The show, created by David Bohrman, who went on to CNN and is now president of Current TV, debuted January 6, 1992.

“We never imagined that our little overnight effort would last so long, inform and entertain so many people, and launch so many careers,” Bohrman tells TVNewser. Bohrman says he still has the audition tapes from original anchors Aaron Brown and Lisa McRee. Over the years, other anchors have included Anderson Cooper, Alison Stewart, Kevin Newman, Thalia Assuras,  Juju Chang, Jeremy Hubbard, David Muir and more.

Bohrman has one bit of advice for the current producers: “They should bring back the World News Now Temperature Index.” Here’s a best-of video, shown this morning on the show:

And this wasn’t the only TV news morning marker Today.

Sherwood’s note, after the jump…

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Terry Baker is joining Current as executive VP of production. Until last December, Baker was Executive Producer for primetime and weekend programming at Fox Business Network. He was part of the network’s 2007 launch, creating and developing seven of the network’s programs. Prior to that, he was Executive Producer at CNBC, where he developed several shows including “Conversations with Michael Eisner.” Baker also worked at CNN for six years, most recently as a Senior Executive Producer for “Anderson Cooper 360,” and also was Senior Producer on “Newsnight With Aaron Brown.”

At Current, Baker will work with network president David Bohrman in leading Current’s new focus as a news analysis and political commentary network, by building new live production capabilities and facilities in New York, home to the network’s flagship program “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”

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Arizona State University’s “Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism” Aaron Brown, who anchored on CNN that day. It was first day on-air at CNN:

I did a lot of television that day, emotionally I think I ran the gamut from a feeling of total stupidity, along with shock and horror when the first tower fell. There I was just trying to hold this broadcast together, hold myself together, the broadcast seemed to be doing fine. This huge thing happened, one of the things an anchor needs to do in those moments is to be one step ahead of what is happening, try and anticipate what is happening. And here is the biggest thing that could possibly happen and I didn’t anticipate it at all. There were a lot of scenarios, but I didn’t think that. And then you start to hear a clock ticking because you know that at some point, a minute, 10 minutes and hour who knows, the second tower is coming down too.

One of the weird memories of the day was Walter Isaacson, who ran CNN at the time and was my boss, and was incredibly smart guy and a great news guy. The only time I remember a boss coming up on the roof, he came up and said “this isn’t a story, this is history. And I thought that was spot on, that is exactly right. This is so beyond anything any of us had other done, I thought that was a great way to put it. We really were doing history that day, history is the kind of event where you say ‘where were you when you heard? And we were all going to remember where we were when we heard.

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From 2002-2006 Surratt worked at CNN as Senior EP of “American Morning” and “Newsnight with Aaron Brown” and was with CNN at the launch of “Anderson Cooper 360.” Surratt may be best known in TV news circles for overseeing the “KTLA Morning News” in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, a format which has been replicated at stations across the country.

The final deal with CNN is being worked out. An announcement is expected soon.

> Related, TVSpy: Wil Surratt Leaves WPIX, May Return to CNN

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After undergoing triple-bypass surgery six weeks ago, Brown was sure he would experience a sudden insight into The Meaning of Life, or a reasonable facsimile. Hasn’t happened.

“I desperately want to say I had the experience of ‘seeing the light on the other side’ or that I’ve become a Buddhist,” says CNN exile Brown, 62. “Actually, I’m just pissed. I don’t like being a patient. I want to go hit golf balls.”

Brown says his recent remarks about Anderson Cooper, his successor at CNN, were misinterpreted. In an interview before the surgery, Brown said: “I know the difference between journalism and a slogan. ‘Keeping them honest’ [tagline for ‘Anderson Cooper 360’] is a slogan.”

“I thought it was played badly,” Brown says. “I’m a big boy. It became, in my opinion, way too personal. I didn’t mean it that way at all. It’s not how I feel. It wasn’t about Anderson, it was about the slogan, the show. It was about the quality of journalism that is either done or not done.”

Brown had promised his journalism students at Arizona State he’d make it back before the end of the semester. He did, for the last two classes. “It was fun to walk into that room,” he says. “I feel a little guilty that I denied them the experience they paid for.”

