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NBC Nightly News
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams |
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|---|---|
 The title card for NBC Nightly News, as of October 2007. |
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| Format | News |
| Created by | Reuven Frank |
| Starring | Brian Williams (2004–present) Lester Holt (weekend edition) (2007–present) |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of episodes | 13,539 (as of August 25, 2007) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Picture format | 480i (SDTV), 1080i (HDTV) |
| Original run | 1970 – present |
NBC Nightly News is the flagship evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from the GE Building, Rockefeller Center in New York City. It has been known by this name since August 3, 1970. Currently, weekday broadcasts are anchored by Brian Williams, and weekend editions of the show are anchored by Lester Holt. The program originates from NBC's Studio 3C, which is connected to the network's central newsroom.
Contents |
NBC Nightly News succeeded the Huntley-Brinkley Report upon the retirement of Chet Huntley in 1970. At first, John Chancellor and Frank McGee alternated evenings from the NBC desk in New York, while David Brinkley remained at his traditional post in Washington. Newscasts on Saturday and Sunday were known as NBC Saturday News and NBC Sunday News, respectively, until sometime in the late 1970s.
McGee left the program several months after Nightly News began in order to replace Hugh Downs on NBC's Today. Chancellor then became the sole anchor, with Brinkley providing three-minute commentaries from Washington several times a week under the title David Brinkley's Journal. In June 1976, though, NBC tried the dual-anchor approach once again, with Chancellor reporting from New York City and Brinkley from Washington. This continued until October 1979, when pressure from the NBC sales department, which thought the rotation deprived the network of a single authoritative news voice, discontinued it.
Unfortunately, by that time, Chancellor was unable to attract the viewers Walter Cronkite was attracting on the CBS Evening News. During his tenure as NBC Nightly News anchor, he never was able to break the grip Cronkite had on the American news viewer, despite NBC's various changes to the show. Chancellor did, however, remain as an editorial commentator on the news for some years after stepping down from the anchor desk in 1982, until his retirement in the early 1990s.
Tom Brokaw became the solo anchor of NBC Nightly News on September 5, 1983, after NBC once again experimented with a dual-anchor format, with Brokaw and Roger Mudd alternating. Brokaw had already anchored NBC's Today Show before joining Nightly News. Brokaw's presence attracted viewers, and during the 1990s, NBC Nightly News battled for the viewership lead with ABC World News Tonight, anchored by the urbane Canadian Peter Jennings. The once-dominant CBS Evening News, anchored by Dan Rather, lost a substantial portion of the audience it held during the Cronkite era and slid to third place in the viewership wars.
In May 2002, Brokaw announced his retirement as anchor of NBC Nightly News, to take effect shortly after the Presidential election of 2004. During this last presidential election coverage, NBC graphic designers created images of a giant electoral map on the Rockefeller Plaza ice-skating rink, and cherry-pickers tallied the electoral vote count on the GE Building. Brokaw's final broadcast took place on December 1, 2004, ending a 21-year run as the network's chief newsman, a record tenure in NBC's history. Brokaw was succeeded by Brian Williams the following day.
Brian Williams, a frequent substitute anchor for Brokaw, became the newscast's permanent anchor on December 2, 2004. The program held onto the number 1 spot in the ratings for network evening news from Williams' start in December 2004 until February 2, 2007, averaging 10 million viewers weekly, according to Nielsen Media research documented in USA Today's website. Currently, it ranks second of three in the evening news wars, finishing behind ABC World News with Charles Gibson. However, Nightly News periodically has one-week victories. In fact, Nightly News had its first one-month victory during the November sweeps period since losing to ABC in February 2007. A blog, The Daily Nightly, has been started to add insight into how the broadcast is put together. In addition, each full weekday broadcast is available for viewing that same night after 10 p.m. Eastern time. Because Brian Williams introduced to the audience the daily blog "The Daily Nightly", he also announced the arrival of a vodcast of the Nightly News.
Williams rose to new levels of popularity for his live spot reporting during and after the 2005 Hurricane season. Ann Curry or Lester Holt substitute for Williams when he is on vacation or on assignment.
