Nevertheless, the new bloc was introduced in January 1982, with veteran CBC journalist Knowlton Nash as newsreader for the 22-minute The National, followed by The Journal, cohosted by Barbara Frum and Mary Lou Finlay. Within a very short time, however, the new bloc received positive critical attention and the counterprogramming strategy seemed successful. The programs saw a substantial improvement in ratings over the old 11:00 P.M. newscast.

While The National continued to be produced by the same staff within CBC news, The Journal was developed by a new unit with CBC Current Affairs, under the direction of Executive Producer Mark Starowicz. Formally, The Journal innovated within Canadian current affairs television in its mixing of short- and long-form documentaries and double-ender interviews with politicians, experts, and commentators. It quickly became the key outlet for political and social debate in the Anglo-Canadian media. The specific format varied from night to night, sometimes focusing on several stories and issues, sometimes providing in-depth coverage of single issues, or serving as the site of national policy debates between the major federal political parties.

While the 10:00 P.M. news and current affairs bloc remained successful throughout the 1980s, there were recurrent tensions within the CBC over questions of news judgment and resource allocation between the two separate production teams responsible for the programs. In 1992 Ivan Fecan, the CBC programming executive, introduced a new prime-time schedule to the network, recreating The National and The Journal as the Prime-Time News, anchored by Peter Mansbridge. He also moved the news and current affairs hour to 9:00 P.M. as part of a reprogramming of CBC prime time into a 7:00–9:00 P.M. “family” bloc and 10:00–12:00 P.M. “adult” bloc. The production of the new Prime-Time News was reorganized into a single production unit, both to overcome previous organizational antagonisms, and to address budget constraints in a period of increasing austerity at the CBC. The move to 9:00 P.M. proved much less successful in ratings, and the initial reformatting of news and current affairs within one program proved more difficult than had been anticipated. By 1995 the scheduling of CBC prime time into “family” and “adult” blocs was abandoned, and the news and current affairs hour was returned to 10:00 P.M. and renamed The National, including the current affairs coverage under the title of The National Magazine. The return to 10:00 P.M. once again proved successful as a counterprogramming strategy for prime-time competition from U.S. networks.