NBC News

Although the operations of CBS News have received more attention from historians of broadcast journalism, NBC's operations often received higher ratings. From 1956 through 1970, NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report anchored by the team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley consistently exceeded the viewership levels attained by CBS News and its main anchor Walter Cronkite. The pair, together with fellow correspondents Frank McGee and Jay Barbree, distinguished itself in the coverage of American manned space missions in the Project Mercury, Project Gemini and Project Apollo programs, during an era when space missions rated continuous coverage. (An entire studio, Studio 8H, was configured for this coverage, complete with 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 Bil Baird were used to depict movements of astronauts before on-board spacecraft television cameras were feasible. Studio 8H is now the home of the long-running NBC show Saturday Night Live.)

NBC Nightly News era

NBC's ratings lead began to slip toward the end of the 1960s and fell sharply when Chet Huntley retired in 1970 (Huntley died of cancer in 1974). The loss of Huntley, along with a reluctance by RCA to fund NBC News at a similar level CBS was funding its news division, left NBC News in the doldrums. The network tried a platoon of anchors (Brinkley, McGee, and John Chancellor) for some months afterward. Despite the efforts of the network's eventual lead anchor, the articulate, even-toned Chancellor, NBC News did not recover its previous viewership levels until after General Electric acquired RCA. Even perennially third-place ABC would equal Nightly News by decade's end with its World News Tonight format. It was only when Tom Brokaw became sole anchor in 1983, after breifly co-anchoring with Roger Mudd, that things began to improve for Nightly News. In 1995, NBC finally won the top spot in the Nielsens for the first time in over 25 years.

NBC's primary news show is NBC Nightly News. Williams assumed primary anchor duties in December, 2004 upon the retirement of his predecessor, Tom Brokaw. On October 22, 2007, NBC Nightly News moved into it's new high definition studios, at Studio 3C at NBC Studios in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The network's 24 hour cable network, MSNBC joined the network in New York on that day as well. The new studios/headquarters for NBC News and MSNBC are now located in one area.

Current programming

Syndicated productions

Other productions

NBC News provides content for the Internet, as well as cable-only news networks CNBC and MSNBC.

In 1982, NBC News began production on NBC News Overnight with anchors Linda Ellerbee, Lloyd Dobyns, and Bill Schechner. That program was cancelled in December 1983, but in 1991, NBC News aired another overnight news show called NBC Nightside. During its run, the show's anchors included Sara James, Bruce Hall, Antonio Mora, Tom Miller, Campbell Brown, Kim Hindrew, Tom Donavan, and Tonya Strong. NBC Nightside lasted until 1998 and was replaced by reruns of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In the early 1990s, NBC News produced a short-lived investigative program called Exposé.

NBC News Channel is a news video and report feed service, similar to a wire service, providing pre-produced international, national and regional stories some with fronting reporters customized for NBC network affiliates. It is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. NBC News Channel also served as the production base of NBC Nightside.

Noted coverage

NBC News got the first American news interviews from two Russian presidents (Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev), and Brokaw was the only American TV news correspondent to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

In the Iraq War, NBC News main anchor Brokaw covered the war extensively, in part owing to the willingness of GE to fund it. NBC newsman David Bloom pushed through the GE and U.S. Department of Defense bureaucracies permission to construct a mobile news vehicle that could transmit live video broadcasts from the battlefield. The "Bloom-mobile" brought satellite images and videos (clear, detailed) into homes across America and Europe, live and one-on-one. Bloom did not live to accept the accolades after the armed conflict; he died of natural causes unrelated to combat during the final phase of the fighting.

Controversies

Dateline NBC General Motors investigation

In 1993, Dateline NBC broadcast an investigative report about the safety of General Motors (GM) trucks. GM discovered the "actual footage" utilized in the broadcast had been rigged by the inclusion of explosive incendiaries attached to the gas tanks and the use of 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. As a result of the controversy, several Dateline producers were fired and NBC News President Michael Gartner was forced out.

Anthrax

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, a letter postmarked from Trenton, New Jersey containing anthrax was addressed to then NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw as part of the 2001 anthrax attacks. The third floor offices of NBC News in New York were sealed off by the FBI for an investigation. Brokaw was not harmed, although two NBC News employees sustained anthrax infection but no permanent injuries.

Mail from a mass murderer

Cho took time between the two shooting episodes to prepare and mail a large multimedia package to NBC News in New York containing messages about his anger at the wealthy and alluding to the slaughter that was about to take place. Although the package was sent overnight mail, it was not received until 11 a.m. on April 18 because of Cho's confusion over the zip code of NBC's headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

The package contained a DVD showing video clips of Cho speaking and more than two dozen photos of Cho, including 11 of him thrusting pistols at the camera. A postal worker delivering the parcel to the network's Rockefeller Center offices recognized the sender and alerted NBC security personnel. They immediately reported the package to the FBI. Meanwhile, NBC made copies of the contents and aired carefully edited pieces on its evening news and cable programs. Snippets from the package, including still photos, videos and voice narration, were also made available to competing news outlets who agreed to credit the network as the source. NBC News president Steve Capus defended use of the material but the frequency of its broadcast was cut dramatically.

Personnel

Current

Former

Broadcasts abroad

NBC Nightly News is shown on CNBC Europe. MSNBC is not 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 in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. MSNBC is also shown occasionally on sister network CNBC Europe during breaking news. Some NBC News programs are shown in the Philippines on 2nd Avenue. NBC Nightly News, along with the full program lineup of NBC, is carried by affiliate VSB-TV in Bermuda. In Australia; the first 2 hours of Today, Weekend Today and Meet The Press are broadcast early in the morning on the Seven Network, just before their own morning show Sunrise.

Bureaus

Major bureaus

Minor bureaus (within the United States)

Foreign bureaus (NBC Universal affiliates)

Theme music

Most of NBC's news television programs use the "The Mission" by John Williams as their theme. The composition was first used by NBC in 1985 and was updated in 2006.^[65]

Contents

History

Caravan era

Huntley-Brinkley era