Nightline (1980 - 2005)

Evolving from Iran: America Held Hostage, the late-1979 ABC News nightly update on the Iranian hostage crisis, Nightline grew rapidly into a cornerstone of the network’s television news programming. For nearly three decades from its inception (1980-2005), Ted Koppel anchored the innovative late-night show that featured a unique mix of in-depth reporting, extended live interviews, and updates on breaking news stories.

A daily in-depth chronicle of the late 20th century, Nightline represents an invaluable historical resource, covering a wide-range of important topics and events, including ongoing events in the Middle East, Cold War politics and the fall of Soviet communism, the emergence of AIDS, political coverage of five presidential administrations, coverage of the 9/11 events and aftermath, Gulf war and the Afghanistan war reporting. Enhanced with detailed descriptive data, the program archive offers rich possibilities for research and discovery in subject areas such as history, politics, the arts, public health and medicine, media analysis, journalism, social policy, and the criminal justice system