|
NBC (an abbreviation for National Broadcasting Company, its former corporate name) is an American television network based in New York City's Rockefeller Center and is shown on basic cable in Canada. It is sometimes referred to as the Peacock Network due to its stylized peacock logo. The network is now part of the media company NBC Universal and supplies programming to more than 200 affiliated U.S. stations. NBC Universal is a unit of General Electric (GE). Formed in 1926 by RCA, control of NBC passed to GE in 1986 following GE's $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. Since this acquisition, the chief executive of NBC (now NBC Universal) has been Bob Wright. NBC and rival CBS have both abandoned the name behind their abbreviations; the Peacock Network's corporate name was shrunk from "National Broadcasting Company, Inc." to "NBC Universal, Inc." following the merger with French Vivendi Universal's Entertainment division, then-owner of Universal Studios, in May 2004. NBC still uses the full name during occasional broadcasts, such as its coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
History Radio The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio network went on the air with twenty-four affiliated stations on November 15, 1926. It was owned by Radio Corporation of America (RCA), itself set up in 1919 to control Guglielmo Marconi's American patents; RCA in turn was owned by General Electric Company (GE), the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the United Fruit Company and American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T). Earliest Stations: WEAF & WJZ During a period of early consolidation in the broadcasting business, RCA had acquired New York radio station WEAF from AT&T. RCA shareholder Westinghouse had a competing facility in Newark, pioneer station WJZ, which also served as the originating station for a loosely-structured network. This station was transferred from Westinghouse to RCA in 1923, and moved to New York.• WEAF had been a laboratory for AT&T's Western Electric, which manufactured transmitters and antennas. AT&T's long-distance and local Bell operating divisions were developing technologies for transmitting voice- and music-grade audio over short and long distances, via both wireless and wired methods. So AT&T's creation of station WEAF in 1922 offered a research-and-development center for these activities. WEAF put together a regular schedule of programs of all types, and created some of the first broadcasts to incorporate commercial endorsements or sponsorships. It was an immediate success, and created links with other stations to offer coverage of sports or political events. WEAF's first efforts in what would become known first as "chain broadcasting" and later as "networking" tied together Outlet Company's WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island with AT&T's WCAP in Washington, D.C. (named for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company division of AT&T). RCA also 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 (since AT&T refused outside companies access to their high-quality phone lines.) The effort was poor at best, with the uninsulated telegraph lines incapable of good audio transmission quality and very susceptible to both atmospheric and man-made electrical interference. In 1925 the management of AT&T decided that WEAF and its network was not compatible with AT&T's goal of providing a phone service, and offered to sell the station to RCA, whose business was set manufacturing. When RCA bought WEAF, it gained rights to rent AT&T's phone lines for network transmission. The NBC Red & Blue Networks Are Born For $1 million, RCA acquired radio station WEAF and a Washington sister-station, WCAP, which it shut down. This transaction accompanied the announcement, in the late summer of 1926, of a new wholly owned division of RCA called The National Broadcasting Company.• Legend has it that the color designations originated from the color of the push-pins early engineers used to designate affiliates of WEAF (red pins) and WJZ (blue pins). A similar two-part/two-color strategy appeared in the recording industry, dividing the market between classical and popular offerings. At various times in the 1930s NBC developed additional color designations, with the NBC White, Gold, and Orange networks operating in various configurations in the South, the Midwest and on the West Coast. NBC became the primary tenant in the brand new Rockefeller Center project in 1936. It would serve as the home of radio operations, some RCA corporate operations, and RCA-owned RKO Pictures. 