News ticker its run, but always featured yellow lettering on a black background, with the CNN logo as a bullet for each scrolled story (sister channel Headline News used a nearly identical ticker except featuring a blue background). CNN/U.S. and Headline News converted their respective tickers to a "flipper" version on December 15, 2008, with the introduction of new on-screen graphics package; a "flipper" ticker had already been in use previously on sister network CNN International. In 2012, after a trial run during its "American Morning" program, the ticker was modified to feature stories grouped into individual categories (such as national headlines,
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