All News Channel

All News Channel (ANC) is a former American satellite television news channel & a website that was a joint venture between Viacom and CONUS Communications, itself a division of Hubbard Broadcasting. The channel was carried mainly on direct-broadcast satellite provider DirecTV (and prior to that, USSB, which was folded into DirecTV in 1999). All News Channel's programming was also syndicated to television stations across the United States. The channel was headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, out of the facility of Hubbard's flagship station KSTP-TV (channel 5), the ABC affiliate for the Minneapolis–St. Paul market. The channel ceased broadcasting on September 30, 2002.

History
All News Channel was launched on November 30, 1989, through a partnership formed between Viacom and Hubbard (structured as a joint venture between CONUS Communications {CONUS being an acronym for Continental U.S.}, a division of Hubbard, and Viacom's Showtime Satellite Services); CONUS was a news video-sharing cooperative service for local television stations nationwide, particularly those affiliated with a major broadcast network. Nearly all of ANC's video came from these stations, who in turn utilized satellite news-gathering trucks that had been invented, built and sold by Hubbard beginning in 1984. CONUS also maintained a small news bureau in Washington, D.C. It was the second nationwide challenger to established cable news channel CNN after the Satellite News Channel (SNC), as well as the first since SNC folded in 1983.

However, All News Channel, like many other cable networks, struggled with cable carriage throughout its existence; indeed, the service was mainly targeted at home satellite dish users, while sales material for ANC largely focused on the ability for broadcast stations to use ANC programming to fill holes in their schedules, as a replacement for programming blacked out by SyndEx restrictions, or as part of localized news services. Beginning in 1992, ANC switched to an all-barter syndication model (having been previously offered on a cash-plus-barter basis) via All-American Television, in part as a defensive strategy against network-supplied overnight newscasts. The channel's reach was boosted in 1994 when Hubbard Broadcasting launched United States Satellite Broadcasting (USSB), including ANC as the direct-broadcast satellite service's only option for news; CNN and other news channels were carried on DirecTV, the proprietor of the Digital Satellite System (DSS) that USSB also utilized to transmit its services.

All News Channel/CONUS also produced news content for third parties. Beginning in January 1991 as a response to the Gulf War, All News Channel produced daily news updates that aired on Showtime (at the time, owned by ANC co-parent Viacom and also partially responsible for management and distribution of ANC) during the premium channel's prime time promotional breaks. The channel also produced USA Updates for USA Network from 1993 to 2000 (these were originally produced at KYW-TV in Philadelphia beginning in January 1989, but cutbacks at Group W resulted in the cessation of the Newsfeed Network satellite video service, which the USA Update segments were produced through, and the sale of its assets to CNN ). From 1991 to 1994, VH1 (also owned by Viacom) carried All News Channel-produced interstitials during the morning music video block Hits, News & Weather. ANC also produced the syndicated morning business news program First Business, before its national distribution rights were transferred to MGM Television shortly after ANC's shutdown, as well as other longform syndicated programming, including The American Times (a daily evening newscast that was primarily carried nationally on America One) and On the Money (a financial analysis program intended to air on weekends).

All News Channel was never profitable throughout its history and could not withstand the challenges of MSNBC and Fox News Channel (both launched in 1996), which pushed ANC to fifth place in the ratings—behind Headline News—among all cable news channels. (Ironically, then-News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch made an offer to buy ANC and CONUS from the Hubbards, who would ultimately refuse, to serve as the cornerstone for what would become FNC. ) ANC benefited in part by being the only news channel on the USSB satellite service, though arguably any advantage enjoyed by ANC was undercut by the fact that many USSB subscribers also subscribed to DirecTV and vice-versa; after USSB merged into DirecTV, it was then one of six such channels (alongside CNN/Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC and Newsworld International), and it no longer had the explicit backing of its satellite provider.

CONUS itself began to be squeezed out of the newsgathering marketplace by rival CNN Newsource, as well as the major networks' own affiliate news services (ABC NewsOne, CBS Newspath and NBC News Channel). As a result, Hubbard announced the closure of CONUS' newsgathering operations in the fall of 2002 (by which time CONUS only had 100 or so affiliates, down from a self-imposed limit of 125 in 1999); Hubbard continued to maintain their videotape archives and sell transponder time. (A trio of ex-CONUS employees then partnered to buy some of CONUS' assets, including a satellite truck, to form ARCTEK Satellite Productions in January 2003.  ) The closure of CONUS also meant the closure of All News Channel, which shut down on September 30, 2002, with veteran anchor Stan Turner thanking those watching and those behind the scenes; stations that carried ANC have since replaced the channel's programming with syndicated and/or paid programming (especially common with NBC stations as the network no longer has an overnight newscast since NBC Nightside ended in 1998) or have expanded their clearance of overnight news programs supplied by their affiliated network.

Format
ANC aired up to five live half-hour newscasts each day (airing at 4:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m., noon, 4:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m. Central Time, with an occasional sixth at 4:30 a.m.), with each edition being repeated until the next live newscast aired; however, exceptions to this set scheduling were made for major breaking news stories.

If mistakes were made during the live broadcasts, a corrected segment would be produced (sometimes live) for the repeat broadcasts. ANC operated on a fixed schedule, where each news block ran the same length every day, and commercials (which consisted mainly of direct response advertisements, and by the mid-1990s, promos for USSB's – and later DirecTV's – slate of general entertainment and premium channels; the latter type of ads were also seen on some stations that carried the channel's programming at times) aired at the same time every day. The on-air talent was mostly exclusive to All News Channel, though some anchors from Hubbard flagship station KSTP also served as ANC anchors, most notably Stan Turner, who worked for the network from 1992 until its closure; KSTP producers also recorded weather segments for All News Channel until 2002. Later, ANC show producers voiced their own weather segments, along with other stories.

Broadcast television stations in many markets carried All News Channel programming during the overnight hours in lieu of signing off, or scheduling movies, infomercials or other syndicated programming to fill overnight and early morning timeslots (similar to the overnight carriage of Headline News that was also common among stations during the same timeframe). In later years, as NBC, ABC and CBS launched their own overnight news programs (NBC Nightside, World News Now and Up to the Minute respectively), ANC programming continued to air on many of their affiliates—including Hubbard-owned stations—as a complement to these programs and also to provide an overnight news option on weekends, when no such option was offered (outside of Nightside during its 1991–98 run); some Hubbard stations ran ANC as a substitute for their affiliated network's overnight newscasts—including KSTP, which offered ANC programming overnights from January 1990 until ANC ceased operations in September 2002, when it began clearing ABC's World News Now (which had been preempted in the Minneapolis–St. Paul market since its August 1991 debut) as a replacement. (From January 1990 to October 1994, KSTP offered ANC programming and live locally produced newscasts in rotating half-hour blocks, as part of an overnight news block branded as Eyewitness News All Night.) In addition, since ANC's newscasts never contained any copyrighted music (by design), stations broadcasting the ANC feed could stay on the air longer without increasing their ASCAP, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), and/or SESAC fees.