PBS News Hour


PBS News Hour is an American daily evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS member stations since October 20, 1975. Previously stylized as PBS NewsHour, the nightly broadcast is known for its in-depth coverage of important issues and current events. The hourlong weekday editions have been anchored by Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett since January 2, 2023. The half-hour PBS News Weekend editions were anchored by John Yang from December 31, 2022 to January 11, 2026.
Broadcasts are produced by PBS member station WETA-TV in Washington, D.C., from its studio facilities in Arlington, Virginia. From 2019 to 2025, news updates inserted into the weekday broadcasts targeted viewers in the Western United States and online have been anchored by Stephanie Sy, originating from the Walter Cronkite [School of Journalism and Mass Communication] at Arizona State University. Additional production facilities for the program are based in San Francisco and Denver. The program is a collaboration between WETA-TV and PBS member station WNET in New York City, along with KQED in San Francisco, KETC in St. Louis, and WTTW in Chicago.
The program debuted in 1975 as The Robert MacNeil Report before being renamed The MacNeil/Lehrer Report one year later. It was anchored by Robert MacNeil from WNET's studios and Jim Lehrer from WETA's studios. In 1983, the show was rebranded as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and then The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer following MacNeil's departure in 1995. It was then renamed to its current PBS NewsHour title in 2009, two years before Lehrer left in 2011. Originally, the program only aired on weekdays before weekend editions began in 2013. Production of the weekend broadcasts were solely produced by WNET, before the New York City station transferred all of its PBS NewsHour involvement to WETA in April 2022.

History

Ownership

In September 1981, production of the program was taken over by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a partnership between Robert MacNeil, Jim Lehrer, and Gannett; the latter sold its stake in the production company in 1986. John C. Malone's Liberty Media bought a 67% controlling equity stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions in 1994, but MacNeil and Lehrer retained editorial control. In 2014, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, owned by MacNeil, Lehrer, and Liberty Media announced its donation, as NewsHour Productions LLC, to WETA-TV as a nonprofit subsidiary.

''The Robert MacNeil Report'' and ''The MacNeil/Lehrer Report'' (1975–1983)

In 1973, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer teamed up to cover the United States Senate's Watergate hearings for PBS. They earned an Emmy Award for their unprecedented gavel-to-gavel coverage.
This recognition led to the creation of The Robert MacNeil Report, a half-hour local news program on WNET, which debuted on October 20, 1975; each episode of the program covered a single issue in depth. On December 1, 1975, the program began to air on PBS stations nationwide. It was renamed The MacNeil/Lehrer Report on September 6, 1976. Most editions employed a two-anchor, two-city format, with MacNeil based in New York City and Lehrer at WETA's studios in Arlington, Virginia. Charlayne Hunter-Gault joined the series as a correspondent in 1977, serving as a substitute host for MacNeil and Lehrer whenever either had the night off. She became the series' national correspondent in 1983.

''The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour'' and ''The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer'' (1983–2009)

Having decided to start competing with the nightly news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC instead of complementing them, the program expanded to one hour on September 5, 1983, incorporating other changes, such as the introduction of "documentary reportage from the field"; it became known at that time as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Lester Crystal was its founding executive producer. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions twice planned to launch late-night newscasts in 1995 and 1999; in both instances, the proposed expansions—which, respectively, were to have involved production and newsgathering partnerships with Wall Street Journal Television and The New York Times—were canceled mid-development.
MacNeil retired from the program on October 20, 1995, leaving Lehrer as the sole anchor. Accordingly, the program was renamed The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on October 23. On January 16, 1996, The NewsHour announced the creation of its official website at PBS Online. The NewsHour won a Peabody Award in 2003 for the feature report Jobless Recovery: Non-Working Numbers. On May 17, 1999, The NewsHour adopted a new graphics package with refreshed music from 1983, plus the new studio with a blue globe in the middle. On October 4, 1999, Gwen Ifill and Ray Suarez joined The NewsHour team as new correspondents. Ifill was a female anchor of a national nightly news program on broadcast television. Effective January 17, 2000, The NewsHour added "America Online Keyword: PBS" to its ending screen for a three-year agreement through April 22, 2003. For only the website, the program took effect on April 23, 2003. On March 3, 2003, the program added dates from the 1999 graphics in the beginning. On November 17, 2003, The NewsHour added music in the beginning with dates.
On May 17, 2006, the program underwent its first major change in presentation in years, adopting a new graphics package and a reorchestrated version of its theme music. On December 17, 2007, the NewsHour became the second nightly broadcast network newscast to begin broadcasting in high definition, with broadcasts in a letterboxed format for viewers with standard-definition television sets watching via either cable or satellite television. The program also introduced a new set and converted its graphics package to HD.

