The early years When CNN went on the air on June 1, 1980 one of the first newscasts was a sports bulletin where
baseball and
North American Soccer League highlights were shown. Later, a nightly program called
Sports Tonight went on the air in late night. During this time,
Nick Charles and
Fred Hickman became established as the program's co-hosts. In addition, CNN aired a weekend program called
Sports Saturday and
Sports Sunday. One of the program's most popular features was called "Play of the Day" (later known as the "Replay of the Day"), which showed a highlight (i.e., a spectacular play) from that day's action.
The 1990s and the end In 1996, CNN launched a new station called
CNN/SI.
Sports Tonight was renamed
CNN/Sports Illustrated, and was replayed many times throughout the night on CNN/SI, like
ESPN was doing (and continues to do) with
SportsCenter. The program reclaimed its
Sports Tonight name shortly afterwards, and when CNN pre-empted the show in late 2000 due to the coverage of the disputed
2000 presidential election, producers decided to differentiate the format from
SportsCenters highlights.
Sports Tonight was relaunched in 2001 with a
sports talk format, where viewers interacted with the hosts via the
Internet and
toll-free phone lines about their favorite teams and players. By then, Charles was no longer hosting; Hickman and
Vince Cellini were the program's hosts.
Sports Tonight continued on both CNN and CNN/SI until September 2001. When the
terrorist attacks occurred on September 11, 2001, CNN went to all-news programming. Three days later, CNN announced that the program would no longer air on CNN, but remain on CNN/SI. In May 2002, CNN/SI shut down operations, and
Sports Tonight ended after a 21-year run.
Aftermath Since the cancellation of
Sports Tonight, CNN has aired various programming at 11 p.m. ET, including
Connie Chung Tonight,
Lou Dobbs Tonight,
Anderson Cooper 360,
Erin Burnett OutFront,
Don Lemon Tonight,
CNN Tonight and currently
Laura Coates Live .
CNN International airs a similar show,
World Sport, that airs several times a day as of 2023. In 2024, as part of its launch of a nightly sports block programmed by
TNT Sports, sibling network
TruTV began airing a 6 p.m. ET news show titled
TNT Sports Tonight (originally announced as
TNT Sports Update), which is produced by CNN and hosted by
Coy Wire. K As of March 2025, it is no longer on truTV's schedule. ==List of
Sports Tonight hosts==