The Wii News Channel, scheduled to debut Saturday, will primarily feature top news stories and photographs from The Associated Press.
Consoles with a broadband Internet connection and the Opera Web browser will be able to access the free news channel, which will offer AP news in multiple languages. Japanese-language news will come from a separate agency.
Source
Looks Like the news channel will be up soon... while i'd still just watch the 6oclock news or check a website on my PC it's still a neat feature and something different to check out when its launched, who knows maybe it will be easier to just click on the news channel to see wants going on in the world outside hyrule... but id rather be in hyrule 
heh
Ooo, yay, just when my parents leave for 10 days.
Sweet, should be cool to see how it works!
Does the news channel contain mostly video? I would be disappointed if it is mostly text, which is the same thing as using the Opera browser to go to cnn.com
well it is a combination of text and pictures. The article stated the the AP would like to eventually bring more media into it. But the nice feature is the map that you can zoom in on new for a specific area similar to the weather channel. This makes it much easier to navigate news than just using the browser.
sounds okay...i just hope its not connected and downloading while not selected, would hate to have my bandwidth bogarted by news channel
doubt i use it much,
Same, I wont use it that much, but fun to have.
YAY! Its available tomorrow for Australia
I need to find a way to get my Wii on the server here at my college...
will there be any small goodies sneaked in along with the news channel in this update?
Who knows. We'll find out tomorow. After the update check your firmware version. As far as I know Wiis are at 2.0 now, so if that changes then it must mean that Nintendo's given you a little more than just the news channel.
lets get a pool going!!
my guess: ver.2.5U
News channel out on friday...who's a thunk it.
the wii is currently updating.
I got the message from nintendo in my wii message board at 9:00am gmt-5:00, or eastern time.
2nd post I've read saying it's up now. I'll go check it out now then.
i'd say the update takes around 20 minutes, I have a good connection and it took a while!
20 mins! Ok, I'll go do it now and try to see how long it takes me. It might be taking so long cuz everyone is doing it at the same time and eating up their bandwidth. Now that I think about it, I'll wait until Saturday or Sunday to do the update then.
what? why does the version number still say 2.0U??
the logo changes for the channel. it's now a nice view of the world map.
It's not a system update I don't think, only adding the channel so that won't change unless they've added something else then it should change.