United States cable news would merge with Time Warner in 1996) created a spin-off of CNN called CNN2, which was originally formatted to show the top news stories of the day on a 30-minute "wheel" schedule. The channel rebranded as CNN Headline News in 1983, before the network abandoned the CNN branding and changed its name to the orphaned initialism HLN in 2008, following a shift from news programming towards a mix of news during the day and discussion programs and documentary series at night that began two years earlier. Turner founded CNN International in 1985, with a straight focus on international news stories
History of CNN (1980–2003) Checkout Channel, a customized channel made available to grocery stores which shut down in 1993. 1996 saw the debuts of two specialty news channels: CNNSI, a sports news channel created in partnership with co-owned magazine "Sports Illustrated", and CNNfn, a business news channel created as a competitor to CNBC (CNNSI shut down in 2002, while CNNfn shut down in December 2004; CNN continues to maintain a partnership with "Sports Illustrated" through CNNSI.com). CNN launched its website, CNN.com (initially an experiment known as "CNN Interactive"), on August 30, 1995, which grew to become one of the most popular news websites in