closing thought

I wasn’t aware, until consulting our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari, that the US staple news programme Nightline whose format has been copied the world over had its premiere in November 1979, and was begun under quite different auspices.
At first, it was not presented and packaged as a feature segment to examine different topics more in depth, but rather it aired as a special broadcast, anchored by the network’s State Department correspondent Ted Koppel, to recap the day’s events regarding the Iranian hostage crisis—and to compete with rival late night talk- and variety-shows for viewership. By the time the hostages were released 444 days later, Nightline was firmly entrenched as an evening’s alternative to monologues, soliloquies and celebrity guests.