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The story
Caravan era
The first regularly scheduled American television newscast in history was made by NBC News on February 21, 1940, anchored by Lowell Thomas (1892–1981), and airing weeknights at 6:45 pm. In June 1940, NBC, through its flagship station in New York City, W2XBS (renamed commercial WNBT in 1941, now WNBC) operating on channel one, televised 30.25 hours of coverage of the Republican National Convention live and direct from Philadelphia. The station used a series of relays from Philadelphia to New York for rebroadcast on W2XB in Schenectady (now WRGB), making this among the first "network" programs of NBC Television. Due to wartime and technical restrictions, there were no live telecasts of the 1944 conventions, although films of the events were reportedly shown over WNBT the next day.
About this time, there were irregularly scheduled, quasi-network newscasts originating from NBC's WNBT in New York City (WNBC) and reportedly fed to WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia and WRGB in Schenectady, NY. For example, Esso sponsored news features as well as The War As It Happens in the final days of World War II, another irregularly scheduled NBC television newsreel program that was also seen in New York, Philadelphia, and Schenectady on the relatively few (roughly 5000) television sets that existed at the time. After the war, NBC Television Newsreel aired filmed news highlights with narration. Later in 1948, when sponsored by Camel Cigarettes, NBC Television Newsreel was renamed Camel Newsreel Theatre and then, when John Cameron Swayze was added as an on-camera anchor in 1949, the program was renamed Camel News Caravan.
In 1948, NBC teamed up with Life magazine to provide election night coverage of President Harry S. Truman's surprising victory over New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. The television audience was small, but NBC's share in New York was double that of any other outlet. The following year, the Camel News Caravan, anchored by Swayze, debuted on NBC. Lacking the graphics and technology of later years, it contained many elements of modern newscasts. NBC hired its own film crews and in the program's early years, it dominated one of its competitors, CBS, which did not hire its own film crews until 1953. In 1950, David Brinkley began serving as the program's Washington correspondent, but attracted little attention until paired with Chet Huntley in 1956. In 1955, the Camel News Caravan fell behind CBS' Douglas Edwards with the News, and Swayze lost the already tepid support of NBC executives. The following year, NBC replaced the program with the Huntley-Brinkley Report.
Beginning in 1951, NBC News was managed by Director of News Bill McAndrew, who reported to Vice President of News and Public Affairs J. Davidson Taylor.
Huntley-Brinkley era
Television assumed an increasingly prominent role in American family life in the late 1950s, and NBC News was called television's "champion of news coverage." NBC president Robert Kintner provided the news division with ample amounts of both financial resources and air time. In 1956, the network paired anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and the two became celebrities, supported by reporters including John Chancellor, Frank McGee, Edwin Newman, Sander Vanocur, Nancy Dickerson, Tom Pettit, and Ray Scherer.
Created by Producer Reuven Frank, NBC's The Huntley–Brinkley Report had its debut on October 29, 1956. During much of its 14-year run, it exceeded the viewership levels of its CBS News competition, anchored initially by Douglas Edwards and, beginning in April 1962, Walter Cronkite.
NBC's Vice President of News and Public Affairs, J. Davidson Taylor, was a Southerner who, with Producer Reuven Frank, was determined that NBC would lead television's coverage of the civil rights movement. In 1955, NBC provided national coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, airing reports from Frank McGee, then News Director of NBC's Montgomery affiliate WSFA-TV, who would later join the network. A year later, John Chancellor's coverage of the admission of black students to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, was the first occasion when the key news story came from television rather than print and prompted a prominent U.S. senator to observe later, "When I think of Little Rock, I think of John Chancellor." Other reporters who covered the movement for the network included Sander Vanocur, Herbert Kaplow, Charles Quinn, and Richard Valeriani, who was hit with an ax handle at a demonstration in Marion, Alabama in 1965.
