ABC NEWS NIGHTLINE
ABC, 11:35 p.m. ET
ABC News Nightline began in 1979 as a late-night 11:30 p.m. ET news program reacting to an ongoing crisis, with Ted Koppel anchoring nightly reports, initially focused on the hostage crisis in Iran. Eventually, Nightline outlasted that single-topic focus. Decades later, the program, was shifted to after midnight, so Jimmy Kimmel could compete more directly with the other network’s late-night major-league hosts. But now, in the course of the coronavirus epidemic, ABC wisely has moved Nightline back to its original time slot opposite the late local news, and announced that, for now, the virus news will be its sole nightly focus. Good call.