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 first heard over WSB in Atlanta which used it for its own purposes until one day someone at NBC in New York heard the WSB version of the notes during a 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 ever 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 Pearl Harbor bombing), on D-Day, and other 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. Legend has it that the three musical notes, G-E-C, stand for NBC's then-and-now parent corporation, the General Electric Company. G-E-C is still used on NBC-TV, although NBC's radio branch no longer exists. G-E-C-G is also still used by ABC, which still has a radio network. New Beginnings: The Blue Network Becomes ABC From its creation in 1934, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had studied the monopolistic effects of network broadcasting on the industry, and found that NBC's two networks and their owned-and-operated stations dominated audiences, affiliates and advertising dollars in American radio. In 1939 the FCC ordered RCA to divest itself of one of the two networks; RCA fought the divestiture order, but divided NBC into two companies in 1940 in case an appeal was lost. The Blue network became the "NBC Blue Network, Inc." (now as ABC) and the NBC Red became "NBC Red Network, Inc." With the loss of the final appeal before the United States Supreme Court, RCA sold the NBC Blue Network, Inc. for $8 million to Lifesavers magnate Edward J. Noble in 1943. For his money 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 renamed the company "The Blue Network, Inc." but wanted something more memorable. In 1944 he acquired rights to the name "American Broadcasting Company" from George Storer and the Blue Network became ABC, with the official name change announced on June 15, 1945, after the sale was completed. "NBC Red" reverted to being simply "NBC" when Blue was sold. Defining Radio’s Golden Age In the golden days of network broadcasting, 1930 to 1950, NBC was the pinnacle of American radio. Home to many of the most popular stars and programs, NBC stations were often the most powerful, or occupied clear-channel frequencies so that they were heard nation-wide. Such well-known stars as Al Jolson, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Fred Allen called NBC home, as did Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony. NBC also broadcast radio's earliest hit, Amos 'n' Andy, in its original fifteen-minute serial format that set the standard for just about all serialised programming in the first radio era, whether for comedies or soap operas. As television became more popular in the 1950s, many NBC radio stars gravitated there. Toscanini made his ten television appearances on NBC between 1948 and 1952. In 1950, the network sanctioned The Big Show, a 90-minute radio variety show that harked back to radio's earliest musical variety style but with sophisticated comedy and dramatic presentations and featuring stage legend Tallulah Bankhead as its host. It aimed to keep classic radio alive as television matured and to challenge CBS's Sunday night lineup —much of which had jumped there from NBC in the late 1940s, including (and especially) Jack Benny. But The Big Shows initial success didn't last despite critics' praises; the show endured only two years, with NBC said to lose a million dollars on the project. NBC Radio's last major programming push, in 1955, was Monitor, a continuous, all-weekend mixture of music, news, interviews and features with a variety of hosts including such well-known television personalities as Dave Garroway, Hugh Downs, Ed McMahon, Joe Garagiola and Gene Rayburn. The potpourri also tried to keep vintage radio alive in featuring segments from Jim and Marian Jordan (in character as Fibber McGee and Molly), Ethel & Albert, and iconoclastic satirist Henry Morgan, among others. Monitor was a success for a number of years, but after the mid-1960s, local stations, especially in larger markets, became increasingly reluctant to break from their established formats to run non-conforming network programming. After Monitor went off the air in early 1975, there was little left of NBC Radio beyond hourly newscasts and news-related features. Later in 1975, NBC launched the NBC News and Information Service, which provided up to 55 minutes of news per hour around the clock to local stations that wanted to adopt an all-news format. The service attracted several dozen subscribers, but not enough to allow NBC to project that it would ever become profitable, and it was discontinued after two years. Near the end of the 1970s, NBC started "The Source," a modestly successful secondary network that provided news and short features to FM rock stations. After their 1986 acquisition of NBC, GE decided that the radio business did not fit their strategic objectives. NBC Radio's network operations were sold to Westwood One, and the NBC-owned stations were sold to various buyers. In 1989, the NBC Radio Network as an independent programming service ceased to exist, becomimg a brand-name for content produced by Westwood One. By the late 1990s NBC-branded newscasts were being produced only on weekday mornings; around 2003 even these were discontinued, and the remaining NBC Radio Network affiliates began to receive CNN Radio-branded newscasts at all hours. At about the same time Westwood One began to distribute a new service called NBC News Radio, consisting of brief news updates read by NBC News and MSNBC anchors and reporters. Television
