The
National Broadcasting Company (
NBC) is an
American television network headquartered in the
GE Building in
New York City's Rockefeller Center. It is sometimes referred to as the
Peacock Network due to its stylized
peacock logo.
Formed in 1926 by the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA), NBC was the first major broadcast network in the United States. In 1986, control of NBC passed to
General Electric (GE), with GE's $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. After the acquisition, the chief executive of NBC was
Bob Wright, until he retired, giving his job to
Jeff Zucker. The network is currently part of the media company
NBC Universal, a unit of
General Electric and
Vivendi.
NBC is available in an estimated 112 million households, or 98.6% of the country. NBC has 10 owned-and-operated stations and nearly 200 affiliates in the United States and its territories.
History
[
Building.jpg|thumb|left|250px|NBC Headquarters in [[New York City]]]
Radio
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 from
American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T). An RCA shareholder,
Westinghouse, had a competing facility in
Newark, New Jersey pioneer station
WJZ (no relation to the current
WJZ-TV), which also served as the
flagship 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, whose products included transmitters and antennas. The
Bell System, 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's
WJAR in
Providence, Rhode Island; and with AT&T's station in
Washington, D.C.,
WCAP.
New parent RCA saw an advantage in sharing programming, and after getting a license for station
WRC 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 announced in late 1926 the creation of a new division known as
The National Broadcasting Company. The new division was divided in ownership between 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 offered commercially sponsored entertainment and music programming; the
Blue Network 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.
Orange, Gold & White Networks
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 in
San Francisco, California. In 1936 the
Orange Network name was dropped and
affiliate 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 radio stations in the 1930s called the
NBC White Network.
RCA moved its corporate headquarters into the new
Rockefeller Center in 1933, signing the leases in 1931. RCA was the lead tenant at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the
RCA Building (now the
GE Building). The building housed NBC studios, as well as theaters for RCA-owned
RKO Pictures. Rockefeller Center's founder and financier
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., arranged the deal with the chairman of GE,
Owen D. Young, and the president of RCA,
David Sarnoff.
[RCA Lead Tenant of Rockefeller Center, see: ]
The chimes
The famous three-note
NBC chimes came about after several years of development. The three note sequence G-E-C may have been heard first over Atlanta's
WSB. The chimes are in the succession of what is known to musicians as a Major 6th triad. Someone at NBC in New York heard the WSB version of the notes during the networked broadcast of a
Georgia Tech football 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 to be accepted by the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. 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), on
D-Day, and disasters. The NBC chimes were mechanized in 1932 by
Richard H. Ranger 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 current parent corporation, the General Electric Company; although GE's radio station in
Schenectady, New York,
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 is still used on NBC-TV. A variant with two preceding notes is used on the
MSNBC cable television network. NBC's radio branch no longer exists.
New beginnings: The Blue Network becomes ABC
The
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had, since its creation in 1934, studied the
monopolistic 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. (now
ABC), and NBC Red became
NBC Red Network, Inc. In January 1942, the two networks formally divorced operations, 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 in May 1943, RCA sold Blue Network Company, Inc., for $8 million to
Life Savers magnate
Edward J. Noble, completing the sale in October 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 in San Francisco, and WENR in Chicago, which shared a frequency with
Prairie Farmer station
WLS); and about 60 affiliates. Noble wanted a better name for the network and in 1944 acquired the rights to the name
American Broadcasting Company from
George Storer. The Blue Network became ABC officially on
June 15,
1945, after the sale was completed.
[
Chicago.jpg|thumb|left|150px|NBC Tower in [[Chicago]]]
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, 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.
NBC became home to many of the most popular performers and programs on the air.
Al Jolson,
Jack Benny,
Edgar Bergen,
Bob Hope,
Fred Allen, and
Burns and Allen called NBC home, as did
Arturo Toscanini's
NBC Symphony Orchestra, which the network helped him create. Other programs were
Vic and Sade,
Fibber McGee and Molly,
The Great Gildersleeve (arguably broadcasting's first spin-off program, from
Fibber McGee),
One Man's Family,
Ma Perkins, and
Death Valley Days. 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) gained ground by allowing radio stars to use their own production companies, which was a tax break. 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 jumped to CBS.
In addition, NBC stars began moving toward television, including comedian
Milton Berle, whose
Texaco Star Theater on NBC became television's first major hit. Conductor Arturo Toscanini made ten television appearances on NBC between 1948 and 1952.
