The anchors on the premiere telecast of
20/20 were
Esquire magazine editor
Harold Hayes, who also served as the program's senior producer, and
Time art critic
Robert Hughes. The program's debut received largely harsh reviews;
The New York Times described it as "dizzyingly absurd" and
The Washington Post denounced it as "the trashiest stab at candycane journalism yet." In his autobiography
Roone: A Memoir, Roone Arledge recalled that probably the most embarrassing part of that initial program was the
Claymation segments featuring caricatures representing then-President
Jimmy Carter (singing "
Georgia on My Mind") and
Walter Cronkite (closing the program intoning his catchphrase, "That's the way it was", spoofing the semi-competing
CBS Evening News). As a result of the scathing reviews reminiscent of another ABC one-episode flop from nine years before, the sketch comedy series
Turn-On, serious and drastic changes were immediately made to salvage the program. ABC terminated the contracts of Hayes and Hughes along with original executive producer Bob Shanks, and a then semi-retired
Hugh Downs was recruited to take on the role of sole host on the following week's program. Also featured in the premiere telecast of
20/20, the opening sequence consisted of a pair of eyeglasses, whose lenses showed colored bars, which are often seen in the
SMPTE color bars (used when television stations were off the air between sign-off and sign-on). The eyeglasses were keyed over a yellow background, and rotated to its rear position to reveal the
20/20 studio. With Downs hosting,
20/20 changed into a more standard yet unique newsmagazine and received kinder reviews from critics. The program was originally launched as a summer replacement series; it was then presented on a once-a-month basis during the 1978–79 television season, before being given a regular weekly timeslot on Thursdays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time beginning May 31, 1979. Emmy Award-winning producer, Bernard I. Cohen began his career with ABC evening news in 1964. From 1979 to 1992, he was a lead Producer at 20/20 and helped solidify the program's top Nielsen Ratings. Ratings were generally very good during the summer months during its eight years on Thursday nights despite competition from
Knots Landing on CBS and
Hill Street Blues on
NBC. It was around this time that the program started using the Brock Brower-written signoff line "We're in touch, so you be in touch" to end each program, which continues to be used to now (the program also used the line "Around the world and into your home, the stories that touch your life" as the introduction during the program's opening titles for much of the 1990s).
Barbara Walters joined the program in 1979 in a role something less than a co-anchor and soon became a regular special contributor in the fall of 1981. In 1984, she was named as co-anchor and thus Hugh Downs's equal, reuniting a duo which had already anchored together on NBC's
Today from 1964 to 1971. The team would remain together on-air for the next 15 years. In the fall of 1987,
20/20 was moved to Fridays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, with the
TGIF family comedy block as its longtime
lead-in; while in that timeslot, it ranked at 21st place in the annual
Nielsen ratings by the 1991–92 season. It aired in that same Friday time slot until the fall of 2001, when ABC briefly replaced the program with the scripted family drama series
Once and Again, only for
20/20 to return to the lineup again four months later; it has basically retained the timeslot ever since. While the program briefly moved to the 8:00 p.m. timeslot on October 12, 2007, it reverted to its usual time two weeks later. In the late 1990s, ABC began to expand the show to additional nights. In September 1997, a second weekly edition of
20/20 with Downs and Walters made its debut on Thursday evenings, later moving to Mondays. From September 1998 to September 2000,
ABC News chose to consolidate its newsmagazine programs by combining
20/20 and
Primetime Live into a singular brand under the
20/20 name and format to compete with
Dateline NBC (which itself ran for four nights a week at the time), and having former Primetime Live anchors
Sam Donaldson and
Diane Sawyer host
20/20 on Wednesday in the former show's old timeslot. Additional nights were also added during this time with various anchors for each broadcast. At its peak,
20/20 ran on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays, in addition to its longtime Friday timeslot; these additional nights of
20/20 were joined by the younger-skewing
20/20 Downtown on Thursday nights in October 1999. In September 2000, ABC reinstated
Primetime under the title
Primetime Thursday, and spun off
20/20 Downtown as a separate newsmagazine simply titled
Downtown on Monday evenings. By early 2002,
20/20 once again was airing only in its original Friday timeslot. On March 3, 1999,
Monica Lewinsky, the former
White House intern who was infamously revealed to have been involved in an affair with then-President
Bill Clinton a few years earlier, was interviewed by Barbara Walters on the program; that particular edition of
20/20 was watched by an estimated 70 million viewers, which ABC stated was a record audience for a news program. After Downs' retirement in 1999, Walters became the solo anchor of
20/20. This lasted until
