program was broadcast in colour. From 1970, the program was anchored by Lloyd Robertson until he was hired away by the CTV Television Network, the CBC's rival, in 1976, largely as a result of Robertson's frustration at not being able to participate in the writing of the newscast due to union rules.
Peter Kent hosted the show for two years and, because he had worked as a senior correspondent with CBC News Magazine and The National, he was allowed to report and write and anchor The National and CBC News Specials before leaving to return to work as a foreign correspondent. In 1978, Knowlton Nash—who had been director of news and current affairs, three management levels above being Kent's supervisor—became the newscast's new anchor, after winning an audition process whose result was upheld in arbitration. Inaccurate news reports had claimed Nash appointed himself to the role. During Nash's tenure, the CBC was able to win formal concessions from its unions allowing working journalists to read the news, allowing Nash to assume the title of "Chief Correspondent" for CBC News. This allowed him to participate in the writing of the show's script as well as act as a news editor with influence over the stories selected for the newscast and other questions of editorial judgment. Nash stepped down as chief anchor in 1988 and was replaced by Peter Mansbridge.
On January 11, 1982, The National was relaunched in the 10:00 p.m. timeslot with a modernized design and format. The Journal, a program that covered news stories in greater depth using interviews and documentaries, followed it at 10:22 p.m.
One of the hosts of The Journal from the beginning was Barbara Frum, who quickly became a symbol of CBC News as she was not afraid to tackle the toughest and most controversial of issues. Frum died of chronic leukemia on March 26, 1992. Her final interview was with Canadian author Mordecai Richler, which took place just days before her death.
That same year, the CBC, which was undergoing major changes, replaced The National and The Journal with Prime Time News, an integrated package which aired at 9:00 p.m. with two hosts, Mansbridge and Pamela Wallin. However, the show fared poorly in the ratings, resulting in the competing CTV National News overtaking the CBC in national news ratings for the first time in its history, and returned to the 10 p.m. time slot in 1994. During this time, the title The National was retained by a separate newscast on CBC Newsworld, hosted by Alison Smith.
In 1995, the main-network program reverted to the name The National, hosted by Mansbridge, and was followed by The National Magazine, hosted by Hana Gartner. Brian Stewart later took the helm of the second program, which was retitled The Magazine. It continued as a pseudo-separate program until the start of the federal election campaign of fall 2000, when the second half-hour was turned over to additional election coverage hosted by Mansbridge, under the moniker "Behind the Ballot". However, The Magazine did not return after the election, and Mansbridge continued to anchor the full hour. In early 2001, this integrated format was introduced as part of a revamp of the program; for a time, the latter part of the hour was often titled Documentary, on nights when such were featured; on other occasions, feature reports and/or panel discussions would be featured instead. The program acquired a new look and format in the eventful fall of that year with the CBC's latest corporate redesign.
Beginning in the late 1990s, in an effort to provide an 11:00 p.m. alternative to the now-dominant CTV National News, the CBC's owned-and-operated stations would repeat the news headline portion of The National at 11:00 p.m., followed by a half-hour local newscast at 11:30. This practice ended in October 2006, when The Hour began airing in that timeslot. Most private affiliates of the CBC did not broadcast the 11 p.m. airing.
"The National Online" debuted on the web on March 21, 1996. The interactive website initially made "available both information about the program and more in-depth content to supplement what we broadcast on television." Later that year the website added news "headlines and very short summaries that got updated about once a day - but that's how online news got started at CBC."
On January 9, 2006, The National adopted a new look as part of a major rebranding for CBC News, stemming mainly from an extensive study by the CBC into how to make news programming more relevant, particularly in the face of stiff competition from CTV National News and Global National. The rebranding had been scheduled for September 2005 but was postponed because of the lengthy lockout that had just concluded at that time. The primary colour of CBC News shifted from blue to red, not unlike BBC News.
The CBC in summer 2006 briefly and controversially aired The National at 11 p.m. on Tuesday nights in the Eastern Time Zone, in order to simulcast the American airing of The One: Making a Music Star. The One received very low ratings on both ABC and CBC, and after two weeks The National returned to airing at 10 p.m. five nights a week as of July 31, 2006.
In May 2007, The National launched a redesigned website featuring the latest broadcast, recent documentaries, and an extensive online archive that opens the floor for comments from the viewers. There is also a behind-the-scenes blog and video bios on many of the reporters.
In December 2008, it was announced that as part of a larger series of planned changes surrounding CBC News, Saturday Report and Sunday Night were to be replaced by weekend editions of The National in 2009, citing that The National had better brand awareness than other CBC News properties. These changes took effect in September 2009; as with its predecessor, a half-hour version of the Saturday-night edition was still scheduled at 6 p.m. ET during the NHL season as a lead-in to Hockey Night in Canadas pre-game show.
Mansbridge, as chief correspondent for CBC News, remained the regular weeknight anchor until 2017, normally hosting from Monday to Thursday, but hosting other nights if a significant news event occurred. Mansbridge also regularly anchored on Fridays until the late 2000s; although CBC primetime promos on Fridays in the early 2010s often indicated that Mansbridge was the regular anchor that night as well, by that point Wendy Mesley was usually substituting, and she was later made the permanent Friday anchor. Mesley had also been the Sunday anchor since September 2010, essentially a reprisal of her tenure as anchor of Sunday Report in the early 1990s, while Asha Tomlinson was the last regular Saturday anchor.