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 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 as hostess, it lured prestigious entertainers, including Fred Allen,
Groucho Marx,
Lauritz Melchior,
Ethel Barrymore,
Louis Armstrong,
Ethel Merman, Bob Hope,
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and
Ella Fitzgerald. But
The Big Shows initial success didn't last despite critical praise. The show endured two years, with NBC losing perhaps a million dollars on the project.
NBC's last major radio programming push, beginning June 12, 1955, was
Monitor, a continuous all-weekend mixture of music, news, interviews and features, with a variety of hosts including well-known television personalities
Dave Garroway,
Hugh Downs,
Ed McMahon,
Joe Garagiola and
Gene Rayburn. 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's dialog comedy
Ethel and Albert (with Alan Bunce); and iconoclastic satirist
Henry Morgan.
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. After
Monitor went off the air January 26, 1975, little remained of NBC network radio beyond hourly newscasts and news features.
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. NIS attracted several dozen subscribing stations, largely in smaller markets, but not enough for NBC to expect profitability, and NBC discontinued it 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) 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 withoiut 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 NBC in 1986, and it decided that radio did not fit its strategy; additionally, the radio division had not been profitable for many years. In the summer of 1987, GE sold NBC Radio's network operations to
Westwood One, and sold off the NBC-owned stations to different buyers. In 1989 the NBC Radio Network as an independent programming service ceased to exist, becoming a brand name for content produced by Westwood One, and ultimately by
CBS Radio. The
Mutual Broadcasting System, 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 canon 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. Prior to GE's acquisition, NBC operated it's radio division partly out of tradition, and partly out of maintaining it's then-FCC mandated requirement to distribute programming for the public good (the now-defunct "Fairness Doctrine"). 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"-- mark in many ways the "beginning of the end" of the old braodcasting era..and the ushering in of the new largely unregulated industry that we see today.
By the late 1990s, Westwood One was producing
NBC-branded newscasts on weekday mornings only. About 2003 these were discontinued, and the remaining NBC Radio Network affiliates began to receive
CNN Radio-branded newscasts around the clock. Westwood One also distributed a new service called
NBC News Radio, brief news updates read by television anchors and reporters from
NBC News and
MSNBC.
Television
For many years NBC was closely identified with
David Sarnoff, 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 stole the spotlight by introducing all-electronic television to the public at the 1939–40
New York World's Fair, simultaneously initiating a regular schedule of programs on the NBC-RCA television station in New York City. President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt 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 channel 4) and was seen by about 1,000 viewers within the station's roughly 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) 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). 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 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 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,
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.
[ Includes .] 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 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, drew large audiences to NBC with his antics on the
The Texaco Star Theater. Legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, who had been conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio since 1937, conducted ten concerts on NBC television between 1948 and 1952. All of these concerts were simulcast on radio, a pioneering event at that time. The simulcasts included a two-part complete performance in concert of
Verdi's opera
Aida, starring
Richard Tucker and
Herva Nelli, and the first complete televised performance of
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The network launched
Today and
The Tonight Show, which would bookend the broadcast day for over fifty years, and which still lead their competitors.
Color television
While rivals
CBS and
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. In 1955, on the television anthology
Producers' Showcase, NBC broadcast a live production in color of
Peter Pan, a Broadway musical adaptation of
J.M. Barrie's beloved play, with its entire original cast, the first such telecast of its kind.
Mary Martin starred as Peter and
Cyril Ritchard played the dual role of Mr. Darling and
Captain Hook. 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 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) was the first color TV station in the nation (at least six hours of color broadcasts a day). The television edition of the
Bell Telephone Hour premiered in color on NBC in 1959, and in September of 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 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
, which premiered in late 1964, had their entire first season in black-and-white. Without television sets to sell, rival networks followed more slowly, finally committing to color in the 1965-66 season.
Days of our Lives was the first soap opera to premiere in color.
In 1967, NBC acquired
MGM's classic 1939 film
The Wizard of Oz after
CBS, which had televised the film beginning in 1956, had been unwilling 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 it go, now agreed to pay MGM more money so that the rights to show the film could revert back 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,
Laugh-In,
Emergency!,
The Dean Martin Show, and
The Flip Wilson Show, but this did not last. In spite of the success of such new shows as
The NBC Mystery Movie,
Sanford and Son,
Chico and the Man,
Little House on the Prairie,
The Rockford Files, and
, as well as continued success from veterans like
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 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 up against it in the 1975-1976 season. None of the new shows NBC introduced in the fall of 1975 earned a second season, all failing in the face of established competition.
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.