On December 4, 2006, NBC Nightly News was presented with limited commercial interruptions by Philips. This marked the first time in its 36-year history in which the newscast has used that experiment.
With the transition to Williams, the show recognized its past in its opening seconds, with small photos of past anchors and sets and the voices of John Cameron Swayze, Huntley, Brinkley, Chancellor, and Brokaw, as well as an orchestral version of the "G-E-C" NBC Chimes, before going into the opening headlines read by Williams. This montage was discontinued beginning with the September 17, 2007 edition.
The most recent permanent set of the Nightly News (in Studio 3C) was retired on the broadcast of May 4, 2007. It had first appeared in 1999. The broadcast's temporary location, Studio 8G, featured the same set used for Sunday Night Football broadcasts by NBC Sports. It was where NBC's 2006 congressional election coverage originated. The newly inaugurated Nightly News studio (3C) was reopened on October 22, 2007, after months of construction.
The weekend editions of Nightly News are anchored by Lester Holt. John Seigenthaler previously served as anchor of the Saturday and Sunday editions of the NBC Nightly News from July 1999 through the April 1, 2007 broadcast.[1]
The weekend editions of NBC Nightly News began January 4, 1969, when Huntley-Brinkley Report was expanded to six nights a week (Monday–Saturday). When lower-than-expected ratings occurred, the network pulled the pair off Saturdays (where they had been alternating weeks reading the newscast alone) and assigned others such as Frank McGee and Sander Vanocur to that evening, renaming it NBC Saturday News. On August 2, 1970, two days after Huntley-Brinkley ended, the network expanded newscasts to Sunday evenings (named NBC Sunday News). Both the Saturday and Sunday reports replaced the in-depth, documentary-oriented Frank McGee Report. Former anchors of the weekend Nightly News include Garrick Utley, Douglas Kiker, Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, John Hart, John Palmer, Connie Chung, Maria Shriver, Giselle Fernandez, Tom Snyder, Jane Pauley, Jessica Savitch and Stephen Frazier.
In the early years of Nightly News, Bill Hanrahan handled the announcing duties for the newscast, as he had done for the previous Huntley-Brinkley Report. Beginning in the 1980s, the announcer for the program was long-time NBC staff announcer Howard Reig. He retired to Florida in 2005 but a recording he made before his retirement was used until December 14, 2007. When the show was on the road or a new substitute anchor is employed, Reig recorded a new introduction in a Miami studio. Since Holt took over as anchor, the weekend editions has been voiced by a different, unidentified announcer who has also worked occasionally on special weekday editions when Reig was unavailable. On December 17, 2007, Nightly News debuted a new announcer: Academy Award winner and actor Michael Douglas.
- "Huntley-Brinkley Report/NBC Nightly News Ticker" (1970–1973); the theme had been used since 1962, when the program was still known as The Huntley-Brinkley Report)
- "NBC News Ticker" (1973–1976)
- Untitled theme (1976–1977)
- "NBC Nightly News", by Henry Mancini (1977–1982)
- "NBC News", by Joseph Paul Sicurella, Tony Smythe, and Bob Christianson (1979–1982 as a bumper; 1982–1985 as the main theme)
- "The Mission", by John Williams (1985— )
- Peter Alexander - National Correspondent
- Ron Allen - National Correspondent
- Jane Arraf - Middle East Correspondent
- Robert Bazell - NBC News Chief Science Correspondent
- Mika Brzezinski - MSNBC anchor, NBC News Correspondent
- Tom Brokaw - NBC News Special Correspondent and former NBC Nightly News anchor
- Kevin Corke - National Correspondent
- Tom Costello[1] - National Correspondent
- Richard Engel - NBC News Chief Middle East Correspondent and Beruit Bureau Chief
- Bob Faw - National Correspondent
- Martin Fletcher - Middle East Correspondent and Israel Bureau Chief
- Dawn Fratangelo - National Correspondent
- David Gregory - Chief White House Correspondent
- George Lewis - National Correspondent and Los Angeles Bureau Chief
- Jim Miklaszewski - Chief Pentagon Correspondent
- Andrea Mitchell - Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent
- Lisa Myers - Senior Investigative Correspondent
- Michael Okwu - West Coast/California Correspondent
- Roger O'Neil - National Correspondent
- Tim Russert - Washington Bureau Chief and Anchor of Meet The Press
- Martin Savidge - New Orleans Bureau Chief
- Dr. Nancy Snyderman - NBC News Chief Medical Editor
- Anne Thompson - NBC News Chief Environment Correspondent
- Pete Williams - Chief Justice Correspondent
- Lester Holt - Anchor, NBC Nighlty News Weekend Edition and Anchor, "Today" Weekend Edition
NBC Nightly News began broadcasting in 1080i high definition on March 26, 2007. Field footage is still shot in standard definition while the network bureaus complete their own conversion to HD, set to be completed in 2009. ABC and CBS have announced no plans to broadcast their evening newscasts in high definition.