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We wish Aaron well in his upcoming surgery, and we think viewer response to CNN’s recent coverage of historic events around the world on “Anderson Cooper 360″ and the rest of our TV and digital platforms speaks for itself.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Some part of me has known for a long time that at some point, the piper that is heart disease is going to get paid,” says Brown, 62, the Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism at Arizona State. “This has been 27 years in the making.”

One night in 1984, when he was an anchor at Seattle’s KING, Brown didn’t realize that the pain he was experiencing was a heart attack. He did the late news, anyway, then was rushed to the hospital.

A week ago, after a routine stress test led to an immediate angiogram, Brown’s cardiologist told him he needed a bypass – stat.

While accepting his fate, Brown says he’s angry, too. He is a planner, and heart surgery was not in his plans. The situation is beyond his control. For Brown, that is a frightening place.

“If you’re a control freak, it’s hard to let go,” says Brown, forced out of CNN in 2005. “On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d be a 12. I’ve never faced anything quite like this. I find myself fighting to get control of it, but I know it’s not healthy for me. I’m trying so hard to let go.

“It sounds crazy, but I don’t recall ever having let go. In my childhood, I had to stay focused and in control, because so many people doubted me. I grew up in a little town [Hopkins,

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There have been many great anchors on the broadcast throughout the years — including Aaron Brown, Lisa Mcree, Ryan Owens, Anderson Cooper, and Juju Chang.

An ABC spokesperson tells TVNewser that the show debuted a new set, and “World News Now”’s sister program, “America This Morning,” will debut its upgraded new look soon.

A look back at the show over its 19 years is after the jump…
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Olbermann, whom MSNBC president Phil Griffin once labeled as the network’s “rock star,” yesterday was suspended indefinitely without pay for having contributed $2,400 each last week to the campaigns of three Democratic congressional candidates. NBC News guidelines prohibit such contributions without prior approval.

Given today’s hyper-partisan political climate, some media experts say it’s time for the rules to change. At MSNBC (blue state) and Fox News Channel (red state), for example, every prime-time host espouses a clear political bias. Moreover, that bias drives their viewership.

“I am shocked, shocked, to learn that Keith Olbermann is a Democrat,” deadpans Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Requiring employees to be politically agnostic makes sense when they work for objective news organizations, Jones says. However, MSNBC and Fox “don’t follow that standard [in prime time], and it’s absurd to pretend anything else. It’s a fig leaf that doesn’t cover anything.”

Rich Hanley, director of graduate programs at Quinnipiac University’s School of Communications, goes so far as to call the rules “quaint and disingenuous,” particularly in light of Fox owner Rupert Murdoch’s recent $1 million-plus contributions to Republican groups.

At MSNBC, where Olbermann is paid to give opinions, the irony is inescapable to Hanley: “It’s funny how a network that calls itself ‘the place for politics’ pulls a host for being political.”

The solution, according to Hanley, is for cable to follow the model of a newspaper op-ed page and make a distinction between daytime and nighttime lineups. Before opinion-driven programs, they could run a simple disclaimer that would distance the host’s views from their own.

“Prime time could become the op-ed page of cable news,” says Hanley. “It just needs to be labeled as such.”

Exiled CNN anchor Aaron Brown is troubled by partisan media, but he says NBC “is entitled to make policy, even if it doesn’t make much sense in this instance. It just shows how crazy things are.

“At least Fox doesn’t pretend it is fair and balanced. Oh wait, it does.”

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The interview is interesting, as Brown expresses his displeasure at the increasingly political focus of the cable news channels:

Of TV news, Brown says he doesn’t watch that much. But he’s still high on the traditional network newscasts, despite their steady decline in viewers. He spent a decade at ABC News, which he remembers warmly, along with its late anchor, Peter Jennings…

And cable news?

He’s not exactly enamored with the move toward constant political debate, with ideologues on both sides. He talks of “hundreds” of people who’ve come up to him with the same complaint:

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But the puffery on most anniversary specials is mild, perhaps because there is something humbling about Katrina that abashes even the most egotistical personalities. Anderson Cooper of CNN was one of the standouts of Katrina, whipped by lashing winds when the storm broke and lashing out at federal incompetence after it subsided. Soon after his return, CNN ousted its longtime prime-time anchor, Aaron Brown, in favor of the dashing Mr. Cooper.