While Walter Cronkite's enthusiasm for the space race eventually won the anchorman viewers for CBS and NBC News, with the work of correspondents such as Frank McGee, Roy Neal, Jay Barbree, and Peter Hackes providing ample coverage of American-crewed space missions in the Project Mercury, Project Gemini, and Project Apollo programs. In an era when space missions received continuous coverage, NBC configured its largest studio, Studio 8H, for space coverage. It used models and mockups of rockets and spacecraft, maps of the Earth and Moon to show orbital trackage, and stages on which animated figures created by puppeteer Bill Baird were used to depict movements of astronauts before on-board spacecraft television cameras were feasible. (Studio 8H had been home to the NBC Symphony Orchestra and is now the home of Saturday Night Live.) NBC's coverage of the first Moon landing in 1969 earned the network an Emmy Award.
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In the late 1950s, Kintner reorganized the chain of command at the network, making Bill McAndrew president of NBC News, reporting directly to Kintner. McAndrew served in that position until he died in 1968. McAndrew was succeeded by his Executive Vice President, Producer Reuven Frank, who held the position until 1973.
On November 22, 1963, NBC interrupted various programs on its affiliate stations at 1:45 p.m. to announce that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. Eight minutes later, at 1:53:12 p.m., NBC broke into programming with a network bumper slide and Chet Huntley, Bill Ryan and Frank McGee informing the viewers what was going on as it happened. Still, the reports were audio-only since a camera was not in service. However, NBC did not begin broadcasting over the air until 1:57 p.m. ET. About 40 minutes later, after word came that JFK was pronounced dead, NBC suspended regular programming and carried 71 hours of uninterrupted news coverage of the assassination and the funeral of the president—including the only live broadcast of the fatal shooting of Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, by Jack Ruby as Oswald was being led in handcuffs by law-enforcement officials through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.
NBC Nightly News era
NBC's ratings lead began to slip toward the end of the 1960s and fell sharply when Huntley retired in 1970; he died of cancer four years later, in 1974. The loss of Huntley and RCA's reluctance to fund NBC News at a similar level as CBS's funding of its news division left NBC News in the doldrums. NBC's primary news show gained its present title, NBC Nightly News, on August 3, 1970.
The network tried a platoon of anchors (Brinkley, McGee, and Chancellor) during the early months of Nightly News. Despite the efforts of the network's eventual lead anchor, the articulate, even-toned Chancellor, and an occasional first-place finish in the Nielsens, Nightly News in the 1970s was primarily a strong second. By the end of the decade, NBC had to contend not only with a powerful CBS but also a surging ABC, led by Roone Arledge. Tom Brokaw became sole anchor in 1983, after co-anchoring with Roger Mudd for a year, and began leading NBC's efforts. In 1986 and 1987, NBC won the top spot in the Nielsens for the first time in years, only to fall back when Nielsen's rating methodology changed. In late 1996, Nightly News again moved into first place, a spot it has held onto in most of the succeeding years. Brian Williams assumed primary anchor duties when Brokaw retired in December 2004.
In 1993, Dateline NBC broadcast an investigative report about the safety of General Motors' (GM) trucks. GM discovered the "actual footage" used in the broadcast had been rigged by including explosive incendiaries attached to the gas tanks and improper sealants for those tanks. GM subsequently filed an anti-defamation lawsuit against NBC, which publicly admitted the results of the tests were rigged and settled the lawsuit with GM on the very same day.
In November 1995, NBC News signed an agreement with German public broadcaster ZDF to share newsgathering resources. The agreement enabled NBC News to move its Frankfurt bureau to ZDF's headquarters in Mainz.
On October 22, 2007, Nightly News moved into its new high-definition studio, Studio 3C, at NBC Studios in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The network's 24-hour cable network, MSNBC, also joined the network in New York on that day. The new studios–headquarters for NBC News and MSNBC were now located in one area.
2007–2014
During the Great Recession, NBC Universal urged NBC News to save $500 million. On that occasion, NBC News laid off several of its in-house reporters, such as Kevin Corke, Jeannie Ohm, and Don Teague. This was the largest layoff in NBC News history.
