World News Airs First Single-Sponsor Broadcast, With Report From Kiribati

“This will be a special edition of World News. Just one commercial interruption tonight. And we hope that meets with your approval,” Charles Gibson said at the top of tonight’s broadcast.

The only commercial, for Celebrex, came in the middle of the newscast. It lasted two and a half minutes. (It was followed by a short teaser for GMA.)

It was followed by Bill Weir‘s first installment of a four-part series, “Key to the World.” Weir traveled to Kiribati, “a laboratory on global warming in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” The single-sponsor format allowed for a total of five and a half additional minutes of news.

> “No one in the newsroom can remember the last time the broadcast had a single sponsor, let alone a single sponsor four times over the course of a month,” EP Jon Banner blogs…

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