NBC is a mainstream radio and television network company in the United States, headquartered in Rockefeller Center, New York, with a peacock as its logo. It is currently part of the media conglomerate NBC Universal and provides programs to more than 200 affiliated American television stations.

NBC was established in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and founded by David Sarnoff in New York in November 1926. In 1986, its parent company, RCA, was acquired by General Electric Corp. (GE, General Electric Corp.), and it was also purchased. In January 2011, NBC was acquired by Comcast (English: Comcast Corporation, transliteration: Comcast, (NASDAQ: CMCSA)), a cable TV, broadband network and IP phone service provider and content provider. For nearly 20 years, its president and CEO has been Bob Wright.

After NBC merged with the entertainment division of France's Vivendi Universal in 2004, it changed its original "National Broadcasting Company, Inc." to "NBC Universal" (NBC Universal, Inc.), but NBC still uses its full name "National Broadcasting Corporation" in some programs. (ABC also occasionally uses its full name "American Broadcasting Company" in some of its programs and publications)

NBC produces a large number of news, sports entertainment programs and TV series every year, among which TV series such as "The Art of the Heart", "The House of Six" (also translated as "Friends"), "Will & Grace" and "Grimm" are familiar to Chinese audiences.

In addition, NBC participated in investing in Hong Kong Wireless Television (TVB) in the mid-1960s, but held a very small shareholding and later withdrew.

Broadcasting

NBC and its 24 affiliated stations began broadcasting on November 15, 1926, under the control of the Radio Corporation of America, which was established in 1919. ,RCA) management. RCA is controlled by four companies: General Electric Company (GE), the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the United Fruit Company and AT&T.

Early radio stations: WEAF and WJZ

In the early expansion of broadcasting, RCA acquired New York radio station WEAF from AT&T, and one of RCA's shareholders, Westinghouse Electronics, established There was a similarly positioned pioneer radio station in the city, WJZ, which was transferred from Westinghouse to RCA in 1923 and moved to New York.

WEAF was originally an experimental institution of AT&T's Western Electric Company, responsible for manufacturing receiving equipment and antennas; at the same time, AT&T's Bell Company was researching technologies that could achieve higher quality audio transmission, so AT&T Radio WEAF was opened in 1922 as a research and development center. WEAF has a fixed program broadcast schedule, and also launches some new programs in response to the needs of advertising and sponsors. WEAF quickly became successful and networked with other stations to broadcast sports and political news. One of WEAF's major innovations was the formation of a model called "chain broadcasting" (today's "Broadcast Collaboration Network"), combining Outlet's WJAR radio station in Rhode Island and AT&T's Washington radio station WCAP radio stations are closely connected.

RCA also noticed the advantages brought by this model (each station shares programs), so in 1923, RCA opened the WRC station in Washington, transmitting programs among various cities through low-quality means (AT&T At that time, it had a monopoly on high-quality transmission modes)

In 1925, AT&T's management believed that WEAF radio (and its network) was inconsistent with the company's purpose of telephone service, so they agreed to sell WEAF radio to RCA. After purchasing WEAF, RCA leased the AT&T telephone network to transmit its programs.

The birth of NBC Red & Blue Networks

RCA purchased WEAF and another Washington sister station, WCAP, for $1 million, and then closed WCAP Radio. Then, in the late summer of 1926, The National Broadcasting Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of RCA, was formed. In fact, this company is composed of 50% investment by RCA, 30% investment by General Electric and 20% by Westinghouse Electronics. The company's official founding date is November 15, 1926. As the flagship station of the two previous broadcast networks, WEAF and RCA's WJZ co-existed in the newly formed NBC for about a year. In 1927, NBC formally determined their marketing strategy: the NBC Red Network broadcast entertainment and music programs, mainly from WEAF New York radio (the frequency was 660KHZ in 1928); the NBC Blue Network ) broadcast news and cultural programs, mainly from WJZ New York radio station (frequency 760hHZ in 1928, 770KHZ in 1941). It is said that this color division comes from the way engineers used to distinguish WEAF and WJZ radio members in the early years. WEAF was identified with a red pushpin and WJZ used blue. A similar two-color division is used in the recording industry to distinguish classical and pop records. In 1930, NBC developed a variety of networks named after colors, such as the NBC White Network in the South, the NBC Gold Network in the Midwest, and the NBC Orange on the West Coast. Network).