John Miller was hired as a permanent co-host of the program in 2002; Miller never got very comfortable in the anchor chair, and a year later, he jumped at the chance to rejoin law enforcement. For a few months in early 2003, Barbara Walters temporarily anchored solo again. However, in May of that year,
John Stossel – an investigative correspondent for the program who was behind the controversial, though popular, "Give Me a Break" segments – was named as Walters' new co-anchor. As one of the first veteran anchors, Barbara Walters chose to go into semi-retirement as a broadcast journalist in 2004. However, she remained with
20/20 as a frequent contributor to the program. ABC News correspondent
Elizabeth Vargas was promoted to the co-anchor position. On August 25, 2008,
20/20 (alongside
ABC World News and
Nightline) began broadcasting in
high definition, with broadcasts presented in a
pillarbox format for viewers with
standard-definition television sets watching either through
cable or
satellite television. The program also introduced a new set and upconverted its existing graphics package to HD. In September 2009, before the start of its 31st season, John Stossel announced he would leave the program after 28 years to pursue a new weekly show on
Fox Business. Barbara Walters and
Diane Sawyer also contributed reports. On December 10, 2009, ABC News announced that
Good Morning America news anchor
Chris Cuomo was promoted to co-host
20/20 alongside Elizabeth Vargas. On January 29, 2013, it was announced that Chris Cuomo would leave ABC News and
20/20 for
CNN to co-host the cable network's new morning news program,
New Day; on the same day, ABC announced
David Muir would join Elizabeth Vargas as the new co-anchor of the program, in addition to continuing as weekend anchor of
ABC World News Tonight (a role he retains after being appointed to main anchor of the since-renamed
ABC World News Tonight in September 2014). The program expanded once again on March 2, 2013, with the debut of
20/20 Saturday, which mainly features rebroadcasts of archived stories from previous editions of
20/20 (mainly those dating back as early as 2008) in the same single topic format as the flagship Friday broadcasts.
20/20 Saturday airs outside of
college football season, at either 9:00 p.m. as a two-hour broadcast formatted as separate hour-long episodes centered on two different topics or at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time as an hour-long broadcast, depending on the programs that precede it that given week. Barbara Walters originally served as host of the program until her retirement from regular television broadcasting in May 2014, after which the hosting duties were turned over the anchors of the Friday editions. On December 22, 2017, Elizabeth Vargas announced that she would be leaving
20/20 and ABC News at the end of May. On April 23, 2018,
Good Morning America news anchor
Amy Robach was announced to take over as co-anchor alongside Muir in May; she subsequently departed from ABC News (and
20/20 by extension) on January 27, 2023, after the
Daily Mail reported the previous November on an affair between her and
T.J. Holmes, who co-anchored
GMA3: What You Need to Know with her. Meanwhile,
Deborah Roberts was named a contributing anchor to
20/20 on October 4, 2022, via a note from ABC News President
Kimberly Godwin. The December 30, 2022 edition of the program was interrupted in the Eastern and Central time zones by news of Barbara Walters's death around 9:30 p.m. ET, and anchor Phil Lipof anchored coverage for 90 minutes with ABC News's official obituary and comment from other ABC News staff about her life and impact. On December 19, 2024, ABC News aired the documentary
Manhunt: Luigi Mangione and the CEO Murder - A Special Edition of 20/20.
20/20 Downtown Unlike most other newsmagazines,
20/20 Downtown was never carried by any big name anchor. An ensemble team of anchors fronted the broadcast, which was aimed at attracting younger viewers, but was hampered by many of the network's larger market
network affiliate stations bumping the program to late night or weekend timeslots to accommodate local pre-game shows or coach's shows/highlight recap programming dealing with
NFL or
college football teams preceding ABC's
Monday Night Football. The anchor/reporting duties were filled by the team of
Elizabeth Vargas,
Cynthia McFadden,
Chris Cuomo,
Jay Schadler and
John Quiñones. The program was renamed
Downtown but was canceled in 2002. In 2003, the program returned for one season as
Primetime Monday, with the same anchors and format.
Special episodes Even though
20/20 still occasionally uses a multiple topic format, the program has seen a gradual shift towards single topic editions since the late 2000s (similar to what has occurred with
Dateline NBC since around the same timeframe, although continuing to include a wider range of topics), either in the form of various story packages that relate to the topic or a focus on a single story. Multiple episodes scheduled the same day without previous notice air under the
20/20 banner involving
breaking news stories, either of national or world importance (and usually feature David Muir or a substitute at the
World News Tonight desk leading coverage), or air after the verdict of a trial the series has followed as part of its continuing coverage and feature previous reporting and interviews wrapped around verdict coverage.
Bad Romance: A Special Edition of 20/20 ==Theme music==