Networks showcase staffers in traditional end-of-year credit runs

As is traditional, the networks used the end of the year holiday season to showcase the names of the hard-working people both on-camera and behind the scenes who bring viewers the news every day.

Many newscasts will run full credits on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (Dec. 24 or 24, respectively) or New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day (Dec. 31 and Jan. 1, respectively).

This can be convenient because running the entire sequence can take around five minutes or more and many broadcasts operate with reduced resources over the holidays, so filling time with pre-produced credits cuts down on the amount of content that needs to be produced while also giving the show a chance to recognize its entire team.

In TV, five minutes is longer than most packages run, so it would often be impractical to include it during a busy news day, especially during 30-minute programs, which is why holiday editions are often favored (local newscasts sometimes run full or extended credits once per week or another set interval, but these sequences typically don’t run as long).

Back at the network level, however, each individual broadcast often has its own core team of staffers assigned permanently to it, but there are also workers around the globe, such as at bureaus and shared operations, that contribute to multiple broadcasts and most network credit sequences will include these individuals in at least one of its full credit runs.

All that said, 2022’s calendar layout introduced some oddities in running credits.

Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve both fell on consecutive Saturdays, while Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fell on back-to-back Sundays.

ABC’s “Good Morning America” aired full credits Dec. 25, 2022, during what was technically a weekend edition of the broadcast and combined the scrolling list with photos to include both weekday and weekend teams.

 
“CBS Mornings” and “CBS Saturday Morning” are titled separately and have distinct anchors and behind-the-scenes leadership, so “Saturday Morning” aired its full credits crawl Dec. 25 as duo Rachael & Vilray performed.

Weekday “CBS Mornings” aired its full credits Dec. 23, 2022, alongside a weekly retrospective that typically airs on most Fridays throughout the rest of the year.

CBS has an unique structure for its evening newscasts.

Although the two shows typically air at the same time and share much of the same graphics and music, “CBS Evening News” airs on weekdays only and “CBS Weekend News” airs, as its name suggests, on weekends.

The two broadcasts are titled differently and the weekend editions are typically produced from CBS News headquarters in New York or its owned station in Chicago, WBBM, instead of Washington, D.C. 

The credits that ran Dec. 24 included references to both weekday and weekend staffers, though it was notably shorter than other networks’, so it’s not clear if it was meant to cover weekday editions too.

“NBC Nightly News” is titled the same throughout the weekend (technically listed as “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” in many instances).

The weekend editions, however, are anchored by Telemundo and MSNBC anchor José Díaz-Balart on Saturdays and correspondent and “NBC News Daily” anchor Kate Snow on Sundays.

Each anchor’s name is included in the opening audio announce, but their names do not appear on-screen with the show’s logo in the open.

NBC’s weekday edition ran its full credits Dec. 24, 2022.

Díaz-Balart introduced a pre-taped segment featuring Lester Holt on Dec. 24, that lead into the full credits run.

ABC’s “Good Morning America” aired full credits Dec. 25 that included mentions of both weekday and weekend staff.

Most credit sequences that air around the end-of-the-year holidays feature popular music or production music in the background, most of which has been removed in the videos accompanying this story due to licensing restrictions, though “CBS Mornings” regularly makes use of its credits crawl to showcase a weekly news summary and “CBS Saturday Morning” featured a musical performance produced just for the broadcast.

It’s also become common to see the crawls include candid or professional photographs of staffers along with the names.