NBC News

NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. It operates under the NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of NBCUniversal, which itself is a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations report to the president of NBC News, Rebecca Blumenstein. The NBCUniversal News Group also comprises the Spanish language Noticias Telemundo and United Kingdom-based Sky News. It formerly included MSNBC, the network's 24-hour liberal cable news channel, as well as business and consumer news channels CNBC and CNBC World before their split in 2025 as part of a larger split from NBCUniversal into Versant.

NBC News aired the first regularly scheduled news program in American broadcast television history on February 21, 1940. The group's broadcasts are produced and aired from 30 Rockefeller Plaza, NBCUl's headquarters in New York City. The division presides over the flagship evening newscast, NBC Nightly News; the world's first of its genre morning television program, Today; and the longest-running American television series, Meet the Press, a Sunday morning newsmaker interview program. NBC News also offers 70 years of rare historic footage from the NBCUniversal Archives online. NBC News operates NBCNews.com, the division's official website.

The first regularly scheduled American television newscast in history was made by NBC News on February 21, 1940, anchored by Lowell Thomas (1892–1981), and airing weeknights at 6:45 P.M. In June 1940, NBC, through its flagship station in New York City, W2XBS (renamed commercial WNBT in 1941, now WNBC) operating on channel one, televised 30.25 hours of coverage of the Republican National Convention live and direct from Philadelphia. The station used a series of relays from Philadelphia to New York, for rebroadcast on W2XB in Schenectady (now WRGB), making this among the first "network" programs of NBC Television. Due to wartime and technical restrictions, there were no live telecasts of the 1944 conventions, although films of the events were reportedly shown over WNBT the next day.

About this time, there were irregularly scheduled, quasi-network newscasts originating from NBC's WNBT in New York City (WNBC) and reportedly fed to WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia and WRGB in Schenectady, NY. For example, Esso sponsored news features as well as The War As It Happens in the final days of World War II, another irregularly scheduled NBC television newsreel program that was also seen in New York, Philadelphia, and Schenectady on the relatively few (roughly 5000) television sets which existed at the time. After the war, NBC Television Newsreel aired filmed news highlights with narration. Later in 1948, when sponsored by Camel Cigarettes, NBC Television Newsreel was renamed Camel Newsreel Theatre and then, when John Cameron Swayze was added as an on-camera anchor in 1949, the program was renamed Camel News Caravan.

In 1948, NBC teamed up with Life magazine to provide election night coverage of President Harry S. Truman's surprising victory over New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. The television audience was small, but NBC's share in New York was double that of any other outlet. The following year, the Camel News Caravan, anchored by Swayze, debuted on NBC. Lacking the graphics and technology of later years, it contained many elements of modern newscasts. NBC hired its own film crews and in the program's early years, it dominated one of its competitors, CBS, which did not hire its own film crews until 1953. In 1950, David Brinkley began serving as the program's Washington correspondent, but attracted little attention until paired with Chet Huntley in 1956. In 1955, the Camel News Caravan fell behind CBS' Douglas Edwards with the News, and Swayze lost the already tepid support of NBC executives. The following year, NBC replaced the program with the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Beginning in 1951, NBC News was managed by Director of News Bill McAndrew, who reported to Vice President of News and Public Affairs J. Davidson Taylor.

Television assumed an increasingly prominent role in American family life in the late 1950s, and NBC News was called television's "champion of news coverage." NBC president Robert Kintner provided the news division with ample amounts of both financial resources and air time. In 1956, the network paired anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and the two became celebrities, supported by reporters including John Chancellor, Frank McGee, Edwin Newman, Sander Vanocur, Nancy Dickerson, Tom Pettit, and Ray Scherer.

Created by Producer Reuven Frank, NBC's The Huntley–Brinkley Report had its debut on October 29, 1956. During much of its 14-year run, it exceeded the viewership levels of its CBS News competition, anchored initially by Douglas Edwards and, beginning in April 1962, Walter Cronkite.