Online Encyclopedia
NBC
- This article is about the U.S. broadcaster. For alternate uses see NBC (disambiguation)
The National Broadcasting Company, now formally called NBC Universal Television or NBC, is an American television network based in New York's Rockefeller Center. As of May 2004, it became part of NBC Universal.
NBC supplies programming to more than 200 American affiliated stations. It owns and operates stations in Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Washington, DC, San Jose, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Diego, Hartford, Connecticut, Raleigh, North Carolina, Columbus, Ohio, Birmingham, Alabama, and Providence, Rhode Island.
The network was acquired by the General Electric Company in 1986 with the purchase of NBC's parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
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History
NBC was founded in 1926 as a radio network, by RCA, GE, and Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The network started with 24 stations on November 15.
The National Broadcasting Company was created when RCA purchased radio stations WEAF-New York, WCAP-Washington, D.C., and the radio programming network from American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) in 1926 and merged those assets with its own WJZ New York, WRC Washington and radio programming network. The WEAF stations and network would become known as the NBC Red network; the WJZ stations and network would be dubbed the NBC Blue network, which later became the American Broadcasting Company.
The WEAF network was created by AT&T to serve as a research and development for technologies involved with transmitting audio over wire and radio. AT&T's Western Electric division manufactured radio transmitters and antennas and needed a real-world environment to test their design and ability to transmit audio. 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. These effort came together to create radio station WEAF in New York City.
With a radio station broadcasting to the public, programming was needed. WEAF put together a regular schedule of programs of all types, and created some of the first broadcasts to encorporate commercial endorsements or sponsorships by commercial entities. The station met with great success, and with the opening of radio stations across the United States many stations wished to share programming. WEAF's first efforts in what would become known first as "chain broadcasting" and later as "networking" tied together The Outlet Company's WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island with AT&T's WEAF and WCAP in Washington, DC (named for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company division of AT&T). With the success of this effort and the good audio quality of AT&T's phone line circuits, the WEAF network became a success.
At the same time, RCA was beginning to realize that sharing programming on stations in different cities also made sense. RCA licensed WRC in Washington, D.C. in 1923 and 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 succeptable to both atmospheric and man-made electrical interference.
In 1925 the management of AT&T decided that WEAF and its network were not compatible with AT&T's goal of providing phone service and began looking to sell the station and its network. AT&T found a ready buyer in RCA, whose primary business was radio broadcasting and manufacturing, the a deal was struck where RCA would buy WEAF and gain the rights to rent AT&T's phone lines to transmit radio programs between cities.
In 1926, RCA bought WEAF, closed WCAP, created the wholly-owned division called the National Broadcasting Company and operated the New York stations and the two network efforts side by side for about a year. In 1927 NBC formally created two radio networks, the NBC Red Network with WEAF as its originating station distributing mostly entertainment and music programming; and the NBC Blue Network with WJZ as its originating station and concentrating on news and cultural programming.
Legend has it that the color designations originated from the color of the push pins the engineers at AT&T used to designate the affiliates of WEAF (red push pins) and RCA's WJZ (blue push pins). At various times in the 1930s there were several other color designations, with the NBC White, Gold and Orange networks operating in various configuration of the west coast.
The famous 3-note chimes of NBC came about after several years of trying different musical note combinations. The three note combination (G-E-C; not related at all to RCA's original stockholder General Electric) came from 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 3 notes in 1933, and it was the first ever audio trademark to be accepted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. An alternate jingle was also used that went E-G-C-C, known as "the fourth chime" and used during wartime (especially in the wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing) and other disasters.
NBC became the primary tenant in the brand new Rockefeller Center project in 1936. It would serve to consolidate radio operations, some RCA corporate operations, and the home of the flagship theatres of RCA-owned RKO Radio Pictures in the Radio City Music Hall of the RKO Roxie theatre (since torn down).
From its creation in 1934, the Federal Communications Commission had been studying the monopolistic effects of chain broadcasting (what we now call "networking") on the radio industry, and found that the NBC Red and Blue networks and their owned-and-operated radio stations owned by NBC controlled the majority of radio audiences, radio affiliates and advertising dollars in the American radio industry. In 1939 the FCC ordered RCA to divest itself of one of the two NBC networks and accompanying owned-and-operated stations. RCA fought the divestiture order, but divided NBC into two companies in 1940 in case the appeals were lost. The NBC Blue network became the "NBC Blue Network, Inc." and the NBC Red Network becoming the "NBC Red Network, Inc."
With the loss of the final appeal before the United States Supreme Court, RCA sold the NBC Blue Network, Inc. to Lifesavers magnate Edward J. Noble in 1943. He renamed the company "The Blue Network, Inc." but quickly realized that the name was not appropriate for a major radio network. After acquiring the rights to the name "the American Broadcasting Company" from broadcaster George Storer in 1946, the Blue Network, Inc. become the American Broadcasting Company. The NBC Red Network was renamed the NBC Radio Network after the Blue network was sold.
Since GE's acquisition of RCA, NBC has been owned by General Electric. The NBC Radio Network was sold by General Electric in 1988 to Westwood One. While the chimes and an hourly newscast still appear on radio at certain times on weekdays, the NBC Radio Network as a programming service ceased to exist in 1989 and simply became a marketing brand name for programming produced by Westwood One.
For many years NBC was closely identified with founder David Sarnoff, who viewed it as a means for selling entertainment, and consumer electronics.
While CBS has received more attention from historians discussing broadcast journalism history, NBC's news operation was no slouch. From 1956 through 1970, the television broadcast team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley consistently exceeded the viewership levels attained by CBS News and its main anchor Walter Cronkite. The dominance ended when Huntley retired, to die a year later from cancer. The loss of Huntley, along with a reluctance of RCA to fund NBC News at the level CBS was funding CBS News, left NBC News in the doldrums. NBC News did not recover viewership levels until after GE acquired RCA.
The network transitioned from black-and-white programming to color before any other network in the United States. Periodic color transmissions began in the 1950s and the first show to air all episodes in color, Bonanza, began in the fall of 1959. By 1963, most of the schedule was in color, a feat that would not be accomplished until 1965 for CBS and 1966 for ABC.
Evolution of the NBC logo
In 1943, four years after inaugurating television service, NBC got its first official logo, a microphone surrounded by lightning bolts, a modification of an existing logo used by the NBC radio network. (Lightning bolts were also part of corporate parent RCA's logo).
In 1954, on New Year's Day, to coincide with the start of broadcasting in color, a stylized xylophone and mallet was introduced, accompanied by the three-tone "bing-bong-bing" chimes, first heard on NBC radio in 1927. The tones are the notes "G," "E," and "C." A MIDI of this tune can be heard here.
In 1956 an abstraction of an eleven-feathered peacock to indicate richness in color was adopted, due to the increase in color programming. NBC's first color broadcasts showed only a still frame of the colorful peacock, but in 1957 on Your Hit Parade the peacock was animated, and thereafter appeared at the beginning of every NBC color broadcast until a revamped animation appeared in the 1960s. On April 16, 1962, on the Laramie series, a second version of the Peacock was introduced in which the bird fanned its bright plumage against a kaleidoscopic color background.
Beginning in 1959, an animated logo joined the Peacock, appearing at the end of broadcasts. Beginning with N, each letter would grow from the other, forming a stacked typographic logo ending with C, forming the base. This would be known as the Snake.
On New Year's Day, 1976, the time had come to update NBC's visual identity, and a stylized N was introduced, consisting of two trapezoids. The design was bold, bright and contemporary. NBC was briefly sued by the Nebraska ETV Network, as it was using a similar logo.
The Peacock, still with eleven feathers, returned in the fall of 1979, married with the N, to create a design called "the Proud N". The Peacock was simplified in keeping with the letter's pared-down design. Although all eleven feathers were intact, the teardrop tips were gone, the feet were gone and the Peacock's body became a simple triangular shape.
On May 8, 1986, NBC broadcasted its 60th Anniversary Special. At the very end, every NBC star (past and present) stood on stage to introduce a new logo for America. The arranged marriage of "N" and Peacock ended, and "The Bird" returned to its place as NBC's symbol. The peacock was now flipped to the right to suggest it was forward looking, not back. With its six feathers representing the network's six divisions (News, Sports, Entertainment, Stations, Network and Operations), this Peacock remains one of the world's most recognized logos.
NBC News
NBC News got the first interview from 2 Russian presidents (Putin, Gorbachev) and was the only American eye-witness of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
In the 2nd Iraq war, NBC News and main anchor Tom Brokaw covered the war like no other television company, in part owing to the willingness of GE to fund it. NBC News correspondent David Bloom pushed through the GE and US Department of Defense bureaucracies permission to construct a mobile news vehicle that could transmit live video broadcasts from the battlefield. The "Bloommobile" brought satellite images and videos (clear, detailed) into homes of 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.
NBC News also benefits from the GE corporate structure by having the ability to take reports from its cable counterpart MSNBC.
Related articles
- List of programs broadcast by NBC
- List of United States television networks
- List of NBC affiliates
- List of NBC slogans
External links
- NBC Television official site
- Museum of Broadcast Communications - NBC History
- Screen captures of NBC logos past and present, as well as footage of vintage promos