''PBS NewsHour''

Departure of Jim Lehrer and switch to co-anchors (2009–2013)

On May 11, 2009, PBS announced that the program would be revamped on December 7 of that year under a revised title, the PBS NewsHour. In addition to increased integration between the NewsHour website and nightly broadcast, the updated production returned to a two-anchor format. Lehrer described the overhaul as the first phase in his move toward retirement.
On September 27, 2010, PBS NewsHour was presented with the Chairman's Award at the 31st [News & Documentary Emmy Awards], with MacNeil, Lehrer, Crystal, and former executive producer Linda Winslow receiving the award on the show's behalf.
Lehrer formally ended his tenure as a regular anchor of the program on June 6, 2011. He continued to occasionally anchor on Fridays, when he usually led the political analysis segment with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and The New York Times columnist David Brooks, until December 30, 2011. PBS NewsHour continues with various anchors until September 6, 2013.

Transfer of production, expansion to weekends and the west (2013–present)

On August 6, 2013, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff were named co-anchors and co-managing editors of the NewsHour. They shared anchor duties on the Monday through Thursday editions, with Woodruff anchoring solo on Fridays due to Ifill's duties as host of the political discussion program Washington Week, which was also produced Friday evenings.
For much of its history, the PBS NewsHour aired only Monday through Friday, but in March 2013, plans to expand the program to include Saturday and Sunday editions were under development. PBS NewsHour announced that the weekend editions of the program would premiere on September 7, 2013, with Hari Sreenivasan serving as anchor. Although they aired for a half-hour, the weekend broadcasts were branded with a modified program name, PBS NewsHour Weekend. The program was based on the duration of WNET's involvement with the program. From the weekend broadcasts' debut until the March 27, 2022 edition, the Saturday and Sunday editions originated from the Tisch/WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, rather than the program's main production facilities at the Arlington, Virginia, studios of WETA-TV.
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions announced in October 2013 that it had offered to transfer ownership in the PBS NewsHour to WETA. Lehrer and MacNeil cited their reduced involvement with the program's production since their departures from anchoring, as well as "the probability of increasing our fundraising abilities." WETA's board of trustees approved the transfer on June 17, 2014, and it took effect on July 1. At that time, NewsHour Productions, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of WETA, took over production of the program. WETA also acquired MacNeil/Lehrer Productions' archives, documentaries, and projects, though not the company's name. PBS NewsHour Weekend was not affected by the ownership transfer and continued to be produced by WNET until 2022 when the program moved back to Washington.
On July 20, 2015, the PBS NewsHour introduced an overhauled visual appearance for its weekday broadcasts, debuting a new minimalist set designed by Eric Siegel and George Allison that heavily incorporates PBS's longtime "Everyman" logo. The program also introduced a new graphics package by Troika Design Group and original theme music by Edd Kalehoff, which incorporates a reorchestration of the nine-note "Question and Answer" musical signature that has been featured in the program's theme since its premiere in 1975 and a musical signature originally incorporated into the Kalehoff-composed theme for the Nightly Business Report used from 2002 to 2010. PBS NewsHour Weekend retained its original graphics package and the theme music by David Cebert and Bernard Hoffer until August 29, 2015, when it transitioned to the same theme music and a reworked version of the graphics package used for the weekday broadcasts.
Ifill took brief breaks from her NewsHour anchor duties in the late spring and in November 2016, as she had been undergoing treatment for advanced stage breast and endometrial cancer. After her death was announced on November 14, 2016, that evening's edition of the PBS NewsHour was dedicated to Ifill and her influence on journalism, featuring tributes from Woodruff, Sreenivasan, former colleagues and program contributors. Although the program initially featured guest anchors on some editions between January and March 2017, Woodruff went on to become sole anchor.
The Plastic Problem aired in 2018 and went on to win a Peabody Award, presented at List of [Peabody Award winners #2019|the 2019 ceremony].
PBS NewsHour West launched on October 14, 2019, a regional bureau affiliated with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in Phoenix. Anchored by Stephanie Sy, the bureau produces its own news summary with up-to-date information on events that develop after the original broadcast. A version of the program with this summary is shown to viewers in the Western United States and to online and East Coast viewers watching re-broadcasts. The program PBS NewsHour West ended on December 19, 2025.
On April 2, 2022, WETA assumed production responsibilities for the show's Saturday and Sunday editions, which concurrently began originating from the studio at the station's Washington facility used for the weekday broadcasts. The broadcasts were retitled PBS News Weekend, with respect to their shorter duration. NewsHour Productions transferred production of the weekend broadcasts from WNET in a move to streamline the program's production and news-gathering resources, allowing the weekday and weekend news broadcasts to have the same pool of correspondents and to share resources with Washington Week. Coinciding with the move, the weekend editions began carrying feature segments covering culture and the arts. Sreenivasan was initially replaced as weekend anchor by former NBC News and MSNBC correspondent Geoff Bennett, until John Yang was established as the weekend anchor beginning December 31, 2022.
Woodruff announced in May 2022 that she would step down as anchor at the end of the year, with plans for ongoing reporting on longer pieces as well as WETA projects and specials. Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett were named Woodruff's successors. Woodruff made her final anchor broadcast on December 30, 2022, while Nawaz and Bennett co-anchored their first broadcast on January 2, 2023.
PBS News Weekly, a digital-only half-hour series of News Hour segments from the prior week, premiered on December 15, 2023, initially hosted by Nick Schifrin and broadcast on Fridays.
PBS News Hour introduced a new logo and the new studio on June 10, 2024, now featuring the current PBS logo, with the program's graphics rendered in the system's proprietary PBS Sans typeface family introduced in 2019. At the same time, the program's longstanding use of camel case in its name was discontinued, with "NewsHour" becoming "News Hour", in conjunction with the network's rebranding news operation as PBS News.
For the first time in over 40 years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was not among the sponsors for the show on July 21, 2025. Nawaz and Bennett addressed the absence at the end of that night's broadcast. Among the impact of funding cuts, News Hour West ceased operations on December 19, 2025, and News Hour Weekend aired its last episode on January 11, 2026. PBS News is replacing the weekend show with two new current affairs programs: Horizons hosted by William Brangham and Compass Points hosted by Nick Schifrin.

Production and ratings

PBS News Hour is notable for being shown on public television, as there are no interruptions for commercial advertisements. But, like most public television programming, there are "corporate image" advertisements at the beginning and end of each broadcast; and there may be "barker" interruptions during locally produced pledge drives that ask viewers to donate to their local PBS member station or member network. Those stations not programming a pledge drive typically provide encore presentations from their archives.
The program has a more deliberate pace than the news broadcasts of the commercial networks it competes against, allowing for deeper detail in its story packages and feature segments. At the start of the program, the lead story is covered in depth, followed by a news summary that lasts roughly between six and eight minutes, briefly explaining many of the top national and international news headlines; international stories often include excerpts of reports filed by ITN correspondents. This is usually followed by three or four longer news segments, typically running six to twelve minutes, which explore a few of the events mentioned in the headline segment in depth and include discussions with experts, newsmakers, and/or commentators. The program formerly included a reflective essay on a regular basis, but these have been curtailed in recent years; since Woodruff and Ifill became anchors, these essays have mainly aired as part of the end-of-show segment "Brief, but Spectacular".
On Fridays, the program features political analysis and discussion between two regular contributors, one from each of the Republican and Democratic parties, and one host from among the senior correspondents. Since January 2021, the usual participants have been MS NOW co-host Jonathan Capehart and The New York Times columnist David Brooks. Analysts who fill in when Capehart or Brooks are absent have included David Gergen, Thomas Oliphant, Rich Lowry, William Kristol, Ramesh Ponnuru, Ruth Marcus, Michael Gerson, David Corn and E. J. Dionne. On Mondays, a similar segment, "Politics Monday", features analysis and discussion of political issues with contributors Amy Walter, national editor of The Cook Political Report, and Tamara Keith, Washington, D.C. correspondent for NPR.
The program's senior correspondents are Woodruff and Jeffrey Brown. Essayists have included Anne Taylor Fleming, Richard Rodriguez, Clarence Page and Roger Rosenblatt. Correspondents have been Tom Bearden, Betty Ann Bowser, Susan Dentzer, Elizabeth Farnsworth, Kwame Holman, Spencer Michels, Fred de Sam Lazaro, the economics correspondent Paul Solman, Malcolm Brabant and others.
Lehrer and Ifill were frequent moderators of U.S. political debates. By November 2008, Lehrer had moderated more than ten debates between major U.S. presidential candidates. In 2008, Ifill moderated a debate between U.S. vice presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin; in 2004, she moderated a debate between candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards.
According to Nielsen ratings at the program's website, 2.7 million people watch the program each night, and 8 million watch in the course of a week.

Honor Roll segment

On March 31, 2003, after the U.S.–led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the PBS News Hour began what it called its "Honor Roll", a short segment displaying in silence the picture, name, rank, and hometown of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. On January 4, 2006, military personnel killed in Afghanistan were added to the segment. PBS NewsHour aired the final honor roll segment on August 30, 2021, after the end of War in Afghanistan.

