NBC
Encyclopedia
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcasting
Commercial broadcasting
Commercial broadcasting is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship...

 television network
Television network
A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...

 and former radio network
Radio network
There are two types of radio networks currently in use around the world: the one-to-many broadcast type commonly used for public information and mass media entertainment; and the two-way type used more commonly for public safety and public services such as police, fire, taxicabs, and delivery...

 headquartered in the GE Building
GE Building
The GE Building is an Art Deco skyscraper that forms the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center in the midtown Manhattan section of New York City. Known as the RCA Building until 1988, it is most famous for housing the headquarters of the television network NBC...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...

 with additional major offices near Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 and in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network," due to its stylized peacock logo
NBC logos
The National Broadcasting Company has used several corporate logos over its history, yet the peacock is its most well known.-Microphone logo :...

, created originally for color broadcasts.

Formed in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), NBC was the first major broadcast network
Broadcast network
A broadcast network is an organization, such as a corporation or other voluntary association, that provides live television or recorded content, such as movies, newscasts, sports, Public affairs programming, and other television programs for broadcast over a group of radio stations or television...

 in the United States. In 1986, control of NBC passed to General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

 (GE), with GE's $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. GE had previously owned RCA and NBC until 1930, when it had been forced to sell the company as a result of antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...

 charges.

After the 1986 acquisition, the chief executive of NBC was Bob Wright, until he retired, giving his job to Jeff Zucker
Jeff Zucker
Jeffrey "Jeff" Zucker is an American television executive and former President and CEO of NBCUniversal.-Personal life:Zucker was born to Jewish-American parents in Homestead, Florida, near Miami. His father was a cardiologist, and his mother, Arlene, was a school teacher...

. The network is currently part of the media company NBCUniversal, a joint venture of Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...

 and General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

. As a result of the merger, Zucker left NBC and was replaced by Comcast executive Steve Burke
Steve Burke (businessman)
Stephen B. "Steve" Burke is Executive Vice President of Comcast and CEO/President of NBC Universal. Burke is a director at JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway....

.

NBC has 10 owned-and-operated stations and nearly 200 affiliates in the United States and its territories.

Earliest stations: WEAF & WJZ

During a period of early broadcast business consolidation, the radio-making Radio Corporation of America (RCA) had acquired New York radio station WEAF
WFAN
WFAN , also known as "Sports Radio 66" or "The FAN", is a radio station in New York City. The station broadcasts on a clear channel and is owned by CBS Radio...

 from American Telephone & Telegraph
American Telephone & Telegraph
AT&T Corp., originally American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. AT&T is the oldest telecommunications company...

 (AT&T). An RCA shareholder, Westinghouse
Westinghouse Electric (1886)
Westinghouse Electric was an American manufacturing company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997...

, had a competing facility in Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

 pioneer station WJZ
WABC (AM)
WABC , known as "NewsTalkRadio 77 WABC" is a radio station in New York City. Owned by the broadcasting division of Cumulus Media, the station broadcasts on a clear channel and is the flagship station of Cumulus Media Networks...

 (no relation to the radio and TV stations in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

 currently using those call letters), which also served as the flagship
Flagship station
In broadcasting, a flagship is the broadcast which originates a television network, or a particular radio show or TV show, primarily in the United States and Canada. This includes both direct network feeds and broadcast syndication, but generally not backhauls...

 for a loosely structured network. This station was transferred from Westinghouse to RCA in 1923, and moved to New York.

WEAF acted as a laboratory for AT&T's manufacturing and supply outlet Western Electric
Western Electric
Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...

, whose products included transmitters and antennas. The Bell System
Bell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...

, AT&T's telephone utility, was developing technologies to transmit voice- and music-grade audio over short and long distances, using both wireless and wired methods. The 1922 creation of WEAF offered a research-and-development center for those activities. WEAF had a regular schedule of radio programs, including some of the first commercially sponsored programs, and was an immediate success. In an early example of chain or networking broadcasting, the station linked with the Outlet Company
The Outlet Company
The Outlet Company was a corporation based in Providence, Rhode Island, which owned holdings in both retail and broadcasting. The centerpieces of the group was its flagship Providence store and WJAR radio and television, also in Providence....

's WJAR
WJAR
WJAR is the NBC-affiliated television station for the state of Rhode Island and Bristol County, Massachusetts licensed to Providence. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 51 from a transmitter in Rehoboth, Massachusetts...

 in Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...

; and with AT&T's station in Washington, D.C., WCAP
WCAP (defunct)
WCAP was a short-lived radio station that originated in Washington, D.C. during the early-to-mid 1920s. It was owned by AT&T, and its call letters allegedly derived from the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, the local telephone company controlled by AT&T which, based on available reports...

.

New parent RCA saw an advantage in sharing programming, and after getting a license for station WRC
WTEM
WTEM — branded ESPN 980 — is a sports radio station licensed to Washington, D.C. and serving the Washington metro area. It is the flagship of a sports talk trimulcast with WWXT in Prince Frederick, Maryland and WWXX in Buckland, Virginia, all affiliated with ESPN Radio and owned by Red Zebra...

 in Washington, D.C., in 1923, attempted to transmit audio between cities via low-quality telegraph lines. AT&T refused outside companies access to its high-quality phone lines. The early effort fared poorly, since the uninsulated telegraph lines were susceptible to atmospheric and other electrical interference.

In 1925, AT&T decided WEAF and its embryonic network were incompatible with AT&T's primary goal of providing a telephone service. AT&T offered to sell the station to RCA in a deal that included the right to lease AT&T's phone lines for network transmission.

Red & Blue Networks

RCA spent $1 million to buy WEAF and Washington sister station WCAP, shut down the latter station and merged its facilities with surviving station WRC, and announced in late 1926 the creation of a new division known as The National Broadcasting Company. The new division was divided in ownership among RCA (fifty percent), General Electric (thirty percent), and Westinghouse (twenty percent). NBC launched officially on November 15, 1926.

WEAF and WJZ, the flagships of the two earlier networks, operated side-by-side for about a year as part of the new NBC. On January 1, 1927 NBC formally divided their respective marketing strategies: the Red Network
NBC Red Network
The NBC Red Network was one of the two original radio networks of the National Broadcasting Company. After NBC was required to divest itself of its Blue Network , the Red Network continued as the NBC Radio Network.It, along with the Blue Network, were the first two commercial radio networks in the...

offered commercially sponsored entertainment and music programming; the Blue Network
Blue Network
The Blue Network, and its immediate predecessor, the NBC Blue Network, were the on-air names of an American radio production and distribution service from 1927 to 1945...

mostly carried sustaining or non-sponsored broadcasts, especially news and cultural programs. Various histories of NBC suggest the color designations for the two networks came from the color of the push pins NBC engineers used to designate affiliates of WEAF (red) and WJZ (blue), or from the use of double-ended red and blue colored pencils. A similar two-part/two-color strategy appeared in the recording industry, dividing the market between classical and popular offerings.

On April 5, 1927, NBC reached the West Coast with the launch of the NBC Orange Network, also known as The Pacific Coast Network. This was followed by the debut on October 18, 1931, of the NBC Gold Network, also known as The Pacific Gold Network. The Orange Network carried Red Network programming and the Gold Network carried programming from the Blue Network. Initially the Orange Network recreated Eastern Red Network programming for West Coast stations at KPO
KNBR
KNBR, The Sports Leader, is the on-air branding used by two AM radio stations in the San Francisco, California, area broadcasting a sports radio format, owned by Cumulus Media....

 in San Francisco. In 1936 the Orange Network name was dropped and network affiliate
Network affiliate
In the broadcasting industry , a network affiliate is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the television program or radio program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network...

 stations became part of the Red Network. At the same time the Gold Network became part of the Blue Network. NBC also developed a network for shortwave
Shortwave
Shortwave radio refers to the upper MF and all of the HF portion of the radio spectrum, between 1,800–30,000 kHz. Shortwave radio received its name because the wavelengths in this band are shorter than 200 m which marked the original upper limit of the medium frequency band first used...

 radio stations in the 1930s called the NBC White Network.

Prior to occupying its location at Rockefeller Center, NBC had occupied upper floors of a building at 711 Fifth Avenue developed by Floyd Brown, himself an architect. Home of NBC from its construction in 1927, the broadcast company occupied floor designed by Raymond Hood
Raymond Hood
Raymond Mathewson Hood was an early-mid twentieth century architect who worked in the Art Deco style. He was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, MIT, and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the latter institution he met John Mead Howells, with whom Hood later partnered...

 – who designed the tenants multiple studios as "a Gothic church, the Roman forum, a Louis XIV room and, in a space devoted to jazz, something “wildly futuristic, with plenty of color in bizarre designs.” NBC outgrew 711 Fifth Avenue in 1933.

In 1930, General Electric was compelled by antitrust charges to divest itself of RCA, which it had founded. RCA moved its corporate headquarters into the new Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...

 in 1933, signing the leases in 1931. RCA was the lead tenant at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the RCA Building (now the GE Building
GE Building
The GE Building is an Art Deco skyscraper that forms the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center in the midtown Manhattan section of New York City. Known as the RCA Building until 1988, it is most famous for housing the headquarters of the television network NBC...

). The building housed NBC studios, as well as theaters for RCA-owned RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...

. Rockefeller Center's founder and financier John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. was a major philanthropist and a pivotal member of the prominent Rockefeller family. He was the sole son among the five children of businessman and Standard Oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller and the father of the five famous Rockefeller brothers...

, arranged the deal with the chairman of GE, Owen D. Young, and the president of RCA, David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American commercial radio and television. He founded the National Broadcasting Company and throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his...

.

The chimes

The famous three-note NBC chimes
NBC chimes
The NBC chimes, named for the radio and television network on which they have been used, consists of a succession of three distinct pitches: G3, E4, and C4 , sounded in that order, creating an arpeggiated C-major chord in the second inversion, within about two seconds time, and reverberating for...

 came about after several years of development. The three note sequence G-E'-C' were heard first over Atlanta's WSB
WSB (AM)
WSB — branded AM 750 and 95.5 FM News/Talk WSB — is a commercial radio station licensed to Atlanta, Georgia broadcasting a news/talk format. The station transmits with 50,000 watts of nondirectional power day and night, enjoying clear-channel status on its broadcast frequency according to the U.S...

. The chimes outline what is known to musicians as a second inversion C Major triad. Someone at NBC in New York heard the WSB version of the notes during the networked broadcast of a Georgia Tech football
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football
The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team represents the Georgia Institute of Technology in collegiate level football. While the team is officially designated as the Yellow Jackets, it is also referred to as the Ramblin' Wreck. The Yellow Jackets are a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference...

 game and asked permission to use it on the national network. NBC started to use the three notes in 1931, and it was the first audio trademark
Sound trademark
A sound trademark is a non-conventional trademark where sound is used to perform the trademark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services....

 to be accepted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...

. A variant sequence was also used that went G-E'-C'-G, known as "the fourth chime" and used during wartime (especially in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...

), on D-Day, and disasters. The NBC chimes were mechanized in 1932 by Richard H. Ranger
Richard H. Ranger
Richard Howland Ranger was an American electrical engineer, music engineer and inventor. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of John Hilliard and Emily Anthen Gillet Ranger, He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I, earning the rank of Major...

 of the Rangertone company; their purpose was to send a low level signal of constant amplitude that would be heard by the various switching stations manned by NBC and AT&T engineers, and thus used as a system cue for switching different stations between the Red and Blue network feeds. Contrary to popular legend, the three musical notes, G-E'-C', did not originally stand for NBC's previous parent corporation, the General Electric Company; although GE's radio station in Schenectady, New York
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...

, WGY, was an early NBC affiliate, and GE was an early shareholder in NBC's founding parent RCA. General Electric did not own NBC outright until 1986. G-E'-C' was incorporated into John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...

' theme music for the NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...

, and is still used on NBC-TV. A variant with two preceding notes is used on the MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

 cable television network. NBC's radio branch no longer exists.

New beginnings: The Blue Network becomes ABC

The Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

 (FCC) had, since its creation in 1934, investigated the monopolistic
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...

 effects of network broadcasting. The FCC found that NBC's two networks and its owned-and-operated stations dominated audiences, affiliates and advertising in American radio. In 1939 the FCC ordered RCA to divest itself of one of the two networks. RCA fought the divestiture order, but in 1940 divided NBC into two companies in case an appeal was lost. The Blue Network became NBC Blue Network, Inc. and NBC Red became NBC Red Network, Inc. Both networks formally divorced operations on January 8, 1942, and the Blue Network was referred to on the air as either Blue or Blue Network, with official corporate name Blue Network Company, Inc. NBC Red, on the air, became known simply as NBC.

After losing its final appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 in May 1943, RCA sold Blue Network Company, Inc., for $8 million to Life Savers
Life Savers
Life Savers is an American brand of ring-shaped mints and artificially fruit-flavored hard candy. The candy is known for its distinctive packaging, coming in aluminum foil rolls....

 magnate Edward J. Noble
Edward John Noble
Edward John Noble was an American broadcasting and candy industrialist originally from Gouverneur, New York. He co-founded the Life Savers Corporation in 1913...

, completing the sale on October 12, 1943. Noble got the network name, leases on land-lines and the New York studios; two-and-a half stations (WJZ in Newark/New York; KGO
KGO (AM)
KGO is a news/talk-format radio station radio with offices and studios in San Francisco, California. Unlike most other American news/talk stations, KGO originates nearly all of its own programming locally. Since 1978, KGO radio has received Arbitron's number-one ranking in the Bay Area...

 in San Francisco, and WENR in Chicago, which shared a frequency with Prairie Farmer station WLS
WLS (AM)
WLS is a Chicago clear-channel AM station on 890 kHz. It uses C-QUAM AM stereo and transmits with 50,000 watts from transmitter and towers on the south edge of Tinley Park, Illinois....

); and about 60 affiliates. Noble wanted a better name for the network and in 1944 acquired the rights to the name American Broadcasting Company
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

from George Storer. The Blue Network became ABC officially on June 15, 1945, after the sale was completed.

Defining radio’s golden age

In the golden days of network broadcasting, 1930 to 1950, NBC was at the pinnacle of American radio. NBC broadcast radio's earliest mass hit, Amos 'n' Andy
Amos 'n' Andy
Amos 'n' Andy is a situation comedy set in the African-American community. It was very popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s on both radio and television....

, beginning in 1926–27 in its original fifteen-minute serial format. The show set a standard for nearly all serialized programming in the original radio era, both comedies and soap operas. The appeal of the two struggling title characters landed a broad audience, especially during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

.

NBC became home to many of the most popular performers and programs on the air. Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....

, Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...

, Edgar Bergen
Edgar Bergen
Edgar John Bergen was an American actor and radio performer, best known as a ventriloquist.-Early life:...

, Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...

, Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...

, and Burns and Allen
Burns and Allen
Burns and Allen, an American comedy duo consisting of George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen, worked together as a comedy team in vaudeville, films, radio and television and achieved great success over four decades.-Vaudeville:...

 called NBC home, as did Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...

's NBC Symphony Orchestra
NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra established by David Sarnoff of the National Broadcasting Company especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini...

, which the network helped him create. Other programs were Vic and Sade
Vic and Sade
Vic and Sade was an American radio program created and written by Paul Rhymer. It was regularly broadcast on radio from 1932 to 1944, then intermittently until 1946, and was briefly adapted to television in 1949 and again in 1957....

, Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.-Husband and wife in real...

, The Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve , initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. Built around Throckmorton Philharmonic Gildersleeve, a character who had been a staple on the classic radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, first Introduced to...

(arguably broadcasting's first spin-off program, from Fibber McGee), One Man's Family
One Man's Family
One Man's Family, is a long-running American radio soap opera. It was heard for almost three decades, from 1932 to 1959. Created by Carlton E. Morse, it was the longest-running uninterrupted serial in the history of American radio...

, Ma Perkins
Ma Perkins
Ma Perkins is an American radio soap opera which was heard on NBC from 1933 to 1949 and on CBS from 1942 to 1960. Between 1942 and 1949, the show was heard simultaneously on both networks...

, and Death Valley Days
Death Valley Days
Death Valley Days is an American radio and television anthology series featuring true stories of the old American West, particularly the Death Valley area. Created in 1930 by Ruth Woodman, the program was broadcast on radio until 1945. It continued from 1952 to 1975 as a syndicated television series...

. NBC stations were often the most powerful, and some occupied unique clear-channel national frequencies, reaching many hundreds or thousands of miles at night.

In the late 1940s, rival Columbia Broadcasting System
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 (CBS) gained ground by allowing radio stars to use their own production companies, which was profitable for them. In early radio years, stars and programs commonly hopped between networks when their short-term contracts expired. In 1948–49, beginning with the nation's top radio star, Jack Benny, many NBC performers (including Edgar Bergen
Edgar Bergen
Edgar John Bergen was an American actor and radio performer, best known as a ventriloquist.-Early life:...

 and Charlie McCarthy, Burns and Allen
Burns and Allen
Burns and Allen, an American comedy duo consisting of George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen, worked together as a comedy team in vaudeville, films, radio and television and achieved great success over four decades.-Vaudeville:...

 and Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

) jumped to CBS.

In addition, NBC stars began moving toward television, including comedian Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Milton Berlinger , better known as Milton Berle, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater , in 1948 he was the first major star of U.S. television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr...

, whose Texaco Star Theater
Texaco Star Theater
Texaco Star Theater is an American comedy-variety show, broadcast on radio from 1938 to 1949 and telecast from 1948 to 1956. It was one of the first successful examples of American television broadcasting, remembered as the show that gave Milton Berle the nickname "Mr...

on NBC became television's first major hit. Conductor Arturo Toscanini conducted ten television concerts on NBC between 1948 and 1952. The concerts were simulcast
Simulcast
Simulcast, shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often...

 on both TV and radio, perhaps the first such instance in which this was done. Two of them were historic firsts – the first complete telecast of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...

, and the first complete telecast of Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

's Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...

, performed in concert rather than with scenery and costumes. The Aida telecast starred Herva Nelli
Herva Nelli
Herva Nelli was an Italian-born operatic soprano.-Biography:Named after the French socialist Gustave Hervé, she was born in Florence, where she attended a convent school...

 and Richard Tucker
Richard Tucker
Richard Tucker was an American operatic tenor.-Early life:Tucker was born Rivn Ticker in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of Romanian immigrants from Bessarabia. His father, Shmul Ticker, and mother Fanya-Tsipa Ticker had already adopted the surname "Tucker" by the time their son entered first...

.

Aiming to keep classic radio alive as television matured, and to challenge CBS's Sunday night radio lineup, much of which had jumped from NBC with Jack Benny, NBC launched The Big Show
The Big Show (NBC Radio)
The Big Show, an American radio variety program featuring 90 minutes of top-name comic, stage, screen and music talent, was aimed at keeping American radio in its classic era alive and well against the rapidly-growing television tide...

in November 1950. This 90-minute variety show updated radio's earliest musical variety style with sophisticated comedy and dramatic presentations. Featuring stage legend Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...

 as hostess, it lured prestigious entertainers, including Fred Allen, Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...

, Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior was a Danish and later American opera singer. He was the pre-eminent Wagnerian tenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and has since come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type.-Biography:...

, Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors.-Early life:Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew...

, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

, Bob Hope, Danny Thomas
Danny Thomas
Danny Thomas was an American nightclub comedian and television and film actor, best known for starring in the television sitcom Make Room for Daddy . He was also the founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital...

, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. KBE was an American actor and a highly decorated naval officer of World War II.-Early life:...

, and Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

. But The Big Shows initial success did not last despite critical praise, as most of its potential listeners were increasingly becoming television viewers. The show endured two years, with NBC losing perhaps a million dollars on the project (they were only able to sell advertising time during the middle half-hour every week).

NBC's last major radio programming push, beginning June 12, 1955, was
Monitor
Monitor (NBC Radio)
NBC Monitor was an American weekend radio program broadcast from June 12, 1955, until January 26, 1975. Airing live and nationwide on the NBC Radio Network, it originally aired beginning Saturday morning at 8am and continuing through the weekend until 12 midnight on Sunday...

, a creation of NBC President Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, who also created the innovative NBC television programs Today Show, Tonight Show, and Home. Monitor was a continuous all-weekend mixture of music, news, interviews and features, with a variety of hosts including well-known television personalities Dave Garroway
Dave Garroway
David Cunningham "Dave" Garroway was the founding host of NBC's Today from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing, relaxed, and relaxing style belied a battle with depression that may have contributed to the end of his days as a leading television personality—and, eventually, his life...

, Hugh Downs
Hugh Downs
Hugh Malcolm Downs is a long time American broadcaster, television host, news anchor, TV producer, author, game show host, and music composer; and is perhaps best known for his role as co-host the NBC News program Today from 1962 to 1971, host of the Concentration game show from 1958 to 1969, and...

, Ed McMahon
Ed McMahon
Edward Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr. was an American comedian, game show host and announcer. He is most famous for his work on television as Johnny Carson's sidekick and announcer on The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992. He also hosted the original version of the talent show Star Search from 1983 to 1995...

, Joe Garagiola and Gene Rayburn
Gene Rayburn
Gene Rayburn was an American radio and television personality. He is best known as the host of various editions of the popular American television game show Match Game for over two decades....

. The potpourri show tried to keep vintage radio alive by featuring segments from Jim and Marian Jordan (in character as Fibber McGee and Molly); Peg Lynch
Peg Lynch
Margaret Frances “Peg” Lynch, born November 25, 1916, in Lincoln, Nebraska, is the creator of the radio and television program Ethel and Albert.- Early life :...

's dialog comedy Ethel and Albert
Ethel and Albert
Ethel and Albert was a radio and television comedy series about a married couple, Ethel and Albert Arbuckle, living in the small town of Sandy Harbor...

(with Alan Bunce); and iconoclastic satirist Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan (comedian)
Henry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...

.
Monitor was a success for a number of years, but after the mid-1960s, local stations, especially in larger markets, were reluctant to break from their established formats to run non-conforming network programming. One exception was Toscanini: The Man Behind the Legend, a weekly series commemorating the great conductor's NBC broadcasts and recordings which began in 1963 and ran for several years. After Monitor went off the air January 26, 1975, little remained of NBC network radio beyond hourly newscasts and news features, and The Eternal Light
The Eternal Light
The Eternal Light is a long-running American radio and television program on the NBC Radio Network, produced in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary, that was broadcast between 1944 and 1989. Featuring interviews, commentary, and award-winning dramas from the perspective of Judaism, it...

 on Sunday mornings.

The last years of NBC Radio

Beginning on June 18, 1975, NBC launched the NBC News and Information Service (NIS), which provided up to 55 minutes of news per hour around the clock to local stations that wanted to adopt an all-news format. NBC aired the service on WRC in Washington and on its owned-and-operated FM stations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. NIS attracted several dozen subscribing stations, but by the fall of 1976 NBC determined that it could not project that the service would ever become profitable and gave the subscribers six months' notice that it would be discontinued. NIS operations ended on May 29, 1977. In 1979, NBC started The Source, a modestly successful secondary network providing news and short features to FM rock stations.

The NBC Radio Network also pioneered personal advice call-in national talk radio with a satellite-distributed talk show in the evening entitled TalkNet, featuring Bruce Williams (personal financial advice), Bernard Meltzer (personal/financial advice) and Sally Jesse Raphael (personal / romantic advice). While never much of a ratings success, TalkNet nonetheless helped further the national talk radio format. For affiliates, many of them struggling AM stations, TalkNet helped fill the evenings with free programming, allowing the stations to sell local advertising in a dynamic format without the cost associated with producing local programming. Some in the industry feared this trend would lead to ever-more control of radio content by networks and syndicators.

GE acquired RCA in 1986, and with it NBC, signaling the beginning of the end of NBC Radio. There were three factors that led to its demise. First, GE decided that radio did not fit its strategy. Second, the radio division had not been profitable for many years. Finally, FCC rules at the time prevented a new owner from owning both a radio and TV division. In the summer of 1987, GE sold NBC Radio's network operations to Westwood One
Westwood One
Westwood One was an American radio network and was based in New York City. At one time, it was managed by CBS Radio, the radio arm of CBS Corporation, and Viacom and was later purchased by the private equity firm The Gores Group...

, and sold off the NBC-owned stations to different buyers. By 1990, the NBC Radio Network as an independent programming service was pretty much gone, becoming a brand name for content produced by Westwood One, and ultimately by, ironically, CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...

. The Mutual Broadcasting System
Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...

, which Westwood One had acquired two years earlier, met the same fate, and essentially merged with NBC Radio.

It should be noted that GE's divestiture of NBC's entire radio division was the first cannon shot of what would play out in the national broadcast media, as each of the Big 3 broadcast networks were soon acquired by other corporate entities. The NBC case was particularly noteworthy in that it was the first to be bought—and was bought by a corporate behemoth outside the broadcast industry as GE is a manufacturer. Prior to the acquisition by GE, NBC operated its radio division partly out of tradition, and partly to meet its then-FCC-mandated requirement to distribute programming for the public good. (The broadcast airwaves are owned by the public, that broadcast spectrum is limited, there are only so many broadcast stations to go around which was/is the basis for broadcast regulation requiring certain content for the public good.) Syndicators such as Westwood One were not subject to such rules as they owned no stations. Thus did GE's divestiture of NBC Radio – "America's First Network" – in many ways mark the "beginning of the end" of the old broadcasting era and the ushering in of the new, largely unregulated industry that we see today.

By the late 1990s, Westwood One was producing NBC Radio-branded newscasts, on weekday mornings only. In 1999, these were discontinued, and the few remaining NBC Radio Network affiliates began to receive CNN Radio
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

-branded newscasts around the clock. But in 2003, Westwood One began distributing a new service called NBC News Radio, consisting of one-minute news updates read by television anchors and reporters from NBC News
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is...

 and MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

. The content, however, is written by employees of Westwood One – not NBC News.

Television

For many years NBC was closely identified with David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American commercial radio and television. He founded the National Broadcasting Company and throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his...

, who used it as a vehicle to sell consumer electronics. It was Sarnoff who ruthlessly stole innovative ideas from competitors, using RCA's muscle to prevail in the courts. RCA and Sarnoff had dictated the broadcasting standards put in place by the FCC in 1938, and captured the spotlight by introducing all-electronic television to the public at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...

, simultaneously initiating a regular schedule of programs on the NBC-RCA television station in New York City. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 appeared at the fair, before the NBC cameras, becoming the first U.S. president to appear on television on April 30, 1939. The David Sarnoff Library has available an actual, off-the-monitor photograph of the FDR telecast. The broadcast was transmitted by NBC's New York television station W2XBS Channel 1 (now WNBC-TV
WNBC
WNBC, virtual channel 4 , is the flagship station of the NBC television network, located in New York City. WNBC's studios are co-located with NBC corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan...

 channel 4) and was seen by about one thousand viewers within the station's roughly 40 miles (64.4 km) coverage area from their Empire State Building transmitter location.

The next day, May 1, four models of RCA television sets went on sale to the general public in various New York City department stores, promoted in a series of splashy newspaper ads. It is to be noted that DuMont (and others) actually offered the first home sets in 1938 in anticipation of NBC's announced April 1939 start-up. Later in 1939, NBC took its cameras to professional football and baseball games in the New York City area, establishing many "firsts" in the history of television.

Actual NBC "network" broadcasts (more than one station) began about this time with occasional special events – such as the British King and Queen's visit to the New York World's Fair – being seen in Philadelphia (over the station which would become WPTZ, now KYW
KYW-TV
KYW-TV, virtual channel 3, is an owned and operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. KYW-TV shares a studio facility with its sister station, CW flagship WPSG just north of Center City Philadelphia...

) and in Schenectady (over the station which would become WRGB), two pioneer stations in their own right. The most ambitious NBC television "network" program of this pre-war era was the telecasting of the Republican National Convention in 1940 from Philadelphia, which was fed live to New York and Schenectady. However, despite major promotion by RCA, television set sales in New York in the 1939–1940 period were disappointing, primarily due to the high cost of the sets, and the lack of compelling regular programming. Most sets were sold to bars, hotels and other public places, where the general public viewed special sporting and news events.
Television's experimental period ended, and the FCC allowed full commercial telecasting to begin on July 1, 1941. NBC's New York station W2XBS received the first commercial license, adopting the call letters WNBT (it is now WNBC-TV
WNBC
WNBC, virtual channel 4 , is the flagship station of the NBC television network, located in New York City. WNBC's studios are co-located with NBC corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan...

). The first official, paid television commercial on that day broadcast by any station in the United States was for Bulova Watches, seen just before the start of a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball telecast on NBC's WNBT, New York. A test pattern, featuring the newly assigned WNBT call letters, was modified to look like a clock, complete with functioning hands. The Bulova logo, with the phrase "Bulova Watch Time", was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern. A photograph of the NBC camera telecasting the test pattern-advertisement for that first official TV commercial can be seen at this page. Among programming on the opening weekend of WNBT's programming was amateur boxing at Jamaica Arena, the Eastern Clay Courts tennis championships, programming from the USO, a spelling bee-type game show called "Words on the Wing," a few feature films, and the television debut of the game show Truth or Consequences
Truth or Consequences
Truth or Consequences is an American quiz show originally hosted on NBC radio by Ralph Edwards and later on television by Edwards , Jack Bailey , Bob Barker , Bob Hilton and Larry Anderson . The television show ran on CBS, NBC and also in syndication...

