Nick News was originally known as
Nick News W/5 until the show's
"who, what, when, where, and why" format was dropped. During its original run,
Nick News with Linda Ellerbee was telecast on Sunday nights at 8:00 p.m. and later 8:30 p.m. with in-between times on
Nickelodeon, and ran in repeats at various timeslots.
Nick News was #1 in the ratings on Nickelodeon in 1992–1993, and has never gone below #6 in the ratings, making it one of the most consistently highly rated news shows on TV. From 1993 to 1997, the first-run syndicated version of the show—distributed by Viacom Enterprises (now
CBS Media Ventures)—aired on local stations—both independent and network-affiliated—all over the United States of America. The show won a
Peabody Award in 1994, and Linda Ellerbee won a Personal Award in 1998 for her work on the show. The show also previously appeared on early weekday mornings, fully commercial-free as a part of the television cable industry's
Cable in the Classroom initiative, which urged teachers from schools across the globe to tape episodes of
Nick News and show them to their classes during school hours. The show was a regular part of the lineup on the
Noggin channel, one of Nickelodeon's sister networks, from February 1999 until March 2002.
TeenNick aired two episodes of the show in repeats on both October 25, 2010, and February 15, 2011, and also aired once as part of their nightly block
The Splat from November 5–6, 2016.
Nick News is well known for many trademarks during its run on Nickelodeon, such as Ellerbee's signature tagline, "If you want to know, ask!"; the only time the sign off was not used was on the finale episode on December 15, 2015, when Ellerbee signed off with the words "And so it goes"; an homage to her previous signoff as anchor of
NBC News Overnight decades earlier. After nearly 25 years on the air, an hour-long finale titled
Hello, I Must Be Going: 25 Years of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee aired on Nickelodeon on December 15, 2015. The episode featured clips from older episodes of the series. The final episode was nominated for a
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program, a category for which the series had been nominated 22 times, with nine wins across the series's 23-year history.
Revival On June 23, 2020, Nickelodeon announced it would be reviving
Nick News in a series of hour-long specials. The first installment, titled
Kids, Race and Unity: A Nick News Special, premiered on June 29 and was hosted by American musician
Alicia Keys.
Kids, Race and Unity was made in direct response to the
wave of protests and unrest following the
murder of George Floyd, aiming to "amplify the voices and experiences of Black children across the country". Special guests that appeared on the program included
Black Lives Matter co-founders
Patrisse Cullors,
Alicia Garza, and
Opal Tometi; teen activist
Marley Dias, founder of the #1000BlackGirlsBook campaign; 12-year-old singer and viral sensation
Keedron Bryant;
Ibram X. Kendi, author of
Antiracist Baby; Teens4Equality founders Jade Fuller, Nya Collins, Zee Thomas, Kennedy Green, Emma Rose Smith and Mikayla Smith; social media star
Tabitha Brown and her family; and family therapist, Dr. George James. In its current iteration, Nickelodeon has partnered with its corporate sibling
CBS News on presentation. On October 6, 2020,
60 Minutes veteran Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson was tapped as executive producer of the
Nick News revival and the inaugural vice president of news programming for Nickelodeon. CBS News correspondent Jamie Yuccas serves as the host, while reporters
Vladimir Duthiers,
Enrique Acevedo, and Imtiaz Tab also contribute.
Nick News also appears as interstitials during regular Nickelodeon programming to cover current events. ==Notable episodes==