News Channels:

refers to disseminating current events via the medium of television. "News bulletins" or "newscasts" are programs lasting from seconds to hours that provide updates on world, national, regional or local news events. Television news is very image-based, showing video of many of the events that are reported. Television channels may provide news bulletins as part of a regularly scheduled news program. Less often, television shows may be interrupted or replaced by "news flashes" to provide news updates on current events of great importance or sudden events of great importance.

[edit] Cable news
Further information: United States cable news

Cable news refers to channels which are devoted to current events 24 hours per day. The originator of this format from which the name derives is CNN (as well as CNN International), which originally stood for cable news network in reference to the then-new phenomenon of cable television. As satellite and other forms have evolved, the term cable news has become something of an anachronism but is still in common use; many other channels have since been established, such as BBC World News, BBC News, Sky News, Al Jazeera, France 24, STAR News, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and ABC News Now. Some news channels specialize even further, such as ESPNEWS (sports from ESPN), CNBC, Bloomberg Television and Fox Business Network (financial).

A term which has entered common parlance to differentiate cable news from traditional news broadcasts is network news, in reference to the traditional television networks on which such broadcasts air. A classic example is the cable news channel MSNBC, which overlaps with (and, in the case of breaking world-changing events, pre-empts) its network counterpart NBC News.