CVS/pharmacy agreed to become sole commercial sponsor of ABC’s “World News With Charles Gibson” on April 23, the last of four successive single-sponsor Monday broadcasts starting April 2.

The sponsor of the first three Monday nights insisted on not being identified at this point, according to a spokesperson for Carat USA, which negotiated that portion of the deal.

The unprecedented deal, months in the making, will add approximately five minutes of editorial time to each of the broadcasts. That time will accommodate a series of reports on serious issues around the world by “Good Morning America Weekend” co-anchor Bill Weir, who increasingly has been contributing to “World News.”

“On any given night, the news of the day dominates much of ‘World News.’ This additional time provides a unique opportunity on two fronts – to open a window to parts of the world our audience may not know much about and to cover more of the day’s news,” “World News” executive producer Jon Banner said in the announcement Wednesday.

For “Keys to the World,” Mr. Weir’s subject will include a sparsely populated cluster of islands being eaten up by a rising Pacific Ocean and a solution to one of the biggest problems in Africa: high infant and maternal mortality.

The CVS pact marks the first solo-sponsorship deal covering multiple broadcasts. However, Philips Electronics was sole sponsor of one edition of “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” in November 2006 and one edition of “60 Minutes” in 2005.

(Editor: Horowitz)