Satellite News Channel (SNC) was an American short-lived news-based cable television channel that was operated as a joint venture between the ABC Video Enterprises division of American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (a.k.a. ABC) and the Group W Satellite Communications subsidiary of Westinghouse Broadcasting Company (a.k.a. Group W). Designed as a satellite-delivered cable network, the channel is best remembered as the first 24-hour news cable competition to the Cable News Network (CNN). SNC's headquarters were based in the New York City suburb of Stamford, Connecticut.[1]
The channel's format consisted of 18-minute-long rotating newscasts with the remaining time in each half-hour block allocated for a regional news summary; this lent credence to SNC's slogan, "Give us 18 minutes, we'll give you the world," which was derived through Group W's experience in all-news radio. Each 18-minute national newscast featured content gathered from both in-house newsgathering and reporting staffs and reports sourced from international television networks that maintained content agreements with ABC/Group W to supply stories for the channel.[2] The regional summaries were sectioned by "zones", and often originated from either ABC affiliates (such as KOMO-TV