Brian Williams, who stayed in the Superdome throughout the storm, has kept a proprietary hold on Katrina. He hosted a “Dateline” special on NBC this week that repurposed a post-Katrina special he made shortly after the hurricane hit, a personal account entitled, “In his Own Words.” (It was repeated on MSNBC on Friday night.) And Mr. Williams, not surprisingly, began delivering the evening news from New Orleans on Thursday, before any of his competitors had showed up.

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“Apparently Madoff wasn’t available,” deadpans CNN exile Aaron Brown (Class of ’05), king of the caustic soundbite.

Brown, the Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism at Arizona State, labels CNN’s return to opinion-driven programming at 8 p.m. as “a ratings play, pure and simple… I don’t really believe [it] will accomplish a thing but that is just me.”

Depending on how CNN fills the 9 p.m. slot — now in play following Larry King‘s announcement last week that he’s stepping down — the struggling network can “redefine its concept,” according to Brown. “They have to be less boring and more compelling.”

Like Brown, many believe CNN must reinvent itself in prime time in order to staunch hemorrhaging ratings. Some, like Syracuse University pop culture expert Bob Thompson, say the network “has already cried ‘uncle’” on its down-the-middle mission.

At 9 p.m., there are two obvious options — hire a younger, hipper, glitzier host or ditch the somnolent chat format in favor of a faster-paced, multi-guest/topic show.

“Long-form interview shows like King’s for a general audience are an anachronism,” says network-news analyst Andrew Tyndall. “The interview shows that work now have a more narrow subject matter – usually politics or a political slant.”

True enough, unless CNN can wrangle CBS’s Katie Couric, who’s keeping her options open.

Bodog Online Sportsbook currently lists her as the 2-1 co-favorite (with Piers Morgan). Face it, if she wants it, it’s hers. Couric would kill at 9 p.m. Game over.

Tyndall’s dark horse is ABC White House ace Jake Tapper, passed over for “This Week” by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Quick reality check: Tapper’s contract isn’t up until 2012.

Tapper “was shafted by ABC,” says Tyndall. “It would be good musical chairs – he goes to CNN, Amanapour goes to ABC. CNN wins in that trade.

“Of all the mainstream TV journalists at the moment, Tapper is most in tune with how to combine old-fashioned journalism with new media social networking and online reporting.”

Marc Berman, senior TV analyst for Media Week, argues that CNN should keep King’s format intact, “no if’s, and’s or but’s.” Tinkering with such an entrenched foundation would alienate core, older viewers. (See Couric, Katie.)

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First on TVNewser: “World News Now,” ABC’s middle-of-the-night news program, is about to see another change at the anchor desk. TVNewser has learned that Jeremy Hubbard, who joined the broadcast in 2008, is departing “World News Now” for a promotion to digital correspondent for ABC News. (Welcome back to daylight, Jeremy)

ABC News is hiring Rob Nelson, morning news anchor at CBS-affiliate WWL-TV in New Orleans, to co-anchor the program with Vinita Nair. No word yet on his official start date.

“World News Now” has been something of a revolving door for young, promising talent. Since the show’s launch in 1992, the newscast’s seen Anderson Cooper, Juju Chang, Alison Stewart, Aaron Brown, Kevin Newman, David Muir, and others pass through the anchor chair.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Aaron Brown, who was replaced in 2005 by [Anderson] Cooper at 10 p.m., said that CNN doesn’t have the “big, broad personalities” that seem to excel these days in the evenings on cable news. Brown included himself in that group, along with Campbell Brown, John King, and Cooper.

“If I were at CNN, the thing that would scare me is not that we’re losing, but that it’s that re-runs are beating us,” Brown said. “At 10 p.m., a two-hour-old ‘Countdown’ is beating my guy, the guy I have invested millions in promotional dollars.”

Another former cable news host, Phil Donahue, who had a show on MSNBC in the early 2000′s hopes CNN does nothing. “At this moment, their competition is more entertaining than they are,” Donahue told Calderone. “And I admire them for holding on and not being seduced by that kind of arm-waving.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Kast and her husband Jim Rosapepe, the former Ambassador to Romania, have written a new book, “Dracula Is Dead,” about Romania after the fall of communism in 1989.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.