.

Limited programming continued until the U.S. entered World War II. Telecasts were curtailed in the early years of the war, then expanded as NBC began to prepare for full service upon the war's end. On V-E Day
Victory in Europe Day
Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 , the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not...

, May 8, 1945, WNBT broadcast hours of news coverage, and remotes from around New York City. This event was pre-promoted by NBC with a direct-mail card sent to television set owners in the New York area. At one point, a WNBT camera placed atop the marquee of the Hotel Astor panned the crowd below celebrating the end of the war in Europe. The vivid coverage was a prelude to television's rapid growth after the war ended.

The NBC television network grew from its initial post-war lineup of four stations. The 1947 World Series
1947 World Series
The 1947 World Series matched the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers, with the Yankees winning the Series in seven games for their first title since , and the eleventh championship in team history...

 featured two New York teams (Yankees and Dodgers), and local TV sales boomed, since the games were telecast in New York. More stations along the East Coast and in the Midwest were connected by coaxial cable through the late 1940s, and in September 1951 the first transcontinental telecasts took place.

The early 1950s brought success for NBC in the new medium. Television's first big star, Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Milton Berlinger , better known as Milton Berle, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater , in 1948 he was the first major star of U.S. television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr...

, drew large audiences to NBC with his antics on Texaco Star Theater
Texaco Star Theater
Texaco Star Theater is an American comedy-variety show, broadcast on radio from 1938 to 1949 and telecast from 1948 to 1956. It was one of the first successful examples of American television broadcasting, remembered as the show that gave Milton Berle the nickname "Mr...

. Under its innovative president, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, the network launched Today and The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

, which would bookend the broadcast day for over fifty years, and which still lead their competitors. Weaver, who also launched the genre of periodic 90-minute network "spectaculars," network-produced motion pictures, and the live 90-minute Sunday afternoon series Wide Wide World
Wide Wide World
Wide Wide World was a 90-minute documentary series telecast live on NBC on Sunday afternoons at 4pm Eastern. Conceived by network head Pat Weaver and hosted by Dave Garroway, Wide Wide World was introduced on the Producers' Showcase series on June 27, 1955...

, left the network in 1955 in a dispute with its chairman David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American commercial radio and television. He founded the National Broadcasting Company and throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his...

, who subsequently named his son Robert Sarnoff as president.

In 1951, NBC commissioned Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

 to compose the first opera ever written for television; Menotti came up with
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast...

, a forty-five minute work for which he wrote both music and libretto, about a disabled shepherd boy who meets the Three Wise Men and is miraculously cured when he offers his crutch to the newborn Christ Child. It was such a stunning success that it was repeated every year on NBC from 1951 to 1966, when a quarrel between Menotti and NBC ended the broadcasts. However, by 1978, Menotti and NBC had patched things up, and an all-new production of the work, filmed partly on location in the Middle East, was telecast that year.

Color television

While rivals CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 and DuMont
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network, also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont, Du Mont, or Dumont was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC for the distinction of being first overall. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned by DuMont...

 also offered color broadcasting plans, RCA convinced a waffling FCC to approve its color system in December 1953. NBC was ready with color programming within days of the FCC's decision. NBC began with some shows in 1954, and that summer broadcast its first program to air all episodes in color, The Marriage
The Marriage
The Marriage was the first prime-time network television series to be broadcast regularly in color. It was a situation comedy broadcast live by NBC for seven episodes in the summer of 1954...

.
  • In 1955, on the television anthology Producers' Showcase
    Producers' Showcase
    Producers' Showcase is an American anthology television series that was telecast live during the 1950s in compatible color by NBC. With top talent, the 90-minute episodes, covering a wide variety of genres, aired under the title every fourth Monday at 8 p.m. ET for three seasons, beginning October...

    , NBC broadcast a live production in color of Peter Pan
    Peter Pan (1954 musical)
    Peter Pan is a musical adaptation of J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan and Barrie's own novelization of it, Peter and Wendy. The music is mostly by Mark "Moose" Charlap, with additional music by Jule Styne, and most of the lyrics were written by Carolyn Leigh, with additional lyrics by Betty...

    , a new Broadway musical adaptation of J. M. Barrie
    J. M. Barrie
    Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...

    's beloved play, with the musical's entire original cast, the first such telecast of its kind. Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

     starred as Peter and Cyril Ritchard
    Cyril Ritchard
    Cyril Ritchard was an Australian stage, screen and television actor, and director. He is probably best remembered today for his performance as Captain Hook in the Mary Martin musical production of Peter Pan....

     played the dual role of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook
    Captain Hook
    Captain James Hook is the main antagonist of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and its various adaptations. The character is a villainous pirate captain of the Jolly Roger brig, and lord of the pirate village/harbour in Neverland, where he is widely feared. Most...

    . The broadcast drew the highest ratings for a television program up to then. It was so successful that NBC restaged it live a mere ten months later, and in 1960, long after Producers' Showcase had ended its run, Peter Pan, with most of the 1955 cast, was restaged again, this time as a TV special on its own, and videotaped so that it would no longer have to be done live on television.
  • In 1956 during a National Association meeting in Chicago, NBC announced that its Chicago TV station WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV
    WMAQ-TV
    WMAQ-TV, channel 5, is an owned-and-operated television station of the NBC Television Network, located in Chicago, Illinois. WMAQ-TV's main studios and offices are located within the NBC Tower in the Streeterville neighborhood, with an auxiliary street-level studio on the Magnificent Mile at 401...

    ) was the first color TV station in the nation (at least six hours of color broadcasts a day).
  • The television edition of the radio program The Bell Telephone Hour
    The Bell Telephone Hour
    The Bell Telephone Hour is a long-run concert series which began April 29, 1940 on NBC Radio and was heard on NBC until June 30, 1958. Sponsored by Bell Telephone, it showcased the best in classical and Broadway music, reaching eight to nine million listeners each week. It continued on television...

     premiered in color on NBC in 1959, where it continued for nine more years.
  • In September 1961, the Walt Disney anthology television series moved from ABC to NBC, where the show continued its very long run, this time in color. As many of the Disney programs shown in black-and-white on ABC had actually been filmed in color, they could easily be repeated on the NBC edition of the program.
  • The 1962 Rose Bowl
    1962 Rose Bowl
    The 1962 Rose Bowl, played on January 1, 1962, was the 48th Rose Bowl Game. The Minnesota Golden Gophers defeated the UCLA Bruins, 21–3.Big Ten Conference champion Ohio State declined the invitation to play in the Rose Bowl...

     was the first color television broadcast of a college football game.


By 1963, much of NBC's prime time schedule was in color, although some popular programs like The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series that was broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious secret international espionage and law-enforcement...

, which premiered in late 1964, had their entire first season in black-and-white. In the fall of 1965, NBC achieved 95% color programming in prime time (the exceptions were I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie is a 1960s American sitcom with a fantasy premise. The show starred Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries...

and Convoy
Convoy (TV series)
Convoy is a 13-episode American television show set during World War II that appeared on NBC for the 1965–1966 television season.The series starred John Gavin as Commander Dan Talbot of the US Navy destroyer escort "DD181" and John Larch as civilian merchant Captain Ben Foster of the cargo ship...

), and began billing itself as "The Full Color Network". Without television sets to sell, rival networks followed more slowly, finally committing to 100% prime-time color programming in the 1966–67 season. Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...

was the first soap opera to premiere in color.

In 1967, NBC acquired MGM's classic 1939 film
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

after CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

, which had televised the film beginning in 1956, refused to meet MGM's increased price for more television showings.
Oz had been, up to then, one of the few programs that CBS had telecast in color, but by 1967, color was the norm on TV, and the film became another in the list of color specials telecast by NBC. The network showed the film annually for eight years, beginning in 1968, after which CBS, realizing that they may have committed a colossal blunder by letting this then-huge ratings success go to another network, now agreed to pay MGM more money so that the rights to show the film could revert to them.

Two distinctive features of the film's showings on NBC were:
  1. the film was shown for the first time without a host to introduce it as had always been previously done,
  2. the film was slightly cut to make room for more commercials. Despite the cuts, however, it continued to score excellent television ratings in those pre-VCR days, as audiences were generally unable to see the film any other way at that time.

1970s doldrums

The 1970s started strongly for the network thanks to hits like Adam-12
Adam-12
Adam-12 was a television police drama which followed two police officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, Pete Malloy and Jim Reed, as they patrolled the streets of Los Angeles in their patrol unit, 1-Adam-12. Created by Jack Webb who is known for creating Dragnet, the series captured a...

, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In is an American sketch comedy television program which ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to May 14, 1973. It was hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin and was broadcast over NBC...

, Emergency!
Emergency!
Emergency! is an American television series that combines the medical drama and action-adventure genres. It was produced by Mark VII Limited and distributed by Universal Studios...

, The Dean Martin Show
The Dean Martin Show
The Dean Martin Show is a TV variety-comedy series that ran from 1965 to 1974 for 264 episodes. It was broadcast by NBC and hosted by crooner Dean Martin...

, and The Flip Wilson Show
The Flip Wilson Show
The Flip Wilson Show is a variety show that aired in the U.S. on NBC from September 17, 1970 to June 27, 1974. The show starred American comedian Flip Wilson; the program was one of the first American television programs starring a black person in the title role to become highly successful with a...

, but this did not last. In spite of the success of such new shows as the NBC Mystery Movie
NBC Mystery Movie
The NBC Mystery Movie is the general name of an American television series, produced by Universal Studios, that was broadcast by NBC from 1971-77...

, Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son is an American sitcom, based on the BBC's Steptoe and Son, that ran on the NBC television network from January 14, 1972, to March 25, 1977....

, Chico and the Man
Chico and the Man
Chico and the Man is an American sitcom which ran on NBC for four seasons, from September 13, 1974 to July 21, 1978. It stars Jack Albertson as Ed Brown , the cantankerous owner of a run down garage in an East Los Angeles barrio, and Freddie Prinze as Chico Rodriguez, an upbeat, optimistic Chicano...

, Little House on the Prairie
Little House on the Prairie (TV series)
Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...

, The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American television drama series which aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980. It has remained in regular syndication to the present day. The show stars James Garner as Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford and features Noah...

, Police Woman
Police Woman (TV series)
Police Woman is an American television police drama starring Angie Dickinson that ran on NBC for four seasons, from September 13, 1974, to March 29, 1978.-Synopsis:...

and Quincy, M.E.
Quincy, M.E.
Quincy, M.E., also called Quincy, is a United States television series from Universal Studios that aired from October 3, 1976, to September 5, 1983, on NBC...

, as well as continued success from veterans like The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night....

and The Wonderful World of Disney, the network entered a slump in the middle of the decade. Disney, in particular, saw its ratings nosedive once CBS put 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....

 up against it in the 1975–1976 season. In 1974 under new president Herb Schlosser, the network tried to go after younger viewers with a series of costly movies, miniseries and specials. This failed to attract the desirable 18–34 demographic, and alienated older viewers. None of the new prime-time shows NBC introduced in the fall of 1975 earned a second season, all failing in the face of established competition. The network's lone breakout success that season was the groundbreaking late-night comedy/variety show, NBC's Saturday Night – which would soon become Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

, in a time slot previously held by reruns of The Tonight Show.

In 1978, Schlosser was promoted to executive vice presidency at RCA, and a desperate NBC lured Fred Silverman
Fred Silverman
Fred Silverman is an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at the CBS, ABC and NBC networks, and was responsible for bringing to television such programs as the series Scooby-Doo , All in the Family , The Waltons , and Charlie's Angels , as well as the...

 away from number-one ABC to turn the network's fortunes around. With the notable exceptions of
Diff'rent Strokes
Diff'rent Strokes
Diff'rent Strokes is an American television sitcom that aired on NBC from November 3, 1978 to May 4, 1985, and on ABC from September 27, 1985 to March 7, 1986...

, Real People
Real People
Real People is an NBC reality television series that aired from 1979 to 1984, on Wednesday and then Sunday nights. Its initial episodes aired live in the Eastern and Central Time Zones.-Synopsis:...

, The Facts of Life
The Facts of Life (TV series)
The Facts of Life is an American sitcom that originally ran on the NBC television network from August 24, 1979 to May 7, 1988. A spin-off of the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, the series' premise focused on Edna Garrett as she becomes a housemother at the fictional Eastland School, a prestigious...

, and the mini-series Shogun
Shogun (TV miniseries)
Shōgun is an American television miniseries based on the namesake novel by James Clavell. As with the novel, the title is often shown as Shōgun in order to conform to Hepburn romanization. The miniseries was broadcast over five nights, between September 15 and September 19, 1980 on NBC in the...

, he could not find a hit. Failures accumulated rapidly under his watch (such as Hello, Larry
Hello, Larry
Hello, Larry is an American sitcom which aired on NBC from January 26, 1979, to April 30, 1980.-First season:Larry Alder is a radio talk show host who left Los Angeles after being divorced and moved to Portland, Oregon, with his two teenage daughters, Diane and...

, Supertrain
Supertrain
Supertrain is an American television drama/adventure series that ran on NBC from February 7 to May 5, 1979. Nine episodes were made, including a 2-hour pilot episode.-Overview:...

, Pink Lady and Jeff, and The Waverly Wonders). Ironically many of them were beaten in the ratings by shows Silverman had greenlighted at CBS and ABC.

Also during this time, NBC suffered the defections of several longtime affiliates in markets such as: Atlanta (WSB-TV
WSB-TV
WSB-TV, virtual channel 2.1 , is the ABC affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship television station of Cox Enterprises and its Cox Media Group subsidiary...

), Baltimore (WBAL-TV
WBAL-TV
WBAL-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station in Baltimore, Maryland. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 11. It is one of the flagship stations of Hearst Television, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation, which also owns sister radio stations WBAL and...

), Baton Rouge (WBRZ-TV
WBRZ-TV
WBRZ, virtual channel 2 , is an ABC affiliate television station serving Baton Rouge, Louisiana, south-central and southeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi. It is owned by the Manship family, who also publishes the Baton Rouge daily newspaper, The Advocate. Its transmitter is located in...

), Charlotte (WSOC-TV
WSOC-TV
WSOC-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is owned by Cox Enterprises. The station's studio is located at North Tryon and 23rd Streets, just north of Uptown Charlotte, and is shared with sister station WAXN-TV . The transmitter is located just outside...

), Dayton (WDTN
WDTN
WDTN, virtual channel 2, is the NBC-affiliated television station for Ohio's Miami Valley. Licensed to Dayton, it broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 50 from a transmitter in the Frytown section of the city. The station can also be seen on Time Warner Cable channel 2 and in...