In Europe, NBC Nightly News is shown live on CNBC Europe. NBC News programming is also shown for several hours a day on the 24 hour news network Orbit News in Europe and the Middle East. In the Philippines, NBC Nightly News is shown at 18.00 local time on 2nd Avenue. In Japan, NBC Nightly News is shown on NTV NEWS 24. It is televised at 7:30 pm Atlantic time on VSB-TV in Bermuda.
In September 2001, a letter containing anthrax was addressed to then NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw as part of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Brokaw wasn't harmed, but two NBC News employees were infected.
| U.S. Network Evening News edit | |
| ABC | World News |
| CBS | CBS Evening News |
| NBC | NBC Nightly News |
| CNN | The Situation Room |
| FNC | Fox Report |
| BBC | World News America (1900 ET) |
| World News Today (2200 ET) | |
On April 18, 2007, NBC News received a package containing a "multimedia manifesto" from Cho Seung-hui, the gunman responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre that occurred two days earlier, the largest school shooting and spree killing in American history. Upon the package's discovery, NBC News handed the package over to federal authorities. The specific details of the package contained a DVD disc of Cho reading from a typed manifesto (also in the package), as well as more than forty pictures of Cho brandishing weapons, including the two handguns believed to have been used in the massacre. Some of the packages contents were shown, albeit copied from the originals and edited for profanity, on the April 18th edition of NBC Nightly News, with anchor Brian Williams and NBC senior justice correspondent Pete Williams (no relation) examining the package's contents in the opening moments of the broadcast.
- Weekdays
- Anchor & Managing Editor: Brian Williams
- Executive Producer: Alexandra Wallace
- Senior Broadcast Producer: Bob Epstein
- Director: Brett Holey
- Senior Producers: M.L. Flynn, Tracey Lyons, Albert Oetgen, Richard Latour
- Broadcast Producer: Ed Deitch
- Anchor Producer: Subrata De
- Tape Producers: Anne Binford Allen and Robin Skolnick
- New York Producers: Donna Bass, Marisa Buchanan, Clare Duffy, Mario Garcia, Joo Lee, Bita Nikravesh, Kelly Venardos, and Robert Windrem
- News Writers: Christine Colvin and Barbara Raab
- Editors: Robert Kaplan, Bob Croce, Jody Henenfeld, Beverly Chase, Maggie Kassner
- Website Producer: Sam Singal
- Music by: John Williams
- Graphic Designers: Joe Incorvaia, Art Director; Collin Pisarra, Assistant Art Director
- Weekend
- Anchor: Lester Holt
- Executive Producer: Pat Burkey
- Senior Broadcast Producer: Tom Bowman
- Director: Patricia Lang
- Associate Director: Roberta Spring
- Producers: Buba Adschiew, Carol Eggers, Tom Dawson, Lydia Lively (Washington), and Maria Alcon
- Graphic Designers: William Donovan, Art Director
- Tape Producer: Lauren Fairbanks
- News Writers: Barbara Bernhard
- Music by: John Williams
- NBC Nightly News
- The Daily Nightly: Official Blog of NBC Nightly News
- NBC Nightly News at the Internet Movie Database
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| John Cameron Swayze • Chet Huntley • David Brinkley • Frank McGee • John Chancellor • Tom Brokaw • Roger Mudd • Brian Williams |