NBC did launch the successful and influential
Saturday Night Live, 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 away from number-one ABC to turn the network's fortunes around. With the notable exceptions of
Diff'rent Strokes,
Real People,
The Facts of Life, and the mini-series
Shogun, he couldn't find a hit. Failures accumulated rapidly under his watch (such as
Hello, Larry,
Supertrain,
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. A popular joke arised in the late 1970s on NBC is the "Nothing But Crap", "NoBody Cares" and "Nobody's Watching Network" to mock the network's slogan: "America's Watching Network".
Also during this time, NBC suffered the defections of several longtime affiliates in markets such as: Atlanta (
WSB), Baltimore (
WBAL), Charlotte (
WSOC), Dayton (
WDTN), Indianapolis (
WRTV), Jacksonville (
WTLV), Minneapolis-St. Paul (
KSTP-TV), and San Diego (
KGTV). Most were wooed away by ABC, which was the number-one network during the late 1970s and early 1980s. 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. Other smaller television markets like
Yuma, Arizona waited many years to get another local NBC affiliate (see TV stations
KVIA and
KYEL).
When U.S. President
Jimmy Carter pulled the American team out of the
1980 Summer Olympics, NBC canceled a planned 150 hours of coverage (which had cost $87,000,000), and the network's future was in doubt. It had been counting on $170,000,000 in advertising revenues and on the broadcasts to help promote fall shows.
The press was merciless towards Silverman, but two of the most savage attacks on his leadership came from within. The company that composed NBC's on-air promo music created a spoof of the
Proud as a Peacock ad campaign. Comedian
Al Franken satirized Silverman in a
Saturday Night Live sketch titled "Limo for a Lame-O." Silverman admitted he "never liked Al Franken to begin with", and the sketch may have hurt Franken's chance of succeeding
Lorne Michaels as executive producer of SNL.
Tartikoff's turnaround
In the summer of 1981, Fred Silverman resigned.
Grant Tinker became president of the network and
Brandon Tartikoff became chief of programming. Tartikoff inherited a schedule full of aging dramas and very few sitcoms, but showed patience with promising programs. The sitcom
The Facts of Life was renewed for a third season. One such show was the critically acclaimed
Hill Street Blues, which rated poorly in its first season. Instead of canceling it, he moved the
Emmy-winning police drama to Thursday night where its ratings improved dramatically. He used the same tactic with
St. Elsewhere. 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!,
Silver Spoons,
Knight Rider and
Remington Steele, its biggest hit in this period was
The A-Team, 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 shows gained a second year.
[The nine new shows of 1983-84 were Bay City Blues, Boone, For Love and Honor, Jennifer Slept Here, Manimal, The Rousters, Mr. Smith, We Got it Made, and The Yellow Rose.] It was the only time that a network's entire line of new series had failed to be renewed since the network's 1975 lineup.
In 1982 NBC canceled
Tom Snyder's
The Tomorrow Show and gave the time slot to 34-year-old comedian
David Letterman. Though Letterman had had an unsuccessful
daytime series in 1980,
Late Night with David Letterman proved much more successful.
In 1984 the huge success of
The Cosby Show led to a renewed interest in sitcoms, while
Family Ties and
Cheers, 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 year. It reached first place in the Nielsen rankings in the 1985-86 season, with hits
The Golden Girls,
Miami Vice,
227,
Night Court,
Highway to Heaven, and
Hunter. The network's upswing continued through the decade with
ALF,
Amen,
Matlock,
L.A. Law,
The Hogan Family,
A Different World,
Empty Nest, and
In the Heat of the Night. In the 1988-89 season, NBC won every week in the ratings for over a full year, an achievement not since duplicated.
"Must See TV"
In 1991, Tartikoff left NBC to take a position at
Paramount Pictures. 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 took his place. His start was shaky due to the end of most of the Tartikoff-era hits. Some blamed him for losing
David Letterman to CBS after giving
The Tonight Show to
Jay Leno, following
Johnny Carson's 1992 retirement. Things turned around with hit series
Friends,
Mad About You,
Frasier,
ER, and
Will & Grace. One of Tartikoff's late acquisitions,
Seinfeld, initially struggled, but became one of NBC's top-rated shows after it was moved into the timeslot following
Cheers. The
Must-See TV 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 landed in the top 40.
Friends finished its run in 2004 along with
Frasier and NBC's
Must See TV declined.
Friends spin-off
Joey (despite a relatively good start) started to fail during its second season.
New Leadership
At the start of the 2000s, however, NBC's fortunes took a rapid turn for the worse. In 2001, CBS chose its hit reality series
Survivor 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. Competing with CBS's popular
CSI franchise, FOX's
American Idol, and ABC hits
Lost,
Desperate Housewives and
Grey's Anatomy, NBC dropped to fourth in the ratings race. 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). Adding to its woes, all of the networks face shrinking audiences due to increased competition from cable, home video, and the internet.