After the sudden death of the influential moderator Tim Russert of Meet the Press in June 2008, Tom Brokaw took over as an interim host; and on December 14, 2008, David Gregory became the new moderator of the show until August 14, 2014, when NBC announced that NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd would take over as the 12th moderator of Meet the Press starting September 7, 2014. Gregory's last broadcast was on August 10, 2014.
By 2009, NBC had established leadership in network news, airing the highest-rated morning, evening, and Sunday interview news programs. Its ability to share costs with MSNBC and share in the cable network's advertising and subscriber revenue made it far more profitable than its network rivals.
On March 27, 2012, NBC News broadcast an edited segment from a 911 call placed by George Zimmerman before he shot Trayvon Martin. The editing made it appear that Zimmerman volunteered that Martin was black, rather than merely responding to the dispatcher's inquiry, which would support a view that the shooting was racially motivated. A media watchdog organization accused NBC News of engaging in "an all-out falsehood." While NBC News initially declined to comment, the news agency did issue an apology to viewers. The Washington Post called the statement "skimpy on the details on just how the mistake unfolded."
On December 13, 2012, NBC News reporter Richard Engel and his five crew members, Aziz Akyavaş, Ghazi Balkiz, John Kooistra, Ian Rivers, and Ammar Cheikh Omar, were kidnapped in Syria. Having escaped after five days in captivity, Engel said he believed that a Shabiha group loyal to al-Assad was behind the abduction and that the crew was freed by the Ahrar al-Sham group five days later. Engel's account was however challenged from early on. In April 2015, NBC had to revise the kidnapping account, following further investigations by The New York Times, which suggested that the NBC team "was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army," rather than by a loyalist Shia group.
In 2013, John Lapinski was Director of Elections, replacing Sheldon Gawiser. In 2015, the election team's decision desk group was given its first permanent space at 30 Rockefeller, replacing the News Sales Archives that had occupied the space previously.
2015–2018
In February 2015, NBC suspended Brian Williams for six months for telling an inaccurate story about his experience in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was replaced by Lester Holt on an interim basis. In March 2015, amid the firing and declining ratings, Andrew Lack rejoined NBC News as a chairman for the division and MSNBC. On June 18, 2015, it was announced that Holt would become the permanent anchor of the Nightly News, and Williams would be moved to MSNBC as an anchor of breaking news and special reports beginning in August. At MSNBC, Lack would move to reduce its emphasis on opinion programming, and place a larger focus on hard news programs, as well as increased use of NBC News personalities such as Williams, Kate Snow, Thomas Roberts, and Chuck Todd (who premiered a daily spin-off of Meet the Press).
MSNBC's ratings subsequently improved in the first quarter of 2016, with daytime viewership up by more than 100%. Today became the first-place morning news show, surpassing Good Morning America in total viewers as of March 31, 2016, following a six-month lead among 25–54-year-olds.
NBC News was the first news team to possess the tape of Donald Trump recorded by the NBCUniversal-produced entertainment news show Access Hollywood, after a producer had made NBC News aware of it. The division internally debated publishing it for three days, and then an unidentified source gave a copy of the tape to The Washington Post Reporter David Fahrenthold, who contacted NBC for comment, notified the Trump campaign that he had the video, obtained confirmation of its authenticity, and released a story and the tape itself, scooping NBC. Alerted that the Post might release the story immediately, NBC News released its own story shortly after the Post story was published.
In January 2017, NBC News hired former Fox News personality Megyn Kelly to a "triple role", which would include becoming a correspondent for major news events and election coverage, hosting a Sunday-night newsmagazine, as well as hosting a daytime talk show. The newsmagazine Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly premiered in June 2017, while the daytime talk show Megyn Kelly Today premiered in September 2017. In late-October 2018, Kelly attracted criticism for a segment on Megyn Kelly Today in which she defended the use of blackface in Halloween costumes; amid the controversy and poor ratings, NBC cancelled Megyn Kelly Today shortly afterward, and Kelly left NBC News in January 2019.
