April 22 marked the 51st anniversary of Earth Day. It also kicked off a two-day virtual climate summit hosted by President Joe Biden, in which 40 world leaders discussed plans to take action on climate change. The combination of the climate summit and the general Earth Day commemoration led to substantial climate and environmental-related coverage on major broadcast and cable TV networks.
Corporate broadcast TV morning and nightly news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 26 climate and environmental segments across 82 minutes on Earth Day. Original programming on CNN and MSNBC aired a combined 38 segments across 186 minutes -- just over three hours. (The other major cable network, Fox, spent all of Earth Day attacking actions taken to address climate change.)