With the 2004-05 season, NBC became the first major network to produce its programming in
widescreen, hoping to attract new viewers. NBC saw only a slight boost.
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, surviving for a second season. The 2006-07 season was a mixed bag, with
Heroes becoming a surprise hit on Monday nights, while the highly touted
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, 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 returned to NBC after eight years,
Deal or No Deal stayed strong, and its comedies
The Office and
30 Rock won the
Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for three consecutive years. However, NBC stayed in fourth place, and has remained so ever since.
In March 2007, NBC announced that it will offer full-length prime-time television shows like
The Office and
Heroes on-demand to play on mobile phones. This will be a first for the United States, as the market shifts away from traditional television.
NBC News
Programming
NBC presently operates on an 87-hour regular network programming schedule. It provides 22 hours of
prime time programming to affiliated stations: 8:00-11:00 p.m.(ET/PT)/7:00-10:00 p.m.(CT,MT,AT,HT) Monday through Saturday and 7:00-11:00 p.m. on Sundays. Programming is also provided 7:00-11:00 a.m. 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; nightly editions of
NBC Nightly News; the Sunday political talk show
Meet the Press; weekday early-morning news program
Early Today; late night talk shows
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,
Late Night with Conan O'Brien and
Last Call with Carson Daly; sketch comedy show
Saturday Night Live; Late-late-night poker series
Poker After Dark; weeknight rebroadcasts of
The Tonight Show under the banner
NBC All Night; and a three-hour Saturday morning animation block under the name
qubo. In addition, sports programming is also provided weekend afternoons any time from 12:00-6:00 p.m. ET, or
tape-delayed PT.
Prime time
Returning comedies are in
red; new comedies are in
pink; returning dramas are in
green; new dramas are in
blue; returning reality shows are in
yellow; new reality shows are in
gold; returning game shows are in
orange; new game shows are in
beige; news programming is in
brown; sports programming is in
purple.
All times are
Eastern and
Pacific (subtract one hour for
Central and
Mountain time), with the exception of Sunday (see below).
Daytime programs
Currently, NBC is the home of only one daytime drama, the long-running serial
Days of our Lives (1965-).
Long-running NBC daytime dramas of the past include
Another World (1964–1999),
The Doctors (1963–1982),
Passions (1999-2007), which later moved to the
DirecTV-exclusive channel
The 101 for its final year on the air, and
Santa Barbara (1984–1993). NBC also aired the final four and a half years of
Search for Tomorrow (1982–1986) after that series was dropped by
CBS, although many NBC affiliates did not air the show in its final years. NBC has also aired numerous short-lived soaps;
Generations (1989–1991) and
Sunset Beach (1997–1999) are a couple of examples, as are two
Another World spin-offs,
Somerset (1970–1976) and
Texas (1980–1982).
Notable daytime game shows that once aired on NBC include
Concentration (1956-1973),
The Match Game (1962-1969),
Let's Make a Deal (1963-1976),
Jeopardy! (1964-1975 and 1978-1979),
The Hollywood Squares (1966-1980),
Wheel of Fortune (1975-1989 and 1991),
Password Plus/Super Password (1979-1982 and 1984-1989),
Sale of the Century (1983-1989),
Scrabble (1984-1990 and 1993) and
Classic Concentration (1987-1991). The final game show to air on NBC's daytime schedule was
Caesars Challenge, 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, one of the era's first breakthrough television shows. The series, which ran for 13 years, featured a frecklefaced
marionette and a myriad of other characters and hosted by
"Buffalo" Bob Smith. 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 and
Looney Tunes, reruns of popular television series like
The Flintstones and
The Jetsons, foreign acquisitions like
Astro Boy and
Kimba the White Lion, original animated series (most notably
The Smurfs and
Alvin and the Chipmunks in the 1980s), cartoon adaptations of
Gary Coleman,
Mr. T,
Punky Brewster,
ALF and
Star Trek, and original live-action series including
The Banana Splits,
The Bugaloos, and
H.R. Pufnstuf.
From 1984 to 1989,
One to Grow On PSAs were shown after the end credits of every show or every other children's show.
In 1989, NBC premiered
Saved by the Bell, which originated at
The Disney Channel as
Good Morning, Miss Bliss.
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 in its first season.