The 1956 trade with Westinghouse During 1955, NBC announced it would sell its radio and television combination in Cleveland, comprised of WTAM-AM-FM and WNBK television, to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in exchange for Westinghouse's Philadelphia stations, KYW radio and WPTZ-TV. After the deal was approved in February 1956, NBC renamed the Philadelphia stations WRCV-AM-TV, while Westinghouse moved the KYW call letters to Cleveland. However, the ink had barely dried on the deal when Westinghouse complained to the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Justice Department, claiming that NBC had extorted them into agreeing to the deal. It turned out that NBC had threatened to pull its television programming from both WPTZ-TV and WBZ-TV in Boston unless Westinghouse agreed to the swap. Following a thorough investigation which lasted several years, the FCC and the Justice Department ordered the swap reversed without NBC realizing any profit on the deal. NBC regained control of the Cleveland stations on June 19, 1965, renaming them under the WKYC call letters. NBC sold WKYC-AM-FM in 1971, and held onto WKYC-TV until 1991. Childrens programming Children's programming has always 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. Throughout the 1960s until 1992, the bulk of NBC's children's programming were derived from theatrical shorts like Pink Panther and Bugs Bunny, 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), popular stars and franchises like Mr. T., ALF, and a critically-acclaimed version of the original Star Trek, and original live-action series including The Banana Splits, The Bugaloos, Talking With A Giant and H.R. Pufnstuf. In 1989, NBC premiered Saved by the Bell, which originated at The Disney Channel as Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Saved by the Bell 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 and One World. 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 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 Endurance, but has expanded to include some animated series such as Kenny the Shark, Tutenstein, and Time Warp Trio. In 2006, the Discovery Kids deal 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/Big Idea. qubo will include blocks to air on NBC, Telemundo (the Spanish-language network owned by NBC Universal), and ion Media Networks's i channel, as well as a 24/7 digital broadcast kids channel, video on demand services and a branded website. The Discovery Kids on NBC block last aired on September 2nd, 2006. The following Saturday, September 9th, NBC started airing the following qubo programs: "VeggieTales", "Dragon", "VeggieTales Presents: 3-2-1 Penguins! and LarryBoy Adventures", "Babar", "Jane and the Dragon", and "Jacob Two-Two." 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. NBCi From 2001-2002, NBC briefly changed their web address to NBCi.com, in a heavily-advertised attempt to launch an Internet portal and start page. This experiment lasted roughly one season, and failed *, and was reverted to NBC.com. However, the NBCi Web site still exists as a portal for NBC-branded content. Current schedule Returning comedies are in red; new comedies are in pink; returning dramas are in green; new dramas are in blue; reality and game shows are in yellow; news programs are in brown; sports programming is in purple. Scheduled premiere dates are shown in parentheses. All times are Eastern and Pacific (subtract one hour for Central and Mountain time), with the exception of Sunday (see below). * See also: 2006 Broadcast TV Fall Primetime Lineup NBC News NBC News currently has the highest rated evening news program (NBC Nightly News) and the highest rated morning show program (The Today Show). NBC News has an agreement with the British broadcaster, the BBC where the two organizations share news gathering resources. Europe NBC Nightly News is shown on CNBC Europe. NBC 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. 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, but after 11PM Central European Time on weekday evenings, the channel aired The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Saturday Night Live, hence its slogan "Where the Stars Come Out at Night." Most NBC News programs were broadcast on NBC Europe, including Dateline NBC 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 stoped broadcasting to most of Europe. At the same time the network relaunched as a German language computer channel, targeting a young demographic. The main show on the new NBC Europe was called GIGA. in 2005 the channel relaunched once again, this time as a free-to-air channel under the name named "Das Vierte". Controversy In October 2006, NBC reportedly rejected ads for a new film documenting the controversy and censorship over prior Dixie Chicks statements about George W. Bush because "they are disparaging of President Bush" citing a policy of rejecting ads dealing with public controversy. The same ads were accepted by CBS and individual local stations, but were also allegedly rejected by The CW. * See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |