Cable news in the United States

Cable news channels are television channels devoted to television news broadcasts, with the name deriving from the proliferation of such networks during the 1980s with the advent of cable television. In the United States, early networks included CNN in 1980, Financial News Network (FNN) in 1981 and CNN2 (now HLN) in 1982. CNBC was created in 1989, taking control of FNN in 1991. Through the 1990s and beyond, the cable news industry continued to grow, with the establishment of several other networks, including, Fox News Channel (FNC), MSNBC, and specialty channels such as Bloomberg Television, Fox Business Network, and ESPN News. More recent additions to the cable news business have been CBSN, Newsmax TV, TheBlaze, Fusion, One America News Network, part-time news network RFD-TV, and—for a time—Al Jazeera America.

As the highest rated and most widely available cable news channels, FNC, CNN, and MSNBC are sometimes referred to as the "big three" with Fox News having the highest viewership. While the networks are usually referred to as 24-hour news networks, reruns of news programs and analysis or opinion programming are played throughout the night, with the exception of breaking news.

...
Wikipedia