), Indianapolis (WRTV
WRTV
WRTV, channel 6, is the ABC television affiliate in Indianapolis, Indiana; it is owned by McGraw-Hill. Its transmitter is located on the northwest side of Indianapolis at 8001 Township Line Road. Its studios are found at 1330 N...

), Jacksonville (WTLV
WTLV
WTLV is the NBC-affiliated television station for Jacksonville, Florida. The station broadcasts a digital signal on VHF channel 13. The station is owned by Gannett as part of a duopoly with the area's ABC affiliate, WJXX. The two stations share studios located on East Adams Street in downtown near...

), Minneapolis-St. Paul (KSTP-TV
KSTP-TV
KSTP-TV, channel 5, is the ABC affiliate for the Twin Cities. Its transmitter is located at the Shoreview Telefarm. It is the flagship station of Hubbard Broadcasting, which also owns several other broadcasting properties across the United States....

), San Diego (KGTV
KGTV
KGTV, digital channel 10, is the ABC television affiliate in San Diego, California. The station can be seen on Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T U-verse on cable channel 10 in standard definition. Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable carry its high definition signal on cable...

) and Schenectady (WRGB
WRGB
WRGB, channel 6, is a television station located in Schenectady, New York, USA. WRGB is owned by Freedom Communications, and is the CBS affiliate for the Albany-Schenectady-Troy television market...

). Most were wooed away by ABC, which was the number-one network during the late 1970s and early 1980s, while WBAL-TV and WRGB-TV went to CBS. In the case of WSB-TV and WSOC-TV, both were (and remain) under common ownership with Cox Communications
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...

, with its other NBC affiliate at the time, WIIC-TV in Pittsburgh (which would become WPXI
WPXI
WPXI, channel 11, is the NBC-affiliated television station for Western Pennsylvania that is licensed to Pittsburgh. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 48 from a transmitter located on the north side of Pittsburgh. Owned by Cox Enterprises, the station has studios in the...

 the following year and also remains owned by Cox), only remaining with the network because WIIC-TV itself was in a distant third to then-CBS affiliate and Group W
Westinghouse Broadcasting
The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, also known as Group W, was the broadcasting division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It owned several radio and television stations across the United States and distributed television shows for syndication....

 powerhouse KDKA-TV
KDKA-TV
KDKA-TV, channel 2, is an owned and operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. KDKA-TV broadcasts from a transmitter located in the Perry North neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and its studios are located in downtown Pittsburgh at Gateway Center....

 & pre-existing ABC affiliate WTAE-TV
WTAE-TV
WTAE-TV is the ABC affiliated television station for Western Pennsylvania that is licensed to Pittsburgh, broadcasting on UHF channel 51 and identifying via PSIP as channel 4 . It also serves as an ABC affiliate for the Wheeling/Steubenville and Clarksburg/Weston, West Virginia market areas...

. (KDKA-TV, which is now owned by CBS, infamously passed up affiliating with NBC after Westinghouse Electric
Westinghouse Electric (1886)
Westinghouse Electric was an American manufacturing company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997...

 bought the station from DuMont in 1954, leading to an acrimonious relationship between NBC and Westinghouse for years afterward.) In markets such as San Diego, Charlotte, and Jacksonville, NBC was forced to replace the lost stations with new affiliates broadcasting on the UHF band
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...

, with the San Diego station (KNSD
KNSD
KNSD is the NBC television station based in San Diego, California. It is owned by a joint venture of NBCUniversal and LIN TV . However, because NBCUniversal has majority control, KNSD is run as an NBC owned and operated station...

) eventually becoming an NBC O&O
Owned-and-operated station
In the broadcasting industry , an owned-and-operated station usually refers to a television station or radio station that is owned by the network with which it is associated...

. Other smaller television markets like Yuma, Arizona
Yuma, Arizona
Yuma is a city in and the county seat of Yuma County, Arizona, United States. It is located in the southwestern corner of the state, and the population of the city was 77,515 at the 2000 census, with a 2008 Census Bureau estimated population of 90,041....

 waited many years to get another local NBC affiliate (see TV stations KIVA and KYMA). The stations in Baltimore, Dayton and Jacksonville, however, have since rejoined the network.

When U.S. President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

 pulled the American team out of the 1980 Summer Olympics
1980 Summer Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Moscow in the Soviet Union. In addition, the yachting events were held in Tallinn, and some of the preliminary matches and the quarter-finals of the football tournament...

, NBC canceled a planned 150 hours of coverage (which had cost $87 million), and the network's future was in doubt. It had been counting on $170 million in advertising revenues and on the broadcasts to help promote fall shows.

The press was merciless towards Silverman, but the two most savage attacks on his leadership came from within. The company that composed NBC's on-air Proud as a Peacock
Proud as a Peacock
"Proud as a Peacock" was the advertising campaign used by the NBC television and radio networks from 1979-1981. The campaign was used to promote NBC's programming and to introduce the "Proud N", a logo that would be used until 1986.-The campaign:...

 promo music created a spoof of the ad campaign called "Loud as a Peacock." Radio host Don Imus at WNBC in New York played the parody on-air. This angered Silverman and he ordered all remaining copies of the parody destroyed, though some copies remain. On Saturday Night Live, series writer and occasional performer Al Franken
Al Franken
Alan Stuart "Al" Franken is the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which affiliates with the national Democratic Party....

 satirized Silverman in an
SNL sketch titled "Limo for a Lame-O." As a result, Silverman admitted he "never liked Al Franken to begin with", and the sketch ruined Franken's chance of succeeding Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...

 as executive producer of
SNL.

Tartikoff's turnaround

In the summer of 1981, Fred Silverman resigned. Grant Tinker
Grant Tinker
Grant Almerin Tinker is the former chairman and CEO of NBC from 1981 to 1986, co-founder of MTM Enterprises, and television producer. Tinker is the former husband of television actress Mary Tyler Moore...

 became president of the network and Brandon Tartikoff
Brandon Tartikoff
Brandon Tartikoff was a television executive who was credited with turning around NBC's low prime time reputation with such hit series as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, ALF, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Seinfeld, Miami Vice, The Golden Girls, Knight Rider, The A-Team, St...

 became chief of programming. Tartikoff inherited a schedule full of aging dramas and very few sitcoms, but showed patience with promising programs. One such show was the critically acclaimed
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received critical acclaim and its production innovations ...

, which rated poorly in its first season. Instead of canceling it, he moved the Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

-winning police drama to Thursday night where its ratings improved dramatically. He used the same tactics with
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere is an American medical drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at fictional St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood...

and Cheers
Cheers
Cheers is an American situation comedy television series that ran for 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993. It was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions, in association with Paramount Network Television for NBC, and was created by the team of James Burrows, Glen Charles, and Les Charles...

. Shows like these were able to get the same ad revenue as their higher-rated, mass-audience competition because of their desirable demographics, upscale, 18–34 year-old viewers. While the network claimed moderate successes with Gimme a Break!
Gimme a Break!
Gimme a Break! is an American sitcom which aired on NBC from October 29, 1981, until May 12, 1987. The series stars Nell Carter as the housekeeper for a widowed police chief and his three daughters.-Premise:...

, Silver Spoons
Silver Spoons
Silver Spoons is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 25, 1982 to May 11, 1986 and in first-run syndication from September 15, 1986 to March 4, 1987...

, Knight Rider and Remington Steele
Remington Steele
Remington Steele is an American television series, co-created by Robert Butler and Michael Gleason. The series, starring Stephanie Zimbalist and Pierce Brosnan, was produced by MTM Enterprises and first broadcast on the NBC network from 1982 to 1987. The series blended the genres of romantic...

, its biggest hit in this period was The A-Team
The A-Team
The A-Team is an American action adventure television series about a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel who work as soldiers of fortune, while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit". The A-Team was created by...

, which, at tenth place, was the network's only top-20 rated show of the 1982–1983 season, and it reached third place the next year. These shows helped NBC through the disastrous 1983–84 season, in which none of its new fall shows gained a second year.

In 1982, NBC canceled Tom Snyder
Tom Snyder
Thomas James "Tom" Snyder was an American television personality, news anchor and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows The Tomorrow Show, on the NBC television network in the 1970s and 1980s, and The Late Late Show, on the CBS Television Network in the 1990s...

's
The Tomorrow Show
Tomorrow (TV series)
Tomorrow was an American late-night television talk show hosted by Tom Snyder...

and gave the time slot to 34-year-old comedian David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...

. Though Letterman had an unsuccessful daytime series
The David Letterman Show
The David Letterman Show was a live morning NBC talk show hosted by David Letterman from June 23 to October 24, 1980. The show originally ran for 90 minutes, then 60 minutes from August 4 onward.-Background:...

 in 1980,
Late Night with David Letterman
Late Night with David Letterman
Late Night with David Letterman is a nightly hour-long comedy talk show on NBC that was created and hosted by David Letterman. It premiered in 1982 as the first incarnation of the Late Night franchise and went off the air in 1993, after Letterman left NBC and moved to Late Show on CBS. Late Night...

proved much more successful.

In 1984, the huge success of
The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992...

led to a renewed interest in sitcoms, while Family Ties
Family Ties
Family Ties is an American sitcom that aired on NBC for seven seasons, from 1982 to 1989. The sitcom reflected the move in the United States from the cultural liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s to the conservatism of the 1980s. This was particularly expressed through the relationship between young...

and Cheers
Cheers
Cheers is an American situation comedy television series that ran for 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993. It was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions, in association with Paramount Network Television for NBC, and was created by the team of James Burrows, Glen Charles, and Les Charles...

, both of which premiered in 1982 to mediocre ratings, saw their viewership increase from having Cosby as a lead-in. The network moved from third place to second place that season. It reached first place in the Nielsen rankings in the 1985–86 season, with hits The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris, which originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992. Starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, the show centers on four older women sharing a home in Miami, Florida...

, Jem
Jem (TV series)
Jem, also known as Jem and the Holograms, is an American animated television series that ran from 1985 to 1988 in U.S. first-run syndication...

, Miami Vice
Miami Vice
Miami Vice is an American television series produced by Michael Mann for NBC. The series starred Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two Metro-Dade Police Department detectives working undercover in Miami. It ran for five seasons on NBC from 1984–1989...

, 227
227 (TV series)
227 is an American situation comedy that originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, until May 6, 1990. The series starred Marla Gibbs as a sharp-tongued, inner-city resident gossip and housewife, Mary Jenkins...

, Night Court
Night Court
Night Court is an American television situation comedy that aired on NBC from January 4, 1984, to May 20, 1992. The setting was the night shift of a Manhattan court, presided over by the young, unorthodox Judge Harold T. "Harry" Stone...

, Highway to Heaven
Highway to Heaven
Highway to Heaven is an American television drama series which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.- Season 1 :- Season 2 :- Season 3 :- Season 4 :- Season 5 :...

, and Hunter. The network's upswing continued through the decade with ALF
ALF (TV series)
ALF is an American science fiction sitcom that originally aired on NBC from 1986 to 1990, created by Paul Fusco. The title character was Gordon Shumway, a friendly extraterrestrial nicknamed ALF , who crash lands in the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family.The series starred Max...

, Amen
Amen (TV series)
Amen is an American television sitcom produced by Carson Productions that ran from September 27, 1986 to May 11, 1991 on NBC. Set in Sherman Hemsley's real-life hometown of Philadelphia, Amen starred Hemsley as the deacon of a church and was part of a wave of successful sitcoms on NBC in the 1980s...

, Matlock
Matlock (TV series)
Matlock is an American television legal drama, starring Andy Griffith in the title role of attorney Ben Matlock. The show originally aired from September 23, 1986 to May 8, 1992 on NBC, where it replaced The A-Team, then from November 5, 1992 until May 7, 1995 on ABC.The show's format was similar...

, L.A. Law
L.A. Law
L.A. Law is a US television legal drama that ran on NBC from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994. L.A. Law reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights,...

, The Hogan Family
The Hogan Family
The Hogan Family is an American television situation comedy that aired from March 1, 1986 to July 20, 1991...

, A Different World, Empty Nest
Empty Nest
Empty Nest is an American sitcom that originally aired on NBC from 1988 to 1995. The series was created as a spin-off of The Golden Girls by creator and producer Susan Harris. For its first three seasons, Empty Nest was one of the year's top 10 most-watched programs...

, and In the Heat of the Night
In the Heat of the Night (TV series)
In the Heat of the Night is a television series based on the motion picture and novel of the same name. It was broadcast on NBC from 1988 until 1992, and then on CBS until 1995...

. In 1986, Bob Wright became chairman of NBC. In the 1988–1989 season, NBC, which was home to an astonishing 18 of the 30 highest-rated programs, won every week in the ratings for more than 12 months, an achievement that has not been duplicated before or since.

NBC aired the first of seven consecutive Summer Olympic Games broadcasts when it covered the 1988 Games
1988 Summer Olympics
The 1988 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad, were an all international multi-sport events celebrated from September 17 to October 2, 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. They were the second summer Olympic Games to be held in Asia and the first since the 1964 Summer Olympics...

 in Seoul, South Korea. In 2002, the network would add the Winter Olympics, giving NBC the rights to every Olympics through the 2012 London Games
2012 Summer Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the "London 2012 Olympic Games", are scheduled to take place in London, England, United Kingdom from 27 July to 12 August 2012...

.

"Must See TV"

In 1991, Tartikoff left NBC to take a position at Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

. In one decade he had taken control of a network with no shows in the Nielsen Top 10 and left it with five. Warren Littlefield
Warren Littlefield
Warren W. Littlefield is an American former television executive.A protégé of Brandon Tartikoff, Littlefield developed Cheers, The Cosby Show, and The Golden Girls as senior and executive vice president of NBC Entertainment under Tartikoff...

 took his place as president of NBC Entertainment. His start was shaky due to the end of most of the Tartikoff-era hits. Some blamed him for losing David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...

 to CBS after giving The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

to Jay Leno
Jay Leno
James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ,...

, following Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...

's 1992 retirement. Things turned around with hit series
Friends
Friends
Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television...

, Mad About You
Mad About You
Mad About You is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 23, 1992 to May 24, 1999. The show starred Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as a newly married couple in New York City. Reiser played Paul Buchman, a documentary film maker. Hunt played Jamie Stemple Buchman, a public relations specialist...

, Frasier
Frasier
Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...

, ER
ER (TV series)
ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994 to April 2, 2009. It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Entertainment, in association with Warner Bros. Television...

, and Will & Grace
Will & Grace
Will & Grace was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 21, 1998 to May 18, 2006 for a total of eight seasons. Will & Grace remains the most successful television series with gay principal characters...

. One of Tartikoff's late acquisitions, Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...

