NBC Nightly News

NBC Nightly News is the flagship evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from Studio 3C at 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 are dubbed NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Weekend editions of the show are anchored by John Seigenthaler and are titled "NBC Nightly News with John Seigenthaler." The program succeeded the Huntley-Brinkley Report upon the retirement of Chet Huntley in 1970. At first, a triumvirate of anchors, John Chancellor, Frank McGee, and David Brinkley presented the news on a rotating basis. McGee left several months after the show began to anchor the morning news program NBC Today Show. Chancellor continued on as sole anchor until June 1976, when the rotating anchor experiment was reinstated, with Chancellor reporting from the NBC News headquarters in New York City with Brinkley reporting from Washington. The anchor rotation was continued until October 1979 with Chancellor and Brinkley; but pressure from the NBC sales department ended it. 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 many years. Tom Brokaw became solo anchor of NBC Nightly News on September 5, 1983, after NBC experimented with a dual-anchor program where he was paired with Roger Mudd. His 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 and hobbled by corporate cost cutting, slid to third place in the viewership wars. In May 2002, Brokaw announced his retirement as anchor of NBC Nightly News effective shortly after the presidential election of 2004. Brokaw's last presidential election coverage in 2004, in which the Rockefeller Plaza ice-skating rink was converted into a giant electoral map and cherry-pickers tallied the electoral vote count on the GE Building. His last broadcast was on December 1, 2004. Brian Williams, a frequent fill-in for Brokaw, succeeded as the newscast's permanent anchor the following day, December 2, 2004. The program has continued to hold onto its number one spot in the ratings, averaging nearly 8 million viewers weekly according to Nielsen Media research documented in USA Today's website. A blog, The Daily Nightly, has been started to add insight into how the broadcast is put together. In addition, the full weekday broadcast is available to view at the same night after 10 p.m. Eastern time. Williams was praised for his reporting during and after the 2005 Hurricane season. Campbell Brown, and Ann Curry often substitute for Brian when he is on holiday or unavailable.
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