Availability

The PBS News Hour is broadcast on more than 350 PBS member stations and member networks, making it available to 99% of the viewing public, and audio from the program is broadcast by some NPR radio stations. It is also rebroadcast twice daily in late night via American Public Television's World digital subchannel service. Broadcasts of the PBS News Hour are also made available worldwide via satellites operated by various agencies such as the Voice of America.
A limited number of PBS member stations and regional member networks do not clear the PBS News Hour on their schedules due to existing carriage on a "primary" PBS member station, a pool mainly confined to "secondary" stations that share certain media markets with a "primary" member outlet. These include the NJ PBS network in New Jersey ; KVCR-DT in San Bernardino, California; and WYIN in Gary, Indiana. In Boston, WGBH-TV airs the program live each weeknight, while its secondary station WGBX rebroadcasts the weekday editions later the same evening, and the weekend editions live; a similar case exists in New York City but in reverse, where WLIW airs the weekday and weekend editions of the PBS News Hour live while WNET airs them on a tape delay. KQED in San Francisco airs the program each weeknight in simulcast with its radio sister at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time, in addition to airing the Western Edition on television at 6:00 p.m. PT. Similarly, KCET in Los Angeles, which shares ownership with KOCE-TV in Huntington Beach through parent Public Media Group of Southern California, carries the live feed at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time, while KOCE-TV airs the 6:00 p.m. Western Edition; both stations thus serve together as the program's carrier in the Los Angeles market. Unusually for many years, the secondary station of Milwaukee PBS, WMVT, carried the program as part of an early-evening news block with the Nightly Business Report, and half-hour international newscasts from Deutsche Welle and World News">World (TV channel)">World News, due to an expanded schedule of PBS Kids and local-interest programming on WMVS; this has since been rectified with the launch of the all-hours PBS Kids subchannel network.
Archives of shows broadcast after February 7, 2000, are available in several streaming media formats at the program's website. The show is available to overseas military personnel on the American Forces Network. Audio from selected segments is also released in podcast form, available through several feeds on the PBS News Hours subscriptions page with link to a FeedBurner website and through podcast services such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and among others.

Livestreaming

The PBS News Hour is streamed live on the program's YouTube channel at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time each weeknight, with the Western edition also streaming live at 9:00 p.m. ET. PBS News Weekend is also streamed on the YouTube channel live Saturdays and Sundays at 5:00 p.m. ET. Full episodes are available later on the PBS News YouTube channel and on the program's dedicated page on PBS's website.
The News Hour was also livestreamed on Ustream until IBM Watson Media discontinued free livestreaming on the platform on September 17, 2018. The News Hour has also provided livestreaming of special events, most notably streaming the January 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump on the program's Twitter account.

International broadcasts

On December 4, 2009, when introducing the new PBS NewsHour format, Lehrer read a list of guidelines for what he called "MacNeil/Lehrer journalism":
  • "Do nothing I cannot defend."
  • "Cover, write, and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me."
  • "Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story."
  • "Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am."
  • "Assume the same about all people on whom I report."
  • "Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise."
  • "Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything."
  • "Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions."
  • "No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously."
  • "And finally, I am not in the entertainment business."

    On-air staff

Current

Anchors

Critical response

PBS News Hour has received generally positive reviews from television critics, children, and parents of young children. Patrick Kevin Day of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff are making history on PBS." David Leonard and Micah Schwalb of The [Denver Post] wrote, "One of the most trusted news programs on television." Phil Owen of TheWrap wrote, "The least partisan analysis." Tim Surette of TV Guide wrote, "The calm and credible information we need." Jennifer Gerson of The 19th wrote, "Nawaz is stepping into history."
In 2003, UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and Missouri economist Jeff Milyo evaluated various media programs based on "think tank" citations to map liberal versus conservative media slants and published a study alleging liberal media bias in general. Based on their research, PBS News Hour is the most centrist news program on television and the closest to a truly objective stance. However, their methodology has been questioned.

FAIR study

In October 2006, the media criticism group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting accused the PBS News Hour of lacking balance, diversity, and viewpoints of the general public, and for presenting corporate viewpoints. FAIR found that the PBS News Hours guest list from October 2005 to March 2006 had Republicans outnumbering Democrats 2–1, and minorities accounting for 15 percent of U.S.-based sources. FAIR also protested in 1995 when Liberty Media purchased a majority of the program, citing Liberty's majority owner, John Malone, for his "Machiavellian business tactics" and right-wing sentiments.
News Hour executive producer Linda Winslow responded to many aspects:
She also accused FAIR of counting sound bites as interviews, thereby skewing their numbers toward the political party holding a majority.

Partnership with NPR

The PBS News Hour partnered with NPR for the broadcast of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 2016, in a strategy to prepare for the election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.