, initially struggled, but became one of NBC's top-rated shows after it was moved into the timeslot following Cheers. The Must See TV
Must See TV
"Must See TV" is an advertising slogan used by the NBC television network to brand its prime time blocks of sitcoms during the 1990s, and most often applied to the network's Thursday night lineup, which featured such popular sitcoms as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, A Different...

tag line was applied to Thursday night's strong lineup. After popular show Seinfeld ended its run in 1998, Friends became the most popular sitcom on NBC. It dominated the ratings, never leaving the top 5 watched shows of the year in its second through tenth season and landing on the number 1 spot in season eight (2001–2002 season). Frasier was also popular and, despite not being as highly rated as Friends, still usually landed in the top 20 and won numerous Emmy Awards.

By the mid-1990s, NBC's sports division, headed by Dick Ebersol
Dick Ebersol
Duncan "Dick" Ebersol is an American television executive and a senior adviser for . He had previously been the chairman of NBC Sports, producing large scale television events such as the Olympic Games and National Football League broadcasts....

, had rights to three of the four major professional sports organizations (NFL, Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...

 and NBA), the Olympics, and the national powerhouse Notre Dame Fighting Irish football
Notre Dame Fighting Irish football
Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team is the football team of the University of Notre Dame. The team is currently coached by Brian Kelly.Notre Dame competes as an Independent at the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision level, and is a founding member of the Bowl Championship Series coalition. It is an...

 team. The
NBA on NBC enjoyed great success in the 90s due in large part to the Chicago Bulls
Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls are an American professional basketball team based in Chicago, Illinois, playing in the Central Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association . The team was founded in 1966. They play their home games at the United Center...

' run of six championships with superstar Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan
Michael Jeffrey Jordan is a former American professional basketball player, active entrepreneur, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats...

. NBC Sports
NBC Sports
NBC Sports is the sports division of the NBC television network. Formerly "a service of NBC News," it broadcasts a diverse array of programs, including the Olympic Games, the NFL, the NHL, MLS, Notre Dame football, the PGA Tour, the Triple Crown, and the French Open, among others...

 would suffer a major blow in 1998, however, when it lost the NFL to CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

, which itself had lost rights to FOX
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

 four years earlier.

In 1998, Littlefield left NBC. Scott Sassa
Scott Sassa
Scott M. Sassa is currently president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, the operating group responsible for Hearst’s interests in cable television networks, including ESPN, Lifetime, A&E and History; a joint venture with Mark Burnett Productions, and Manilla a start up that organizes people's...

 replaced him as president of NBC Entertainment. Sassa oversaw the development of such shows as The West Wing, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is an American police procedural television drama series set in New York City, where it is also primarily produced...

, and Fear Factor
Fear Factor
Fear Factor is an American stunt/dare reality game show. The original Dutch version was called Now or Neverland. When Endemol USA and NBC adapted it to the American market in 2001, they changed the name to Fear Factor. The show pits contestants against each other in a variety of stunts for a...

. Sassa then named Garth Ancier
Garth Ancier
Garth Ancier is a media executive best known for being one of only two people to have programmed three of the five US broadcast television networks .He is the former President of BBC Worldwide America and...

 as his replacement in 1999. Ancier was responsible for putting
The West Wing on the air. Jeff Zucker
Jeff Zucker
Jeffrey "Jeff" Zucker is an American television executive and former President and CEO of NBCUniversal.-Personal life:Zucker was born to Jewish-American parents in Homestead, Florida, near Miami. His father was a cardiologist, and his mother, Arlene, was a school teacher...

 replaced Ancier as president of NBC Entertainment in 2000.

NBC's
Must See TV declined after Friends and Frasier ended their runs in 2004. Friends spin-off Joey
Joey (TV series)
Joey is an American sitcom, which stars Matt LeBlanc reprising his role as Joey Tribbiani from the sitcom Friends. It premiered on the NBC television network, on September 9, 2004, in the former time slot of its parent series, Thursday nights at 8:00 p.m...

(despite a relatively good start) started to fail during its second season.

New century, new problems

At the start of the 2000s, NBC's fortunes took a rapid turn for the worse. In 2001, CBS chose its hit reality series
Survivor
Survivor (U.S. TV series)
Survivor is an American version of the Survivor reality television game show, itself derived from the Swedish television series Expedition Robinson originally created in 1997 by Charlie Parsons. The series premiered on May 31, 2000 on CBS...

to anchor its Thursday night line-up. Its success was taken as a suggestion that NBC's nearly two decades of Thursday night dominance could be broken. With the loss of Friends and Frasier in 2004, NBC was left with several moderately rated shows and few true hits. By then, its major sports offerings had been reduced to the Olympics, PGA Tour
PGA Tour
The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main men's professional golf tours in the United States and North America...

 golf and a floundering Notre Dame football program. NBC's ratings fell to fourth place. CBS led for most of the decade, followed by a resurgent ABC, and Fox (which would eventually become the most watched network for the 2007–08 season). During this time, all of the networks faced shrinking audiences due to increased competition from cable, home video, videogames and the internet, with NBC being the hardest hit.

With the beginning of the 2004–2005 season, NBC became the first major network to produce its programming in widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

, hoping to attract new viewers; however, the network saw only a slight boost.

In 2004, Zucker was promoted to the newly created position of president of NBC Universal Television Group. Kevin Riley became the new president of NBC Entertainment.

In December 2005, NBC began its first week-long primetime game show event, Deal or No Deal, garnering high ratings, and returning multi-weekly in March 2006. On sustained success, Deal or No Deal returned in the fall of 2006. Otherwise, the 2005–06 season was one of the worst for NBC in three decades, with only one fall series, the sitcom My Name Is Earl
My Name Is Earl
My Name Is Earl is an American television comedy series created by Greg Garcia that was originally broadcast on the NBC television network from September 20, 2005, to May 14, 2009, in the United States...

, surviving for a second season. The 2006–07 season was a mixed bag, with Heroes
Heroes (TV series)
Heroes is an American science fiction television drama series created by Tim Kring that appeared on NBC for four seasons from September 25, 2006 through February 8, 2010. The series tells the stories of ordinary people who discover superhuman abilities, and how these abilities take effect in the...

becoming a surprise hit on Monday nights, while the highly touted Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was an American dramedy television series created and written by Aaron Sorkin. It ran for 22 episodes.The series takes place behind the scenes of a live sketch comedy show on the fictional television network NBS , whose format is similar to that of NBC's...

, from the creator of NBC's hit drama The West Wing, lost a third of its premiere-night viewers by week six and was eventually canceled. Sunday Night NFL football
NBC Sunday Night Football
NBC Sunday Night Football is a weekly television broadcast of Sunday evening National Football League games on NBC that began airing on Sunday, August 6, 2006 with the pre-season opening Hall of Fame Game. Al Michaels serves as the play-by-play announcer, with Cris Collinsworth as the color...

 returned to NBC after eight years,
Deal or No Deal stayed strong, and its comedies The Office and 30 Rock
30 Rock
30 Rock is an American television comedy series created by Tina Fey that airs on NBC. The series is loosely based on Fey's experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live...

won the Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

 for Outstanding Comedy Series for four consecutive years. However, NBC has remained in a very distant fourth place, barely ahead of The CW.

However, NBC did gain success in its summer schedule, despite its falling ratings within the regular broadcast season.
America's Got Talent
America's Got Talent
America's Got Talent is an American reality television series on the NBC television network, and part of the global British Got Talent franchise. It is a talent show that features singers, dancers, magicians, comedians, and other performers of all ages competing for the advertised top prize of...

, a reality talent show hosted by Regis Philbin
Regis Philbin
Regis Francis Xavier Philbin is an American media personality, actor and singer, known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. Philbin is often called "the hardest working man in show business" and holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a television camera...

, with its world premiere in 2006, gained a 4.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which was higher than the original premiere of FOX's
American Idol
American Idol
American Idol, titled American Idol: The Search for a Superstar for the first season, is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment...

 in 2002. The show would continue to garner unusually high ratings throughout its summer run. However, NBC decided not to place it in the spring season, and instead use it as a platform to promote their upcoming fall shows. The show is now hosted by Nick Cannon
Nick Cannon
Nicholas Scott "Nick" Cannon is an American actor, comedian, rapper, entrepreneur, record producer, radio, and television personality. On television, Cannon began as a teenage sketch comedian on All That before going on to host The Nick Cannon Show, Wild 'N Out, and America's Got Talent...

, and continues to garner high ratings throughout its summer seasons.

In 2007, Ben Silverman
Ben Silverman
Benjamin Noah "Ben" Silverman is the founder and CEO of Electus, a next generation entertainment studio staked by IAC's Barry Diller....

 replaced Kevin Riley as president of NBC Entertainment, while Jeff Zucker succeeded Bob Wright as CEO of NBC. No new primetime hits emerged in the 2008–2009 season (despite NBC's rare good fortune to have both the Super Bowl
Super Bowl XLII
Super Bowl XLII was an American football game on February 3, 2008 that featured the National Football Conference champion New York Giants and the American Football Conference champion New England Patriots to decide the National Football League champion for the 2007 season...

 and the Beijing Olympic Games
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees competed in 28 sports and 302 events...

 in which to promote their new offerings), while Heroes and Deal or No Deal both collapsed in the ratings, and both have since been cancelled. NBC Universal President/CEO Jeff Zucker
Jeff Zucker
Jeffrey "Jeff" Zucker is an American television executive and former President and CEO of NBCUniversal.-Personal life:Zucker was born to Jewish-American parents in Homestead, Florida, near Miami. His father was a cardiologist, and his mother, Arlene, was a school teacher...

 had previously said that NBC no longer believed that they could be No.1 in prime time.

In March 2007, NBC announced that it would offer full-length prime-time television shows like
The Office and Heroes on-demand to play on mobile phones. This was a first for the United States, as the market shifts away from traditional television.

In 2009, Jeff Gaspin
Jeff Gaspin
Jeffrey "Jeff" Gaspin is an American television executive and was most recently the Chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment. Gaspin resigned his position in late 2010, as a precursor to Comcast taking controlling ownership of the now newly rechristened NBCUniversal, which occurred on...

 replaced Ben Silverman as president of NBC Entertainment.

2010 and beyond

NBC aired the 2010 Winter Olympics
2010 Winter Olympics
The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially the XXI Olympic Winter Games or the 21st Winter Olympics, were a major international multi-sport event held from February 12–28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with some events held in the suburbs of Richmond, West Vancouver and the University...

 in Vancouver, generating 21% higher ratings than its previous broadcast of the 2006 games in Torino. NBC was criticized for repeatedly showing footage of the death of Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 luge
Luge
A Luge is a small one- or two-person sled on which one sleds supine and feet-first. Steering is done by flexing the sled's runners with the calf of each leg or exerting opposite shoulder pressure to the seat. Racing sleds weigh 21-25 kilograms for singles and 25-30 kilograms for doubles. Luge...

r Nodar Kumaritashvili
Nodar Kumaritashvili
Nodar David Kumaritashvili was a Georgian luger, who suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics competition in Vancouver, Canada, on the day of the opening ceremony...

. This led NBC News president Steve Capus to order the footage not to be shown without his permission and announcer Bob Costas
Bob Costas
Robert Quinlan "Bob" Costas is an American sportscaster, on the air for the NBC network since the early 1980s.-Early life:...

 to promise that the video would not be shown again during the Games. NBC Universal is on track to pull in at least $250 million less from advertisers than the $820 million paid for the US rights to air the Games. Even so, with its continuing position in fourth place (although it virtually tied with ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 in many categories due to the sporting events), the 2009–2010 season ended with only two scripted shows – Community
Community (TV series)
Community is an American television comedy series created by Dan Harmon that airs on NBC. The series is about a group of students at a community college in the fictional locale of Greendale, Colorado. The series heavily uses meta-humor and pop culture references, often parodying film and television...

and Parenthood
Parenthood (2010 TV series)
Parenthood is an American comedy-drama television series developed by Jason Katims and produced by Imagine Television and Universal Media Studios. The first season premiered on March 2, 2010 on NBC...

, as well as three unscripted shows – The Marriage Ref
The Marriage Ref
The Marriage Ref is a TV reality show and panel game hosted by comedian Tom Papa and produced by Jerry Seinfeld, in which a rotating group of celebrities decides the winners of real-life marital disputes. The show premiered on NBC on Sunday, February 28, 2010 on the final night of the Olympics...

, Who Do You Think You Are?
Who Do You Think You Are? (U.S. TV series)
Who Do You Think You Are? is an American genealogy documentary series that premiered on NBC on March 5, 2010. The show is an adaptation of the British series of the same name, aired by the BBC. Each week a celebrity goes on a journey to trace his or her family tree. Lisa Kudrow is executive...

, and Minute to Win It
Minute to Win It
Minute to Win It is an American prime time game show on NBC hosted by Guy Fieri. Contestants take part in a series of 60-second challenges that use objects that are commonly available around the house....

– to be renewed for second terms, while others such as Heroes and Law & Order were canceled, the latter of which after 20 seasons, tying it with Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....

for the record for longest-running scripted drama. The 2010–2011 season was more disastrous, with only two midseason replacements, Harry's Law
Harry's Law
Harry's Law is an American legal comedy-drama television series created by David E. Kelley. which premiered on January 17, 2011.On May 12, 2011, NBC renewed the show for a second season, which premiered Wednesday September 21, 2011...

and The Voice
The Voice (U.S. TV series)
The Voice is an American reality talent show that premiered on April 26, 2011 on the NBC television network. Based on the reality singing competition The Voice of Holland, the series was created by Dutch television producer John de Mol. It is part of an international series...

being renewed for a second season as of July.

When Conan O'Brien
Conan O'Brien
Conan Christopher O'Brien is an American television host, comedian, writer, producer and performer. Since November 2010 he has hosted Conan, a late-night talk show that airs on the American cable television station TBS....

 replaced Jay Leno
Jay Leno
James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ,...

 as host of
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

 in 2009, the network gave Leno a new talk show
The Jay Leno Show
The Jay Leno Show is an American comedy show created by and starring Jay Leno, that aired from September 14, 2009 to February 9, 2010 on NBC following the May 29, 2009 conclusion of Leno's first tenure as host of The Tonight Show...

, committing to air it every weeknight at 10:00 pm ET/PT (9:00 pm CT/MT), as an inexpensive comedic alternative to the procedurals and other one-hour dramas that typically air during that time slot. In doing so, NBC became the first large United States network in decades, or possibly ever, to broadcast the same show every weekday during prime time hours. Its executives called the decision "a transformational moment in the history of broadcasting" and "in effect, launching five shows." Conversely, industry executives criticized the network for abandoning a history of airing quality dramas at that hour, and that it would hurt NBC by undermining a reputation built on successful scripted shows. In January 2010, however, NBC would end up announcing that Leno's 10 pm show would be canceled, citing complaints from many affiliates, whose local newscasts significantly dropped in the ratings as a result of the change. Zucker attempted to move and shorten The Jay Leno Show to the 11:35 pm–12:05 am time slot and move the existing shows, including The Tonight Show, back 30 minutes. This, however, caused considerable backlash, as O'Brien had not been given any choice or prior notification of the move. Furthermore, his contract guaranteed him a minimum of three years as host and the majority of his staff had moved with him from New York to California less than a year before the show started. O'Brien refused to be a part of the moves if they went through, gaining tremendous public and professional support, and leading to a host and timeslot conflict
2010 Tonight Show conflict
In early 2010, American television network NBC and two of its late-night talk show hosts, Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno, engaged in a media and public relations conflict over the host and airtime of The Tonight Show, the network's long-running late night program...

