News division The oldest of the two components, the news division began as the news section of two radio stations - DZBC (opened 1949) and DZAQ (opened 1950) both in the Manila area, and DZRI (opened 1951) in Pangasinan, all under the Bolinao Electronics Corporation and later under the Alto Broadcasting System, which broadcast news programs and commentary as part of their programming schedules. In 1956, the Chronicle Broadcasting Network, together with the first news broadcasts on DZXL, started the short-lived 24-hour station DZQL
Radyo Reloj broadcasting news and current affairs until late 1959, the first station of its kind in the country. When the two networks merged in 1957, first as part of Bolinao Electronics Corporation and later on in 1961 adopting the ABS-CBN brand (which it started to adapt the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation as corporate name on February 1, 1967, and later ABS-CBN Corporation on October 1, 2008, with the former now serves as the conglomerate's secondary and alternative name since the said date of October 2008), the news services of these four Manila stations, later reduced to three, were combined into a unified news service but then with separate programs, as the network began expanding with the purchase and later opening of additional stations, first in the Ilocos region and the Cordillera, and then into the Visayas islands, Mindanao, and southern parts of Luzon, with the national radio service broadcasting from the Chronicle Building along Aduana street, Intramuros, Manila, which began broadcasting the two Manila stations in 1958. Alongside them was a small television news service on DZAQ-TV 3 and DZXL-TV 9 with updates broadcast daily, owing to the lack of proper news programs from the beginning of broadcasts in late 1953, with both stations' news bureaus based in the television studios in Roxas Boulevard, Pasay (opened in 1958). Proper news programming on TV, however, would begin in 1960 when news coverage for the national elections began. Channel 9's
Coverage would be the first weekly news program produced by ABS-CBN and it would be followed by the first Filipino-language TV newscast,
Balita Ngayon, in 1966 on Channel 3 and in November 21 with the English-language newscast
The World Tonight on late nights, which is today the longest running English-language national newscast. Channel 9 followed suit with the long-running
Newsbreak as well, joined later by
Apat na Sulok ng Daigdig. By 1968, following the aftermath of the
magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Casiguran (in which
Manila was severely affected by the quake), leading to the collapse of the
Ruby Tower in August that same year, the joint radio and color television coverage of which was the first time ever for a Philippine media company to do so, DZAQ was later converted into a 24-hour Filipino language news and current affairs radio station, adopting the
DZAQ Radyo Patrol 960 branding under the initiative of former station manager
Orly Mercado, veteran broadcaster
Joe Taruc, Ben Aniceto, the then ABS-CBN program director and
Chief Engr. Emil Solidum, whose efforts led to the recruitment of the first generation of mobile field reporters for news coverage and flash reports, a first for any radio station at that time. The station would prove to be a leading source of breaking news stories in the late 1960s and before Martial Law stopped broadcasts in September 1972, Radyo Patrol services were operational in select regional stations, alongside an active service of regional programming in all provincial TV stations in addition to occasional nationwide broadcasts via satellite, the first for any station by then. In 1969 the network would also make history with the first ever weekend news broadcast, ''This Week's News'', a Channel 2 presentation. In July 1986, the news services of ABS-CBN were officially reactivated as part of the network's return to former owners, when DZMM was officially relaunched that month from the Benpres Building in the
Ortigas Center District of Pasig. The new station broadcast its newscasts twice daily, Mondays to Saturdays, with a Sunday midday news program. Two months later, both
Balita Ngayon and
The World Tonight made their television returns on the now reopened TV network. In February 1987,
Balita Ngayon aired its final broadcasts to give way to the now current flagship Filipino language broadcast,
TV Patrol, which began on March 2, 1987. The network restarted regional TV news services in 1988, the same year it launched nationwide satellite broadcasts of
TV Patrol to reach viewers all over the nation.
Current affairs division The division traces its roots to the current affairs and commentary programming that both DZAQ and later on DZXL and DZQL aired beginning in the mid-1950s in both Filipino and English, keeping listeners informed of the latest issues that affect Filipinos. In the 1960s, these would also be complemented by television programming featuring such voices like Max Soliven and Francisco Rodrigo that were aired on the two TV channels. ==Divisions==