Sexual misconduct and NBC News
On November 29, 2017, NBC News announced that Matt Lauer's employment had been terminated after an unidentified female NBC employee reported that Lauer had sexually harassed her during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and that the harassment continued after they returned to New York. NBC News management said it had been aware that The New York Times and Variety had been conducting independent investigations of Lauer's behavior, but that management had been unaware of previous allegations against Lauer. Linda Vester, a former NBC News correspondent, disputed the claims that management knew nothing, saying that "everybody knew" that Lauer was dangerous. According to Ronan Farrow, multiple sources have stated that NBC News was not only aware of Lauer's misconduct beforehand, but that Harvey Weinstein used this knowledge to pressure them into killing a story that would have outed his own sexual misconduct. Variety reported allegations by at least ten of Lauer's current and former colleagues. Additional accusations went public in the ensuing days.
NBC News President Noah Oppenheim suggested an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein after NBC contributor Ronan Farrow pitched a general idea to report on sexual harassment in Hollywood. After a 10-month investigation by Farrow and NBC Producer Rich McHugh, NBC chose not to publish it. The story, with very few changes, was published a few weeks later in the New Yorker Magazine instead. A story on the subject of Weinstein's alleged behavior also appeared several days earlier in The New York Times. Following criticism for missing a major story it had initiated, NBC News defended the decision, saying that at the time Farrow was at NBC, the early reporting still had important missing necessary elements. Farrow later disputed this characterization, saying that he had multiple named accusers willing to come forward and that the version ultimately published in the New Yorker had very few changes from the version that NBC News rejected. This version went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in April 2018. A former NBC News executive has said that the story on Weinstein was killed because NBC News was aware of the sexual misconduct by Lauer; in Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, Ronan Farrow cites two sources within American Media, Inc. stating that the story was killed in response to an overt threat from Weinstein to out Lauer.
2018–present
In October 2018, NBC News announced that it would soft launch a new free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel, initially named "NBC News Signal". The service officially launched on May 29, 2019, as NBC News Now.
In May 2020, Lack departed from NBC News and left NBCUniversal, amid a reorganization being undertaken by new CEO Jeff Shell; NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC were placed under the supervision of Cesar Conde as chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group.
Under Conde, NBC News began efforts to incorporate more diverse viewpoints—including from conservative perspectives—in its output outside of MSNBC (including Meet the Press), to alleviate concerns from its affiliate body that the left-leaning positioning of MSNBC reflected upon the division as a whole. These moves coincided with MSNBC's own changes in leadership, which resulted in a gradual increase in opinion programming, and as a result, a gradual decrease in talent sharing with the remainder of NBC News (with some personalities beginning to prioritize contributions to NBC News Now instead of MSNBC).
In March 2024, NBC News hired Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2017 to 2024. The hire stirred controversy, as McDaniel had been a staunch Donald Trump loyalist during her tenure at the RNC. She made false claims of voter fraud after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, which she sought to overturn. After NBC hired her during her interview on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, McDaniel backtracked on her claims, saying that Biden won the 2020 election "fair and square" and condemned political violence. She said of her conduct as RNC chair, "When you're the RNC chair, you — you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself." After two days of on-air protests by former Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd and various MSNBC commentators (including Rachel Maddow, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace), NBC News announced on March 26, 2024, that the network would not hire McDaniel.
In November 2024, parent company Comcast announced that NBCUniversal would divest most of its cable networks to a new company controlled by its shareholders, later named Versant. The spin-off will include CNBC and MSNBC.
On January 31, 2025, a Defense Department memo announced that NBC News must move out of its longtime workspace on the Correspondents' Corridor in the Pentagon, a move under a new Annual Media Rotation Program for the Pentagon Press Corps. In a statement, NBC News said, "We're disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we've used for many decades".
From Wikipedia’s article on NBC News, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4