, with Leno, Zucker and NBC as a whole having seen significant negative backlash against them for their involvement. Leno would end up returning as host of The Tonight Show effective March 1, 2010, while O'Brien accepted a buyout from NBC. O'Brien went on to host a new show, Conan, on cable network TBS
TBS (TV channel)
TBS , stylized in the logo as tbs, is an American cable television channel owned by Time Warner that shows a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy. TBS was originally known as WTCG, a UHF terrestrial television station that broadcast from Atlanta, Georgia, during the late 1970s...

 starting in November 2010.

Despite the removal of
The Jay Leno Show in prime time, the change had almost no impact on the network's ratings. The increases NBC noticed in the 2010 season compared to 2009 were almost entirely attributable to increased ratings for NBC Sunday Night Football
NBC Sunday Night Football
NBC Sunday Night Football is a weekly television broadcast of Sunday evening National Football League games on NBC that began airing on Sunday, August 6, 2006 with the pre-season opening Hall of Fame Game. Al Michaels serves as the play-by-play announcer, with Cris Collinsworth as the color...

.

Jeff Zucker announced on September 24, 2010 that he would step down as CEO of NBC Universal once Comcast's purchase of NBC was completed at the end of the year. After the purchase was complete, Steve Burke became the new CEO of NBC Universal and Robert Greenblatt
Robert Greenblatt
Robert Greenblatt is an American television executive and currently the chairman of NBC Entertainment.-Career:Greenblatt began his television career at the Fox Broadcasting Company where he ran prime-time programming and developed such shows as the original Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place,...

 replaced Jeff Gaspin as chairman of NBC Entertainment.

The network completed their full conversion to an all-HD schedule (outside of the Saturday morning hours leased by the Qubo
Qubo
Qubo is a multi-platform children's television specialty channel endeavor operated as a joint venture between ION Media Networks, NBCUniversal, Nelvana, Scholastic Corporation, and Classic Media...

 consortium) on September 20, 2011, with the premiere of the eleventh season of Last Call with Carson Daly
Last Call with Carson Daly
Last Call with Carson Daly is an American late night talk show that is broadcast on NBC. The show is hosted by Carson Daly, the half-hour show featuring celebrity interviews, documentary-style coverage of a topic, and musical performances. Last Call airs weeknights at 1:35 a.m. Eastern / 12:35 a.m....

in the format.

NBC News


News presentation has long been an important part of NBC's operations and public image, dating to the network's radio days. Notable NBC News productions have included:
  • Dateline NBC
    Dateline NBC
    Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC. It previously was NBC's flagship news magazine, but now focuses on true crime stories. It airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST and after football season on Sunday at 7 p.m. EST.-History:Dateline is historically notable for...

  • Early Today
    Early Today
    Early Today is an American morning news programme airing on the NBC television network. The program goes out live at 4:00am Eastern Time Zone for those few stations which start their local news at 4:30am, and is transmitted in a continuous half-hour tape delay loop until 10:00am ET, when Today...

  • Meet the Press
    Meet the Press
    Meet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947. It has been...

  • NBC Nightly News
    NBC Nightly News
    NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...

  • Rock Center with Brian Williams
    Rock Center with Brian Williams
    Rock Center with Brian Williams is an American weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC, and hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams...

  • Today


The expansion of the news division to cable has seen the launch of the channels CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...

 for business news, MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

 for general news, with a political orientation, NBC Sports Network for sports news and events, and the acquisition of The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel is a US cable and satellite television network since May 2, 1982, that broadcasts weather forecasts and weather-related news, along with entertainment programming related to weather 24 hours a day...

.

NBC Nightly News has been the nation's most watched newscast since 1997.

Programming

NBC presently operates on an 87-hour regular network programming schedule. It provides 22 hours of prime time programming to affiliated stations: 8-11pm (ET/PT)/7:00-10:00 pm (CT, MT, AT)/6-9 pm (HT) Monday through Saturday and 7–11 pm on Sundays. Programming is also provided 7–11 am weekdays in the form of Today, which also has a two-hour Saturday and one-hour Sunday edition; the one-hour weekday drama Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...

; nightly editions of NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...

; the Sunday political talk show Meet the Press
Meet the Press
Meet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947. It has been...

; weekday early-morning news program Early Today
Early Today
Early Today is an American morning news programme airing on the NBC television network. The program goes out live at 4:00am Eastern Time Zone for those few stations which start their local news at 4:30am, and is transmitted in a continuous half-hour tape delay loop until 10:00am ET, when Today...

; late night talk shows The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is an American late-night talk show hosted by Jay Leno that initially aired from May 25, 1992 to May 29, 2009, and resumed production on March 1, 2010. The fourth incarnation of the Tonight Show franchise made its debut on May 25, 1992, three days following Johnny...

, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is an American late-night talk show hosted by Jimmy Fallon on NBC. The show premiered on March 2, 2009, as the third incarnation of the Late Night franchise originated by David Letterman....

and Last Call with Carson Daly
Last Call with Carson Daly
Last Call with Carson Daly is an American late night talk show that is broadcast on NBC. The show is hosted by Carson Daly, the half-hour show featuring celebrity interviews, documentary-style coverage of a topic, and musical performances. Last Call airs weeknights at 1:35 a.m. Eastern / 12:35 a.m....

; sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

; and weeknight replays of the fourth hour of Today, and week-delay rebroadcasts of Late Night under the NBC All Night banner; and a three-hour Saturday morning animation block under the qubo
Qubo
Qubo is a multi-platform children's television specialty channel endeavor operated as a joint venture between ION Media Networks, NBCUniversal, Nelvana, Scholastic Corporation, and Classic Media...

banner. In addition, sports programming is also provided weekend afternoons any time from 12–6 pm. ET, or tape-delayed
Broadcast delay
In radio and television, broadcast delay refers to the practice of intentionally delaying broadcast of live material. A short delay is often used to prevent profanity, bloopers, violence, or other undesirable material from making it to air, including more mundane problems such as technical...

 PT.

Daytime programs

NBC is currently the home of only one daytime soap opera,
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...

, which has been broadcast on the network since 1965.

Long-running NBC Daytime
NBC Daytime
NBC Daytime is the schedule for the NBC television network's daytime television programming which consists of morning news program Today and soap opera Days of our Lives...

 dramas of the past include
The Doctors (1963–1982), Another World
Another World (TV series)
Another World is an American television soap opera that ran on NBC from May 4, 1964 to June 25, 1999. It ran for a total of 35 years. It was created by Irna Phillips along with William J...

(1964–1999), Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara (TV series)
Santa Barbara is an American television soap opera, first broadcast in the United States on NBC on July 30, 1984, and last aired on January 15, 1993. The show revolved around the eventful lives of the wealthy Capwell family of Santa Barbara, California...

(1984–1993), and Passions
Passions
Passions is an American television soap opera which aired on NBC from July 5, 1999 to September 7, 2007 and on The 101 Network from September 17, 2007 to August 7, 2008....

(1999–2007). NBC also aired the final four and a half years of Search for Tomorrow
Search for Tomorrow
Search for Tomorrow is an American soap opera which premiered on September 3, 1951 on CBS. The show was moved from CBS to NBC on March 29, 1982. It continued on NBC until the final episode aired on December 26, 1986, a run of thirty-five years. At the time of its final broadcast it was the...

(1982–1986) after that series was dropped by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

, although many NBC affiliates did not air the show during that time. NBC has also aired numerous short-lived soaps, including
Generations (1989–1991), Sunset Beach
Sunset Beach (TV series)
Sunset Beach was an American television soap opera, first broadcast in the United States on NBC on January 6, 1997, and last airing on December 31, 1999. The show followed the loves and lives of the people living in a fictional coastal city named Sunset Beach, on the coast of California...

(1997–1999), and the two Another World spin-offs, Somerset
Somerset (TV series)
Somerset is an American television soap opera which ran on NBC from March 30, 1970 until December 31, 1976. The show was a spinoff of another NBC serial, Another World.-Overview :...

(1970–1976) and Texas
Texas (TV series)
Texas is an American daytime soap opera which aired on NBC from August 4, 1980 until December 31, 1982. Created by John William Corrington, Joyce Hooper Corrington, and Paul Rauch, the show was a spinoff of Another World...

(1980–1982).

Notable daytime game shows that once aired on NBC include
The Price Is Right
The Price Is Right
The Price Is Right is a television game show franchise originally produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and created by Bob Stewart, and is currently produced and owned by FremantleMedia. The franchise centers on television game shows, but also includes merchandise such as video games, printed...

(1956–1963), Concentration
Concentration (game show)
Concentration was an American TV game show based on the children's memory game of the same name. Matching cards represented prizes that contestants could win...

(1958–1973 and 1987–1991 as Classic Concentration), The Match Game
Match Game
Match Game is an American television game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...

(1962–1969), Let's Make a Deal
Let's Make a Deal
Let's Make a Deal is a television game show which originated in the United States and has since been produced in many countries throughout the world. The show is based around deals offered to members of the audience by the host. The traders usually have to weigh the possibility of an offer being...

(1963–1968, 1990–1991, and a short-lived 2002 primetime revival), Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...

(1964–1975 and 1978–1979), The Hollywood Squares
Hollywood Squares
Hollywood Squares is an American panel game show in which two contestants play tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The "board" for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants...

(1966–1980), Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, which premiered in 1975. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a large wheel. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that...

(1975–1989 and 1991), Password Plus/Super Password
Password Plus and Super Password
Password Plus and Super Password are American game shows that are revivals of the game show Password. Both Password Plus and Super Password had the same format other than some subtle changes....

(1979–1982 and 1984–1989), Sale of the Century
Sale of the Century (US game show)
Sale of the Century is an American television game show which debuted in the United States on September 29, 1969, on NBC daytime. It was one of three NBC game shows to premiere on that date, the other two being the short-lived Letters to Laugh-In and Name Droppers. The series aired until July 13,...

(1969–1973 and 1983–1989) and Scrabble
Scrabble (game show)
Scrabble is an American television game show that was based on the Scrabble board game. The show was co-produced by Exposure Unlimited and Reg Grundy Productions. It ran from July 2, 1984 to March 23, 1990, and again from January 18 to June 11, 1993, both runs on NBC. A total of 1,335 episodes were...

(1984–1990 and 1993). The final game show to air on NBC's daytime schedule was the short-lived Caesars Challenge
Caesars Challenge
Caesars Challenge is an American game show that aired on NBC from June 14, 1993 to January 14, 1994. Ahmad Rashad hosted the show and Dan Doherty, dressed as a gladiator, served as the show's assistant. Chad Brown and Zach Ruby also served as assistants early in the show. Steve Day announced the...

, which ended in January 1994.

Children's programming

Children's programming has played a part in NBC's programming since its initial roots in television. In 1947, NBC's first major children's series was
Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on NBC in the United States from 1947 until 1960. It was a pioneer in children's television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows...

, one of the era's first breakthrough television shows. The series, which ran for 13 years, featured a frecklefaced marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...

 and a myriad of other characters and hosted by "Buffalo" Bob Smith
Buffalo Bob Smith
Buffalo Bob Smith was the host of the children's show Howdy Doody.-Biography:...

.
Howdy Doody spent most of its run on weekday afternoons.

In 1956, NBC abandoned the children's programming lineup on weekday afternoons, relegating the lineup to Saturdays only with
Howdy Doody as their marquee franchise for the series' remaining four years. From the mid-1960s until 1992, the bulk of NBC's children's programming were derived from theatrical shorts like The Pink Panther Show
The Pink Panther Show
The Pink Panther Show is a showcase of cartoon shorts produced by David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng between 1969 and 1979. The television series was produced by Mirisch Films and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, and was broadcast on two American TV networks:...

and Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...

, reruns of popular television series like The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...

and The Jetsons
The Jetsons
The Jetsons is a animated American sitcom that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, originally airing in prime-time from 1962–1963 and again from 1985–1987...

, foreign acquisitions like Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion
Kimba the White Lion
, known in the United States as Kimba the White Lion, is an anime series from the 1960s. Created by Osamu Tezuka and based on his manga of the same title which began publication in 1950, it was the first color animated television series created in Japan. The manga was first published in serialized...

, original animated series (most notably The Smurfs
The Smurfs (1981 TV series)
The Smurfs is an American animated television series that aired on NBC from September 12, 1981 to August 25, 1990...

and Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks is an American animated music group created by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. in 1958. The group consists of three singing animated anthropomorphic chipmunks: Alvin, the mischievous troublemaker, who quickly became the star of the group; Simon, the tall, bespectacled intellectual;...

in the 1980s), cartoon adaptations of Gary Coleman
The Gary Coleman Show
The Gary Coleman Show is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera that originally aired on NBC during the 1982-1983 season.-Synposis:...

, Mr. T
Mister T (TV series)
Mister T was an animated series that aired on NBC from 1983 to 1986. A total of 30 episodes were produced during the first two seasons, with the final season consisting entirely of reruns...

,
Punky Brewster
It's Punky Brewster
It's Punky Brewster is an animated spin off of the live action television show Punky Brewster. The show was animated by Ruby-Spears Productions.-Synopsis:...

, ALF
ALF (TV series)
ALF is an American science fiction sitcom that originally aired on NBC from 1986 to 1990, created by Paul Fusco. The title character was Gordon Shumway, a friendly extraterrestrial nicknamed ALF , who crash lands in the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family.The series starred Max...

and Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

, and original live-action series including The Banana Splits, The Bugaloos
The Bugaloos
The Bugaloos is an American children's television series produced by brothers Sid and Marty Krofft, airing on NBC on Saturday mornings from 1970 to 1972. The show featured a musical group composed of four British-accented teenagers, who lived in fictional Tranquility Forest...

, and H.R. Pufnstuf
H.R. Pufnstuf
H.R. Pufnstuf was a children's television series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft in the United States. It was the first Krofft live-action, life-size puppet program. The seventeen episodes were originally broadcast September 6, 1969 to September 4, 1971...

.

From 1984 to 1989, One to Grow On
One to Grow On
One to Grow On is an educational public service announcement that broadcast during NBC's Saturday morning line-up from 1983 to 1989 when the network ran cartoons. One to Grow On focuses on ethical and personal safety dilemmas and attempts to teach viewers how to solve them...