NBC became the anchor tenant of the newly built Rockefeller Center in 1936.

NBC scale

The famous NBC three-tone scale was finally born after many years of development. The three-note scale was originally created by Atlanta's WSB station for their own show. Someone at NBC heard it during a Georgia Tech football game one day and immediately asked permission to use it on national stations. NBC began using this three-tone scale in 1931, and it was the first "sound trademark" ever registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A variation of the scale that repeats the first note after three bells - also known as the "NBC four-tone scale" was often used during wartime (especially after Pearl Harbor), during the Allied invasion of Western Europe (D-Day). ) and other disasters.

The NBC Blue Network evolved into the American Broadcasting Company (ABC)

After the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934, it believed that NBC’s two major networks and their Controlled radio stations monopolize the U.S. radio market. The Federal Telecommunications Commission sued RCA in 1939, arguing that it should divest itself of one of its networks. RCA won the lawsuit, but still split NBC into two companies in 1940 to avoid losing an appeal to the Federal Telecommunications Commission. NBC Blue Network became "NBC Blue Network, Inc." (today's American Broadcasting Company, ABC), and NBC Red Network became "NBC Red Network, Inc. )".

After losing in the U.S. Supreme Court decision, RCA sold the NBC Blue Network to insurance giant Edward J. Noble in 1943 for $8 million. Noble acquired two and a half stations (WJZ in Newark/New York City, KGO in San Francisco and WENR in Chicago, which shared the frequency with Rancher) and 60 member stations. Noble changed the company's name to "The Blue Network, Inc." but also wanted a name that was easier to remember. In 1944, he obtained the rights to use the name "American Broadcasting Company" from George Storer, and the Blue Network became ABC. The official announcement of the name change was on June 15, 1945. After the blue network was sold, NBC's red network became simply "NBC."

The Golden Age of Broadcasting

In the golden age of network broadcasting, from 1930 to 1950, NBC represented the highest peak of American broadcasting. NBC is also the home of many famous singers (such as Al Jolson, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Fred Allen and Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra) and programs. Before television became popular in the 1950s, NBC had been an important home for American radio stars. NBC's last major programming boom occurred in 1955 with "Monitor." This is a program that is broadcast continuously on weekends, hosted by many famous program hosts (such as Dave Garroway, Hugh Downs, Ed McMahon, Joe Garagiola and Gene Rayburn), including music, news, interviews and other program content. The success of the "monitor" program continued for many years until the mid-1960s, when some local stations (particularly those in important geographical areas) tended to break away from network broadcasting. In early 1975, the "Listen" program ended its broadcast, and at this time NBC's value was only its hourly news and some related background reports.

At the end of 1975, NBC launched the "NBC News and Information Service" to provide up to 55 minutes of news per hour for some local stations that wanted to broadcast pure news frequencies. The service attracted about a dozen local stations, but it was not enough to make NBC profitable, and the service was discontinued after two years. In the late 1970s, NBC launched "The Source" network, a relatively successful broadcast network that provided news and short reports to FM rock stations.

After General Electric acquired NBC in 1986, it believed that its broadcast business was not in line with their long-term development, so it sold the operations of its broadcast network to Westwood One Company (now the largest broadcast network in the United States, serving as CBS The company's broadcast subsidiary), while some of NBC's radio stations were also sold separately. The NBC Radio Network ceased to exist as a name for a radio programming service in 1989, remaining only as a trademark of Westwood One.

TV

For a long time, NBC was just a way for David Sarnoff to sell appliances. Sarnoff and RCA developed the broadcasting regulations promulgated by the Federal Telecommunications Commission in 1938 and introduced television to the public at the 1939-1940 World's Fair in New York.