MBC Newsdesk is the main nightly newscast of the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation. Among the major networks Newsdesk is considered as the earliest newscast airing at 19:55~21:30 KST.
History
The newscast premiered on 5 October 1970. It was initially named MBC due to the orthography at the time. It was renamed to MBC News Park, or "MBC 뉴스의 現場" in 1976 then reverting to MBC Newsdesk in 1980.
Musical theme
Its 1980s theme song used one part of FNN News' 1980s theme song and one part of Isao Tomita's version of The Planets: Jupiter. In 1991, MBC Newsdesk introduced a new theme song, composed by Lim Taek-Su. In 1993, the end of the theme was changed, and the teletype sound was replaced with Jean-Michel Jarre's "Équinoxe 4." This theme was in use from mid-1993 to mid-1997. Starting from mid-1997, the second part of the theme by Lim was played until 16 April 1998, and replaced with the MBC News Center and MBC News' ending theme. On 31 December 1999, MBC Newsdesk adopted a new theme and a new studio. On 1 January 2001 MBC replaced it with a remix of Lim Taek-Su's first theme. From 7 January to 24 February 2001, MBC Newsdesk reused Lim Taek-Su's original 1993 theme. On 25 February 2001, the remixes of the original theme song was released and used until 2014, which the first remixed had been used until 2012, the second remix had been used until 2014.
Studios
On 1 January 2002, Ohm Kim Young came back on the air. On 3 January 2005, MBC changed their logo to an all lowercase logo and so did the start. Ohm Kim Young left the set in 2008 for MBC president and the news team moved to a different studio from 2008-2013. The news team moved to a more high tech studio in July 2013. This was MBC Newsdesk 's last studio before MBC moved out of their Yeouido headquarters MBC Newsdesk moved to MBC's new headquarters on 4 August 2014.
Note: The newscast was simulcasted before on MBC FM4U Stations Nationwide but was discontinued in November 2016 due to the completion of the MBC Standard FMNational Network in October 2016. The simulcast continued until 18 March 2019 when the newscast moved to the 7:30PM timeslot.