 PSAs were shown after the end credits of every show or every other children's show.

In 1989, NBC premiered
Saved by the Bell
Saved by the Bell
Saved by the Bell is an American television sitcom that aired between 1989 and 1993. The series is a retooled version of the 1988 series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which was itself later folded into the history of Saved by the Bell...

, which originated at the Disney Channel
Disney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...

 as
Good Morning, Miss Bliss
Good Morning, Miss Bliss
Good Morning, Miss Bliss is an American teen sitcom that aired on the Disney Channel from 1988 to 1989 , starring Hayley Mills as a teacher at John F...

. Saved by the Bell, despite bad reviews from TV critics, would become one of the most popular teen series in television history as well as the number one series on Saturday mornings, dethroning The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show
The Bugs Bunny Show
The Bugs Bunny Show is a long-running American television anthology series hosted by Bugs Bunny, that was mainly composed of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons released by Warner Bros. between August 1, 1948 and the end of 1969. The show originally debuted as a primetime half-hour program on...

in its first season.

NBC abandoned the animated series in August 1992 in favor of a Saturday edition of
Today
Weekend Today
Weekend Today is the unofficial title of the weekend editions of Today, an American morning news and talk show which airs daily on NBC.-History:...

and more live-action series under the name TNBC
TNBC
TNBC was a Saturday morning programing block of television shows geared toward teenagers and young adults that aired on NBC from 1992 to 2002.-History:The idea for TNBC sprang from the popularity of Saved by the Bell...

 (
Teen NBC). Most of the series on the TNBC lineup were series produced by Peter Engel
Peter Engel (TV producer)
Peter Engel is a television producer who is best known for his teenage sitcoms which appeared on TNBC, a former Saturday morning block on NBC which featured all teenage-oriented programs for educational purposes...

 such as
City Guys
City Guys
City Guys is a United States television sitcom that aired from 1997 to December 2001. It lasted five seasons, and ended its airing time around the dissolution of TNBC.-Premise:...

, Hang Time
Hang Time (TV series)
Hang Time is an American teen sitcom that aired from 1995–2000. The teen-oriented program aired on Saturday mornings on NBC as part of the network's TNBC morning block. It was created by Troy Searer, Robert Tarlow, and Mark Fink. Producer Peter Engel took over Fink's duties at the start of Season 2...

, California Dreams
California Dreams
California Dreams is an American teen-oriented sitcom that aired from 1992 to 1996 on Saturday mornings during NBC's TNBC programming block. It was created by writers Brett Dewey and Ronald B. Solomon and executive produced by Peter Engel, all known for their work on Saved by the...

, One World
One World (TV series)
One World is a half-hour comedy series on TNBC about the everyday issues of a large family. The show focuses on the Blakes, a household living in Miami with six teens of various ethnic and racial backgrounds, who are adopted by ex-baseball player Dave Blake and his artist wife, Karen. The show was...

and the Saved by the Bell spinoff, Saved by the Bell: The New Class
Saved by the Bell: The New Class
Saved by the Bell: The New Class is a spin-off of the Saved by the Bell series which ran from September 11, 1993 to January 8, 2000. The series lasted for seven seasons on NBC as a part of the network's TNBC Saturday morning line-up. It was the fourth incarnation of the franchise...

. NBA Inside Stuff was also a part of the TNBC lineup during the duration of the NBA season.

In 2002, NBC began a deal with Discovery Communications'
Discovery Communications
Discovery Communications, Inc. is an American global media and entertainment company. The company started as a single channel in 1985, The Discovery Channel. Today, DCI has global operations offering 28 network entertainment brands on more than 100 channels in more than 180 countries in 39...

 Discovery Kids
Discovery Kids
Discovery Kids is an American website owned by Discovery Communications, Inc. created for children. Until October 10, 2010, it was an American digital cable specialty channel, owned by Discovery Communications with television programming for education of children. It was launched in October 1996...

 channel to air their original FCC-mandated educational programming under the banner Discovery Kids on NBC
Discovery Kids on NBC
Discovery Kids on NBC was a six-hour block of Saturday morning television children's programming broadcast by NBC from September 14, 2002 to September 2, 2006. The block featured programming from the Discovery Kids cable network, and all of its programming met the FCC's "E/I" requirements...

. The schedule originally consisted of only live-action series, including a kid-themed version of
Trading Spaces
Trading Spaces
Trading Spaces is an hour-long American television reality program that aired from 2000 to 2008 on the cable channels TLC and Discovery Home. The format of the show was based on the BBC TV series Changing Rooms. The show ran for eight seasons....

and J. D. Roth's Emmy-nominated reality game show Endurace
Endurance (TV series)
Endurance is an American reality television children's program, currently shown on the Discovery Kids cable network in the United States and also on networks in other countries. The show's format is somewhat similar to the CBS television series Survivor, though with a teenaged cast...

, but later expanded to include some animated series such as Kenny the Shark
Kenny the Shark
Kenny the Shark is an animated television series produced by Discovery Kids. The show first aired on NBC's Discovery Kids on NBC from November 1, 2003 until February 18, 2006 with two seasons and 26 episodes having been shown. The series continued to run on Discovery Kids until the network changed...

, Tutenstein
Tutenstein
Tutenstein is an animated television series, produced by Porchlight Entertainment for Discovery Kids based on the comic by Jay Stephens which was published in Oni Press' JetCat Clubhouse. This cartoon also airs on Jetix in Europe and Maxi TV in Turkey. It began broadcasting on November 1, 2003...

, and Time Warp Trio
Time Warp Trio
The Time Warp Trio is a book series written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith and later by Adam McCauley, which chronicles the adventures of three boys - Joe, Sam, and Fred - who travel through time and space with the aid of the mysterious Book.The storyline has been adapted into an...

.

In May 2006, in order to replace the Discovery Kids Saturday Morning block, NBC announced plans to launch a new children's block on Saturday mornings starting in September 2006 as part of the
qubo
Qubo
Qubo is a multi-platform children's television specialty channel endeavor operated as a joint venture between ION Media Networks, NBCUniversal, Nelvana, Scholastic Corporation, and Classic Media...

 endeavor teaming parent company NBC Universal with Ion Media Networks
ION Media Networks
ION Media Networks is an American television broadcasting company that owns and operates over 60 television stations in most major American markets. It is now a privately owned company.-History:...

, Scholastic Press
Scholastic Press
Scholastic is a global book publishing company known for publishing educational materials for schools, teachers, and parents, and selling and distributing them by mail order and via book clubs and book fairs. It also has the exclusive United States' publishing rights to the Harry Potter book...

, Classic Media
Classic Media
Classic Media, LLC, is an American production company and distributor of family programming. It was founded in 2000 by former Marvel Entertainment CEO Eric Ellenbogen and former Broadway Video executive John Engelman in hopes of acquiring mismanaged classic properties and giving exposure to...

 and Corus Entertainment
Corus Entertainment
Corus Entertainment Inc. is a publicly traded Canadian media and entertainment conglomerate.Corus is a leading Canadian specialty television and radio producer, with additional assets in pay television, advertising services, television broadcasting, children's book publishing and children's...

's Nelvana
Nelvana
Nelvana Limited is a Canadian entertainment company founded in 1971 known for its work in children's animation. It was named by founders Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert and Clive A. Smith after a Canadian comic book superheroine created by Adrian Dingle in the 1940s...

. Qubo will include blocks to air on NBC, Telemundo
Telemundo
Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision....

 (the Spanish-language network owned by NBC Universal), and Ion Media Networks's Ion Television, as well as a 24/7 digital broadcast kids channel, video on demand services and a branded website.

The "Discovery Kids on NBC" block aired for the final time on September 2, 2006. On Saturday, September 9, 2006, NBC started airing the following qubo programs: VeggieTales
VeggieTales
VeggieTales is an American series of children's computer animated films featuring anthropomorphic vegetables in stories conveying moral themes based on Christianity...

, Dragon
Dragon (TV series)
Dragon is a Canadian stop-motion children's television program which is based on the books by best-selling children's author Dav Pilkey. The show first aired in Canada in 2004 and continues to air on Treehouse TV and on Qubo in the US....

, VeggieTales Presents: 3-2-1 Penguins!
3-2-1 Penguins!
3-2-1 Penguins! is a series of Sci-Fi computer-animated cartoons launched on November 14, 2000.3-2-1 Penguins! is a series of Sci-Fi computer-animated cartoons launched on November 14, 2000.3-2-1 Penguins! is a series of Sci-Fi computer-animated cartoons launched on...

, Babar
Babar (TV series)
Babar is an animated television series produced in Canada by Nelvana Limited and The Clifford Ross Company. It premiered in 1989 on CBC and HBO, subsequently was rerun on HBO Family and Qubo. The series is based on Jean de Brunhoff's original Babar books, and was Nelvana's first international...

, Jane and the Dragon
Jane and The Dragon (TV series)
Jane and the Dragon is a CGI animated series based on the books of the same name by Martin Baynton. The show is directed by Mike Fallows and motion capture directed by Peter Salmon; it is co-produced by Weta Workshop in New Zealand and Nelvana Limited in Canada...

, and Jacob Two-Two
Jacob Two-Two (TV series)
Jacob Two-Two is a Canadian animated TV series based on a trilogy of books written by Mordecai Richler that first aired on Canadian children's channel YTV and aired on the French Canadian VRAK.TV as Jacob Jacob and in Spanish on Telemundo as Jacobo Dos Dos. It was produced by Nelvana; before being...

.

NBCi

NBCi' redirects here.

In April 2000, NBC purchased a company that specialized with search engines that learned from the users' searches for $32 million, called GlobalBrain
SLI Systems
SLI Systems is a privately owned company that sells site search software for large content-based e-commerce websites. It was founded in 2001 by people from New Zealand and America. The acronym part of the company name stands for Search, Learn and Improve, which refers to the way the software learns...

.

In 1999, NBC briefly changed its web address to "NBCi.com", in a heavily advertised attempt to launch an Internet portal and homepage
Homepage
A home page or homepage has various related meanings to do with web sites:* It most often refers to the initial or main web page of a web site, sometimes called the front page ....

. This move saw NBC teaming up with XOOM.com, e-mail.com, AllBusiness.com
AllBusiness.com
AllBusiness.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet, provides business information and resources for small businesses, those companies with fewer than 500 employees...

, and Snap.com (eventually acquiring all four of them), launching a multi-faceted internet portal with e-mail, webhosting, community, chat, personalization and news capabilities. This experiment lasted roughly one season, failed, and NBCi was folded back into NBC. The NBC-TV portion of the website reverted to NBC.com. However, the NBCi web site continued as a portal for NBC-branded content (NBCi.com redirected to NBCi.msnbc.com), using a co-branded version of InfoSpace
InfoSpace
Infospace provides metasearch and private-label Internet search services for consumers and businesses.InfoSpace's flagship metasearch site is Dogpile; its other consumer brands are WebCrawler, Nation, DoGreatGood and MetaCrawler.-History:...

 to deliver minimal portal content. In mid 2007, NBCi.com began to mirror NBC.com. Starting in 2010, NBCi.com began to redirect to NBC.com.

Evolution of the NBC logo

NBC has used a number of logos throughout its history; early logos were similar to the logo of its then parent company, RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...

, but later logos included stylized peacock images.

Canada

NBC broadcasts from the United States can be received throughout most of Canada, primarily through cable television and satellite television providers, but also over the air in areas close to the Canada – United States border. Aside from simultaneous substitution
Simultaneous substitution
Simultaneous substitution is a practice mandated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requiring Canadian cable, direct broadcast satellite and multichannel multipoint distribution service television distribution companies to substitute the signal of a foreign or...

 (a practice that requires paid-TV companies to switch the signal of an American station to a Canadian station when that network is syndicating a program on the American station to protect advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 revenues), the programming and broadcasting are the same as in the United States.

Europe, Latin America and the Middle East

NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...

 and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, are shown on CNBC Europe
CNBC Europe
CNBC Europe is a business and financial news television channel, the pan-European sister station of CNBC. The network is owned and operated by NBC Universal and headquartered in London, where it shares the Adrian Smith-designed 10 Fleet Place building with Dow Jones...

. NBC is no longer shown outside the Americas on a channel in its own right. However, both NBC News and MSNBC are shown for a few hours a day on Orbit News
Orbit News
OSN News is a 24 hour satellite and cable channel offering exclusively American news programming from ABC, NBC, PBS, and MSNBC to U.S. expats and other viewers abroad, primarily geared towards an audience in the Arab countries...

 in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. MSNBC is also shown occasionally on sister network CNBC Europe
CNBC Europe
CNBC Europe is a business and financial news television channel, the pan-European sister station of CNBC. The network is owned and operated by NBC Universal and headquartered in London, where it shares the Adrian Smith-designed 10 Fleet Place building with Dow Jones...

 during breaking news. Border cities in the Mexico – United States border region can easily receive NBC on-the-air, as well as cable and satellite subscribers across Mexico, especially in the Mexico City area.

NBC Super Channel becomes NBC Europe

In 1993, the Pan-European cable network Super Channel
NBC Europe
NBC Europe was a satellite television channel based in the United Kingdom that broadcast across Europe...

 was taken over by General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

, the parent of NBC, and became NBC Super Channel
NBC Europe
NBC Europe was a satellite television channel based in the United Kingdom that broadcast across Europe...

. In 1996, the channel was renamed NBC Europe
NBC Europe
NBC Europe was a satellite television channel based in the United Kingdom that broadcast across Europe...

, but was, from then on, almost always referred to as simply "NBC" on the air.

Most of NBC Europe's prime time programming was produced in Europe due to rights restriction associated with US primetime shows, but after 11 pm Central European Time
Central European Time
Central European Time , used in most parts of the European Union, is a standard time that is 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time . The time offset from UTC can be written as +01:00...

 on weekday evenings, the channel aired The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

, Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien that aired 2,725 episodes on NBC between 1993 and 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am...

and Later
Later (talk show)
Later was a nightly half hour-long talk show that ran on NBC from 1988 until 2001. Later typically aired for half an hour at 1:30 a.m. following Late Night with David Letterman from 1988 to 1993, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien from 1993 to 2001...

, hence its slogan "Where the Stars Come Out at Night." Many NBC News
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is...

 programs were broadcast on NBC Europe, including Dateline NBC
Dateline NBC
Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC. It previously was NBC's flagship news magazine, but now focuses on true crime stories. It airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST and after football season on Sunday at 7 p.m. EST.-History:Dateline is historically notable for...

, Meet the Press
Meet the Press
Meet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947. It has been...

and NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...

, which was aired live. The Today Show was also initially shown live in the afternoons, but was later broadcast the following morning instead, by which time it was more than half a day old.

