ARLINGTON, Va.—PBS News Hour will rebrand as PBS News across its digital and social platforms, while retaining the PBS News Hour name for its Monday through Friday nightly broadcast.
The move coincides with the opening of its new studios in Arlington on on Monday, June 10. WETA, the flagship public media station in the nation’s capital, recently completed a $58 million expansion project of its Arlington headquarters, including the creation of new studios and editorial offices for PBS News.
The rebrand is a continuation of efforts first launched in 2023 when the Saturday and Sunday broadcast moved production from WNET in New York to News Hour Productions (NHP), a WETA subsidiary, and rebranded as PBS News Weekend, now anchored by John Yang.
Senior executive producer of PBS News Hour and WETA senior vice president Sara Just said that the digital and social rebrand will occur on Monday, June 17.
“The PBS News Hour, our nightly broadcast co-anchored by Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett, remains the flagship of our newsroom as we approach nearly 50 years on the air,” said Just. “Today, all of us consume news across multiple platforms. Audiences encounter our journalism on social media feeds, in news feeds, in live streaming, in primetime specials and breaking news events. Our adjustments to our branding makes it clear that you can rely on PBS News journalism for reliable, trustworthy insight into the events and stories that shape our world and our lives, wherever they encounter it.”
PBS News Hour continues to reach more people and expand its offerings across a variety of platforms. The rebrand is designed to better position the legacy media organization for audiences outside of the traditional one hour broadcast and to create greater visual alignment across broadcast, digital, and social, the news operation said.
The brand’s owned and operated digital and social platforms will implement new PBS News branding starting June 17 with additional updates to social handles and URLs in the coming weeks. Since 2019, average website users are up 44%, at nearly 7.5 million, while average monthly YouTube video views are up 27% at 33 million.
Since its inception in 1975 (then as The Robert MacNeil Report), PBS News Hour has been produced out of a large studio in WETA’s aging production center, located a few blocks away from its Arlington headquarters. The new studio, designed by Eric Siegel and George Allison with lighting design by Dennis Size, will also be used by PBS News Weekend and Washington Week with The Atlantic, and will allow for PBS News special programming to be more easily incorporated into the same space.
The graphic redesign was led by PBS News creative director for broadcast Kojo Boateng including the logo redesign in partnership with Lippincott and the broadcast opening titles designed in partnership with Adolescent, Inc.
