The revolution came, in fact, at 7pm. ABC News bulletins across the country trumpeted a new jazzed-up jingle, an up-tempo revision to the familiar ditty as a countdown clock on digital channel 24 ticked closer to launch.

Up-tempo is the mantra around the ABC at the moment. Things have to move faster in the world of around-the-clock, always-on TV news. Reporters, as Crikey revealed last month, have to move faster to file for multiple platforms and masters. Presenters — Ali Moore and Scott Bevan were the first to air last night — stand up to deliver the news; no time to sit down. This is a test of stamina for viewers and participants.

Static on-screen graphics are out; new ‘supas’, in an informal sans-serif font, zip in and zip out again, while the news ticker at the bottom of the screen — a staple of news networks globally — flashes incessantly with headlines and promotion. Newsflash: the news doesn’t stop.

Chris Uhlmann — now the channel’s dedicated political correspondent — immediately delivered what was proudly branded a scoop: Kevin Rudd snubbing the National Security Committee of Cabinet while he was prime minister. Much was made of his investigative digging; there’s been intense criticism that the ABC doesn’t break enough news and, with Uhlmann as one of the few genuine parliamentary news-breakers on board, there’s a determination to ensure viewers of ABC News 24 will see something new, not simply rehashed.

But attention quickly and deliberately turned offshore, and it’s clear the ABC was keen to demonstrate to the furious Sky News (and part-owner News Limited) staffers watching at home its major advantage over the 24/7 news incumbent — international reporting.

Foreign correspondents were beamed in at quick succession: Stephen McDonell was in Shanghai reporting on its construction boom; Kim Landers was in Chicago looking at street violence; Emma Alberici was in London with a report on preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games. Seamlessly (and after the ABC’s recent glitches, that was a victory in itself) and well-rehearsed, we shifted from Sydney to Washington DC, from Palm Island up north to the Murray-Darling basin down south, during the hour-long simulcast on ABC1 last night.

Back in the purpose-built studio in the atrium of the ABC’s Ultimo centre in Sydney, brightly lit and dizzyingly glossy. Former Triple J journo Steve Cannane anchored the first edition of The Drum, a half-hour of chat (cross-branded with the internally-derided opinion site) that moved swiftly thanks to its lively first-night panel: Chaser Julian Morrow, Fairfax defector Annabel Crabb and token bias-balancer Tim Blair. Cannane has been a rising star on radio and television (he’s been working across Radio National and Lateline since honing his Walkley Award-winning broadcast interviewing on Triple J’s Hack), while a post-pregnancy Crabb will be a major drawcard.

Bevan — a former ABC Moscow correspondent (and, buried on his CV, a reporter for A Current Affair) — returned at 9pm with The World, an hour of news that covered the domestic headlines but focussed on international stories. It was here when the first gremlins hit: Bevan lost contact with a UN official during a live chat from Kabul (a pretty ambitious effort, regardless), but kept his composure and the audio returned. The silver-haired, Anderson Cooper-esque reporter, who also had a story in the can from Houston on the US space shuttle program, is a slick operator behind the autocue and the worldly hour-long bulletin, to air nightly, a welcome edition to the TV news landscape.

At 10pm, Juanita Phillips jumped in the chair for the best stories from the state-based news bulletins. More glitches: the autocue briefly failed and Phillips wasn’t sure where to look, but after a career anchoring on CNN and BBC before returning to Australia she’s a rolling-news pro.

Jim Middleton presents Newsline at 10:30pm, taken from the ABC’s Asia-Pacific Australia Network. The ability to draw on those extra resources (which Sky wants to pinch as part of the bidding process to run the Asia-Pacific government-funded service) will be another feature of the channel. From Monday Lateline Business will air at 8:30pm before its usual ABC1 timeslot, and other ABC1 shows like Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent will be time-shifted.

ABC News 24 has been broadcasting as-live for weeks before it finally flicked the switch tonight. And it showed: the ABC banished the technical demons that thwarted its coverage of the Labor Party leadership spill a few short weeks ago and delivered a near-flawless advertisement for what viewers can expect from the broadcaster’s controversial 24/7 news experiment.

Reaction on Twitter — it was the second-biggest trending topic globally tonight — was mostly positive, though the ABC clearly has a campaign on its hands in educating viewers about how to tune in. Many were confused about why the channel is only available in high-definition (limited spectrum means the broadcaster had to use its HD channel to get ABC News 24 to air) and therefore limited to HD-ready sets and premium HD subscribers on Foxtel and Austar. The online feed via iView and the ABC News website was streaming uninterrupted on my ADSL2 connection.

ABC News 24 was obviously putting its best foot forward tonight with specially-prepared content. But in the days, weeks and months ahead it’s clear the aim is to be more international, more intelligent, and certainly less repetitive, than Sky News. Questions about stretching resources to near-breaking point will remain, but the ABC always had a plethora of digital-ready news content to draw from for this new venture. As a showcase for the breadth and depth of ABC News, it’s an impressive act.

Meanwhile, Margaret Simons writes on her blog The Content Makers:

Last night the ABC’s new 24-hour television news service was launched in an environment where the politics of reporting politics is at least as bitterly contested as the election itself. Our news media organisations are beginning to resemble the purveyors of Viagra with their claims to do it deeper, longer, harder and faster.

Sky News issued a media release yesterday that was all about the ABC’s launch without actually mentioning it. The pay television channel claimed that its 24-hour coverage was “unrivalled” and spruiked the fact that its political editor David Speers (and not the ABC’s people) had been chosen to moderate the leaders’ debate at the National Press Club on Sunday night.

This, of course, is part of a wider battle. This week is also the deadline for submissions to the government on the future of the overseas broadcasting service Australia Network. Sky News hopes to steal the Department of Foreign Affairs funded gig from Auntie, while ABC managing director Mark Scott wants to position the ABC as an instrument of Australia’s “soft diplomacy” at a time when governments in our region are spending up big on broadcasting.

And more broadly, there is the pressure from commercial news organisations who have argued in recent times that the taxpayer dollar should not be used to pay for media services that the market can provide, and that the ABC should therefore be pegged back.