Channel 4 News (United States)


Channel 4 News is the name shared by various local newscasts - primarily NBC affiliates - throughout the United States. The branding is a successor to the NewsCenter brand. It is not to be confused with British news programme Channel 4 News.

History

Beginning circa 1974, the NewsCenter brand and program format for local newscasts was distributed among NBC-owned stations and affiliates as a response to the rising popularity of Eyewitness News, created by Westinghouse Broadcasting and popularized further by ABC-owned stations; and Action News, which originated at Capital Cities Communications.
In 1982, WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. moved away from the NewsCenter branding, a move that other NBC stations mirrored in the subsequent years. By 1985, the Channel 4 News name had spread to KNBC in Los Angeles. KCNC-TV in Denver and WTVJ in Miami, both of which were acquired by NBC later in the decade, switched to the Channel 4 News name as well. KNBC used the Channel 4 News name until summer 2011, when the station changed its newscast title to NBC 4 News. WNBC in New York City, although it used the NewsCenter brand from 1974 to 1980, did not use the Channel 4 News brand, instead adopting its own brand, News 4 New York, in 1980.
NBC stations and affiliates not on channel 4 also began using variations of the Channel 4 News name: WMAQ-TV in Chicago named its newscasts Channel 5 News, WKYC-TV in Cleveland took the Channel 3 News name, and WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, New York, one of the last to adopt the phrase, uses Channel 2 News.
The newscast theme used on KNBC, WRC, and several other NBC affiliates with the Channel News branding was an updated version of composer Michael G. Randall's NewsCenter Theme. KNBC's current version of the NewsCenter Theme was composed by Groove Addicts, Inc.