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Weekend Today

Weekend editions of Today, an American morning news and talk program that airs daily on NBC, began with the launch of the Sunday edition of the program on September 20, 1987. After NBC expanded Today to seven days a week in the 1990s, the name Weekend Today was adapted primarily for promotional purposes.

The Saturday edition of the program, titled Saturday Today since March 2022, is broadcast live in alignment with the weekday editions of Today from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Since 2017, however, the Saturday broadcast is frequently shortened by a half-hour (sometimes even shorter/preempted due to earlier sports start times) to accommodate Premier League soccer matches or other sports events that start before 1:00 p.m. ET (and does not air at all during the weekend of golf's U.S. Open), allowing NBC stations to also accommodate programs from The More You Know block displaced from their normal timeslots to fulfill educational content quotas. Some affiliates outside the Eastern Time Zone air it live, and others on tape-delay. Thus, it may air on some NBC stations as early as 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. local time.

Meanwhile, the Sunday edition, titled Sunday Today with Willie Geist since April 17, 2016, airs from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. ET. Some NBC affiliates choose to air local morning newscasts before and after both Saturday and Sunday editions of the program.

The Sunday edition of Today (titled Sunday Today) premiered on September 20, 1987, and was originally hosted by Maria Shriver and Boyd Matson, with Garrick Utley as news anchor and Al Roker as weather anchor. The program was broadcast from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., followed by Meet the Press. It was the second morning news program to run weekend editions, CBS previously attempted a six-day-a-week morning news program under the "Morning" banner in 1979, the only surviving remnant of which is the newsmagazine CBS News Sunday Morning.

Utley replaced Matson as co-anchor on March 20, 1988. Shriver, weather anchor Al Roker and sports anchor Bill Macatee continued with the program. In 1989, production of Sunday Today moved to Washington, D.C. to allow Utley to also serve as moderator of Meet the Press.

On November 12, 1989, a special edition of Sunday Today featured Utley in Berlin covering the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier that week, with Shriver hosting from Burbank, California and Roker in New York City. At the end of the broadcast, Utley mentioned that Shriver was leaving the show to go on maternity leave. NBC News national correspondent (and eventual co-anchor of the weekday edition of Today) Katie Couric, Deborah Norville, Faith Daniels and Mary Alice Williams became substitute anchors during Shriver's absence.

Maria Shriver returned to Sunday Today from maternity leave on April 8, 1990, and announced that she would be leaving after that day's broadcast. Couric was named interim co-anchor until Mary Alice Williams became the new co-anchor later that month. Production of the Sunday program returned to New York City when Utley left Meet the Press in 1991.

The Today franchise expanded to seven days a week with the premiere of the program's Saturday edition on August 1, 1992, coinciding with NBC's replacement of its Saturday morning children's programming block with the three-hour-long TNBC block. The weekend editions were initially titled Saturday Today or Sunday Today, as applicable, in order to distinguish them from the weekday program. Beginning in the late 1990s, all editions of the program were officially titled Today, although Weekend Today was still sometimes used for promotional purposes. In September 1999, when Ford left for ABC News, John Seigenthaler along with various NBC News reporters rotated alongside Soledad O'Brien. The Sunday program was once again titled "Sunday Today" when Willie Geist became solo anchor in 2016.

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