NBC abandoned the animated series in August 1992 in favor of a Saturday edition of
Today and more live-action series under the name
TNBC (
Teen NBC). Most of the series on the TNBC lineup were series produced by
Peter Engel such as
City Guys,
Hang Time,
California Dreams,
One World and the
Saved by the Bell spinoff,
Saved by the Bell: The New Class. Though there were exceptions, the short-lived
Just Deal, one of only two series without a studio audience and/or
laugh track and the only "filmed" series was co-created and executive produced by
Thomas W. Lynch.
NBA Inside Stuff was also a part of the TNBC lineup during the duration of the NBA season. In 2000, after eleven years NBC discontinued the TNBC Saturday morning block.
In 2002, NBC began a deal with
Discovery Communications' Discovery Kids channel to air their original FCC-mandated educational programming under the banner
Discovery Kids on NBC. The schedule originally consisted of only live-action series, including a kid-themed version of
Trading Spaces and
J. D. Roth's Emmy-nominated reality game show
Endurace, but has expanded to include some animated series such as
Kenny the Shark,
Tutenstein, and
Time Warp Trio. In 2006, Discovery Kids on NBC was discontinued.
[ ]
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 endeavor teaming parent company NBC Universal with
ION Media Networks,
Scholastic Press,
Corus Entertainment and
Classic Media/
Mike Young. qubo will include blocks to air on NBC,
Telemundo (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,
Dragon,
VeggieTales Presents: 3-2-1 Penguins!,
Babar,
Jane and the Dragon, and
Jacob Two-Two.
NBCi
In April 2000,
NBCi purchased a company that specialized with search engines that learned from the users' searches for $32 million, called
GlobalBrain.
In 2001–2002, NBC briefly changed its web address to "
NBCi.com", in a heavily-advertised attempt to launch an
Internet portal and
start page. This move saw NBC teaming up with
XOOM.com, e-mail.com,
AllBusiness.com,
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 to deliver minimal portal content. In mid 2007, NBCi.com began to mirror 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, but later logos included stylized
peacock images.
International broadcasts
Canada
Many cities in Canada including
Windsor, Ontario (
Detroit and
Toledo),
Toronto (
Buffalo),
Vancouver (
Seattle),
Winnipeg (
Minneapolis and
Fargo, North Dakota),
Montreal (
Burlington),
Halifax (
Boston),
Calgary and
Edmonton (
Spokane and
Great Falls, Montana) receive many United States NBC affiliates either over the air, and on
cable television and
satellite television providers. In places far from the border, cable and satellite are the only ways to pick up NBC signals clearly. Aside from
Simultaneous substitution, the programming and broadcasting are the same as in the United States.
Europe, Latin America and the Middle East
NBC Nightly News,
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and
Late Night with Conan O'Brien are shown on
CNBC Europe. 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 in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. MSNBC is also shown occasionally on sister network
CNBC Europe during breaking news. Border cities in the
US-Mexican border can easily receive NBC on-the-air, as well cable and satellite subscribers across
Mexico especially the
Mexico City region.
NBC Super Channel becomes NBC Europe
In 1993, the Pan-European cable network
Super Channel was taken over by
General Electric, the parent of NBC, and became
NBC Super Channel. In 1996, the channel was renamed
NBC 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 11PM
Central European Time on weekday evenings, the channel aired
The Tonight Show,
Late Night with Conan O'Brien and
Later, hence its slogan "Where the Stars Come Out at Night." Many
NBC News programs were broadcast on NBC Europe, including
Dateline NBC,
Meet The Press and
NBC Nightly News, 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 can be received via satellite and many cable networks in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The Tonight Show,
Late Night and
NBC Nightly News continue to be broadcast on
CNBC Europe.
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,
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, 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.
Caribbean
In the Caribbean, many cable television and satellite television providers air local NBC affiliates, or the main network feed from
WNBC-TV New York City or
WTVJ in Miami, though a few locally-owned NBC affiliates do exist (in the case of
Puerto Rico). The island and the nearby
U.S. Virgin Islands are the main receivers of NBC programs available in English and Spanish via the
SAP option.
Bermuda
NBC's full program lineup is carried by local affiliate
VSB-TV, received from the network's East Coast satellite feed.
Netherlands Antilles
In
Aruba, the network programming is carried on station
ATV 15.
Asia Pacific
Guam
KUAM-TV is an NBC affiliate in
Guam and carries the full NBC program lineup via satellite.
NBC Asia and CNBC Asia
In 1995, NBC launched a channel in Asia called
NBC Asia available in
Japan,
Malaysia,
South Korea,
Taiwan and
Thailand. 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 couldn't 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 simulcasted some programs from
CNBC Asia and
MSNBC. On 1 July 1998, NBC Asia was replaced b