In 1999, NBC Europe stopped broadcasting to most of Europe. At the same time the network was relaunched as a German language computer channel, targeting a young demographic. The main show on the new NBC Europe was called NBC GIGA. In 2005, the channel was relaunched once again, this time as a free-to-air movie channel under the name "Das Vierte". GIGA started an own digital channel then, which could be received via satellite and many cable networks in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

and NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...

continue to be broadcast on CNBC Europe
CNBC Europe
CNBC Europe is a business and financial news television channel, the pan-European sister station of CNBC. The network is owned and operated by NBC Universal and headquartered in London, where it shares the Adrian Smith-designed 10 Fleet Place building with Dow Jones...

.

Canal de Noticias

In 1993, NBC began production of Canal de Noticias NBC. This service was beamed to Latin America from the NBC Newschannel headquarters located in Charlotte
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...

, North Carolina. Over 50 journalists were brought to produce, write, anchor and technically produce a 24 hour news service based on the popular "wheel" conceived at CNN. The service folded in 1997 as sales departments were not able to generate any revenue. After Mexican Noticias ECO
Noticias ECO
Noticias ECO , also known as ECO News, was a Mexican news channel, which broadcasted from 1 September 1988 to 1 May 2001. It was the first 24-hour news channel in Spanish and was owned by Televisa...

, Canal de Noticias NBC holds the distinction of being the first 24 hour news service to be seen in Latin America. Telenoticias, at one point owned by CBS, came later followed by CNN en Español
CNN en Español
CNN en Español is CNN's Spanish language news channel. On March 17, 1997, CNN launched CNN en Español, a 24-hour Spanish-language news network for the Hispanic American and United States marketplace.-Mexico programming:...

.

Caribbean

In the Caribbean, many cable television and satellite television providers air local NBC affiliates, or the main network feed from WNBC
WNBC
WNBC, virtual channel 4 , is the flagship station of the NBC television network, located in New York City. WNBC's studios are co-located with NBC corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan...

 New York City or WTVJ
WTVJ
WTVJ, virtual channel 6 , is an owned-and-operated television station of the NBC television network, located in Broward County. WTVJ shares its TV studio and office facility with co-owned Telemundo station WSCV in Miramar, Florida, and its transmitter is located near Sun Life Stadium in north...

 in Miami. A few locally owned NBC affiliates do exist, in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

. The island and the nearby U.S. Virgin Islands are the main receivers of NBC programs available in English and Spanish via the SAP
Second audio program
Second audio program , also known as secondary audio programming, is an auxiliary audio channel for analog television that can be broadcast or transmitted both over the air and by cable TV.-Usage:...

 option.
Bermuda

NBC's full program lineup is carried by local affiliate VSB-TV
VSB-TV
VSB-TV is the NBC television affiliate for Hamilton, Bermuda. The station broadcasts on channel 11. In addition to carrying the full NBC network East Coast feed, VSB locally produces a half-hour nightly newscast at 7 p.m., preceding the NBC Nightly News...

, received from the network's East Coast satellite feed.
Netherlands Antilles

In Aruba
Aruba
Aruba is a 33 km-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela and 130 km east of Guajira Peninsula...

, the network programming is carried on station PJA-TV (ATV) 15, cable 8.

Guam

KUAM-TV
KUAM-TV
KUAM-TV is the NBC affiliate serving Guam. The station is currently owned by Pacific Telestations, Inc., and is a sister station to CBS affiliate KUAM-LP and the local Public-access television cable channel Local 2...

 is an NBC affiliate in Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...

 and carries the full NBC program lineup via satellite.

American Samoa

KKHJ-LP is the NBC affiliate for Pago Pago; it signed onto the network in 2005.

NBC Asia and CNBC Asia

In 1995, NBC launched a channel in Asia called NBC Asia available in Japan, Malaysia, South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

, Taiwan, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

 and the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

. Like NBC Europe, NBC Asia featured most of NBC's news programs as well as the Tonight Show and Late Night. Like its European counterpart, it could not broadcast US-produced primetime shows due to rights restrictions. It also had NBC Super Sports for the latest action in selected sporting events. During weekday evenings, NBC Asia had a regional evening news program. It occasionally simulcast some programs from CNBC Asia
CNBC Asia
CNBC Asia is a business news television channel in Asia. A subsidiary of NBC Universal, it is the Asian service of the Consumer News and Business Channel . Its programmes originate from Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney and has bureaus in Tokyo and Seoul....

 and MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

. In July 1998, NBC Asia was replaced by the National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel (Asia)
The National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated as Nat Geo, is an Asian subscription television channel that features non-fiction, factual programming involving nature, science, culture, and history, produced by the National Geographic Society, just like History and the Discovery...

. As is the case with NBC Europe, however, selected Tonight Show and Late Night episodes and Meet the Press can still be seen on CNBC Asia
CNBC Asia
CNBC Asia is a business news television channel in Asia. A subsidiary of NBC Universal, it is the Asian service of the Consumer News and Business Channel . Its programmes originate from Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney and has bureaus in Tokyo and Seoul....

 during weekends. CNBC Asia shows NFL games and also brands them as Sunday Night Football.

Regional partners

Through regional partners, NBC-produced programs are seen in some countries in the region. In the Philippines, Solar Entertainment's Jack TV
Jack TV
Jack TV is a Philippine cable TV network owned by Solar Entertainment Corporation, test launched on May 2005, officially debuting on July 12, 2005. It offers Western comedy, animation, sports entertainment, drama series and reality shows, such as Cartoon Network, USA Network, The CW, MyNetworkTV,...

 airs Will & Grace
Will & Grace
Will & Grace was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 21, 1998 to May 18, 2006 for a total of eight seasons. Will & Grace remains the most successful television series with gay principal characters...

and Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

, while TalkTV airs The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

and NBC News programs like Today Show, Early Today
Early Today
Early Today is an American morning news programme airing on the NBC television network. The program goes out live at 4:00am Eastern Time Zone for those few stations which start their local news at 4:30am, and is transmitted in a continuous half-hour tape delay loop until 10:00am ET, when Today...

, Weekend Today
Weekend Today
Weekend Today is the unofficial title of the weekend editions of Today, an American morning news and talk show which airs daily on NBC.-History:...

, Dateline
Dateline NBC
Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC. It previously was NBC's flagship news magazine, but now focuses on true crime stories. It airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST and after football season on Sunday at 7 p.m. EST.-History:Dateline is historically notable for...

and NBC Nightly News. Solar TV
Solar TV
Solar Television Network is the flagship cable TV channel and television arm subsidiary of Solar Entertainment Corporation, which is the replacement of C/S 9. This is the revival of the former Solar channel Solar USA....

 used to air The Jay Leno Show. In Hong Kong, TVB Pearl, the English free-to-air channel operated by Television Broadcasts Limited
Television Broadcasts Limited
Television Broadcasts Limited, commonly known as TVB, is the second over-the-air commercial television station in Hong Kong. It commenced broadcasting on 19 November 1967...

, airs NBC Nightly News live, as well as selected NBC programming.

Australia

The Seven Network
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...

 in Australia has close ties with NBC and has used a majority of the network's imaging and slogans since the 1970's. Seven News
Seven News
Seven News is the television news service of the Seven Network in Australia.National bulletins are presented from Seven's high-definition studios in Martin Place, Sydney, while flagship 6pm bulletins are produced in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. The network also produces Seven...

has featured The Mission as its news theme since the mid 1980s. Local newscasts were named Seven Nightly News from the mid 1980s until around 2000.
Seven rebroadcasts some of NBC's news and current affairs programming, including:
  • Today (known as NBC Today and unrelated to Nine Network
    Nine Network
    The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...

    's Australian Today
    Today (Australian TV program)
    Today and Weekend Today are Australian breakfast television programmes, the show is often referred to as The Today Show. The show has been broadcast live by the Nine Network each morning since 1982...

    program)
  • Weekend Today
    Weekend Today
    Weekend Today is the unofficial title of the weekend editions of Today, an American morning news and talk show which airs daily on NBC.-History:...

  • Dateline NBC
    Dateline NBC
    Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC. It previously was NBC's flagship news magazine, but now focuses on true crime stories. It airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST and after football season on Sunday at 7 p.m. EST.-History:Dateline is historically notable for...

  • Meet the Press with David Gregory
    Meet the Press
    Meet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947. It has been...



In 2009, NBC and Seven Network
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...

 used Guy Sebastian
Guy Sebastian
Guy Theodore Sebastian is an Australian pop, R&B, and soul singer-songwriter who was the first winner of Australian Idol in 2003. He is currently a judge on the Australian version of The X Factor. Sebastian has released six top ten platinum/multi platinum albums, including a number-one and...

's No.1 Aria selling song Like it Like That for their summer station promo.

Affiliate world broadcasters of NBC

  • Spain
    Spain
    Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

    :
    • laSexta y Antena 3
      Antena 3
      Antena 3 can refer to two television channels and a radio station:*Antena 3 *Antena 3 *Antena 3...

  • Chile
    Chile
    Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

    :
    • Canal 13
      Canal 13 (Chile)
      Canal 13 , is the second oldest television station in Chile. It is owned by Luksic Group associated with the Papal Catholic University of Chile. Its inaugural transmission took place on August 21, 1959...

      (c. 1963-1995)
    • Chilevisión
      Chilevisión
      CHV, also known as Chilevisión, is the third oldest television station in Chile. Formerly called Teleonce and RTU , this TV station was owned by University of Chile, a Chilean state university...

      (1960's-1970's)
    • Televisión Nacional de Chile
      Televisión Nacional de Chile
      TVN is Chile's state-owned television station. Its inaugural transmission took place on 1969. TVN is owned, but not funded, by the state, and it functions independently from it; a very particular case of public television in South America...

      (1974-present)
  • Mexico
    Mexico
    The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

    :
    • Televisa y TV Azteca
  • Brazil
    Brazil
    Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

    :
    • Rede Record
      Rede Record
      Rede Record de Televisão is a Brazilian television network, founded in 1953 by Paulo Machado de Carvalho, also founder of Rádio Record. Currently it is owned by businessman Edir Macedo, founder and bishop of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Since 2007 it is Brazil's second largest...

      y Rede Bandeirantes
      Rede Bandeirantes
      Rede Bandeirantes , officially nicknamed Band or Band Network, is a television network from Brazil, based in São Paulo. Part of the Grupo Bandeirantes de Comunicação , it aired for the first time in 1967...

  • Venezuela
    Venezuela
    Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

    :
    • RCTV
      RCTV
      Radio Caracas Televisión Internacional is a Venezuelan cable television network headquartered in the Caracas neighborhood of Quinta Crespo. It was sometimes referred to as the Canal de Bárcenas. Owned by Empresas 1BC, RCTV Internacional was inaugurated as Radio Caracas Televisión on 15 November...

      y Venevisión
      Venevisión
      Venevisión is one of Venezuela's largest television networks and a Venezuelan cable and terrestrial television network, which is owned and presided over by Gustavo Cisneros...

  • Italy
    Italy
    Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

    :
    • Steel y Class News
  • Turkey
    Turkey
    Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

    :
    • CNBC-e y e2 y ntvmsnbc

Library

Through the years, NBC has produced many shows in-house, in addition to airing content from other producers such as Revue Studios and its successor Universal Television.

Notable in-house productions of NBC included Get Smart
Get Smart
Get Smart is an American comedy television series that satirizes the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams , Barbara Feldon , and Edward Platt...

, Bonanza
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...

, Little House on the Prairie
Little House on the Prairie (TV series)
Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...

, Las Vegas
Las Vegas (TV series)
Las Vegas was an American television series broadcast by NBC from September 22, 2003 to February 15, 2008. The show focuses on a team of people working at the ficticional Montecito Resort & Casino dealing with issues that arise within the working environment, ranging from valet parking and...

and Crossing Jordan
Crossing Jordan
Crossing Jordan is an American television crime/drama series that aired on NBC from September 24, 2001 to May 16, 2007. It stars Jill Hennessy as Jordan Cavanaugh, M.D., a crime-solving forensic pathologist employed in the Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Medical Examiner's Office...

. NBC sold the rights to its pre-1973 shows to National Telefilm Associates
National Telefilm Associates
National Telefilm Associates was an independent distribution company that handled reissues of American film libraries, including much of Paramount Pictures' animated and short-subjects library.-History:...

 in 1973. Today, those rights are owned by CBS Television Distribution
CBS Television Distribution
CBS Television Distribution is a global television distribution company, formed from the merger of CBS Corporation's two domestic television distribution arms CBS Paramount Domestic Television and King World Productions, including its home entertainment arm CBS Home Entertainment...

.

NBC continues to own its post-1973 productions, through sister company NBC Universal Television Group, the successor to Universal TV. As a result, NBC in a way now owns several other series aired on the network prior to 1973, such as Wagon Train
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...

.

See also

  • List of NBC personalities
  • List of NBC television affiliates (by U.S. state)
  • List of NBC television affiliates (table), arranged by market
  • List of programs broadcast by NBC
  • List of programs previously broadcast by NBC
  • Must See TV
    Must See TV
    "Must See TV" is an advertising slogan used by the NBC television network to brand its prime time blocks of sitcoms during the 1990s, and most often applied to the network's Thursday night lineup, which featured such popular sitcoms as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, A Different...

  • NBC chimes
    NBC chimes
    The NBC chimes, named for the radio and television network on which they have been used, consists of a succession of three distinct pitches: G3, E4, and C4 , sounded in that order, creating an arpeggiated C-major chord in the second inversion, within about two seconds time, and reverberating for...

  • NBC Daytime
    NBC Daytime
    NBC Daytime is the schedule for the NBC television network's daytime television programming which consists of morning news program Today and soap opera Days of our Lives...

  • NBC News
    NBC News
    NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is...

  • NBC page
    NBC page
    An NBC page is a person usually in his or her early twenties working in various departments of the NBC television network during a one-year period as a training ground for careers in television broadcasting and entertainment...

    s
  • NBC Sports
    NBC Sports
    NBC Sports is the sports division of the NBC television network. Formerly "a service of NBC News," it broadcasts a diverse array of programs, including the Olympic Games, the NFL, the NHL, MLS, Notre Dame football, the PGA Tour, the Triple Crown, and the French Open, among others...

  • NBC Studios
    NBC Studios
    The NBC Studios in New York, New York is located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the historic GE Building houses the headquarters of the NBC television network, its parent General Electric, and NBC's flagship station WNBC , as well as cable news channel MSNBC.When NBC Universal relocated,...

  • Telemundo Puerto Rico
  • The Weather Channel
    The Weather Channel
    The Weather Channel is a US cable and satellite television network since May 2, 1982, that broadcasts weather forecasts and weather-related news, along with entertainment programming related to weather 24 hours a day...



External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK