World news update is an overnight television news program produced by ABC News. The program is a combination of general and offbeat news stories, repurposed segments and story packages from other ABC News programs, as well as an occasional feature segment or two. The show is characterized by its lighthearted and irreverent tone.
World News Now has also included a few odd features, such as a live performance of the “World News Polka” (usually by comedian Barry Mitchell on accordion) on Friday mornings, a weekly segment called “Far-Flung Postcards” in which the anchors travel to a distant country or state and report on a story of interest, and an occasional weather forecast using video footage of a locale with which the host is familiar. A version of the song “New E-mail” is also used to close each broadcast, with the anchors responding (often humorously) to a random viewer e-mail sent to the World News Now studio.
In the past, network O&Os WHDH-TV in Boston and WABC-TV in New York City preempted World News Now for a simulcast of the cable home shopping channel Jewelry Television, but later began clearing the show again; WPVI-TV dropped the Jewelry TV simulcast in favor of a weekday rebroadcast of Live with Kelly and Ryan, a rebroadcast of Tamron Hall, and a local automated weather subchannel from its own 5:00 a.m. newscast in late August 2020. Prior to September 2011, three ABC stations owned by Citadel Communications – KCAU-TV in Sioux City, KLKN-DT in Lincoln, Nebraska and WOI-DT in Ames, Iowa – all pre-empted the program in order to fulfill existing syndicated programming contracts instead of clearing the full schedule of World News Now until those contracts expired.