NBC New York - News Operation

News Operation

From the late 1960s through the 1980s, WNBC was involved in a fierce three-way battle with WCBS-TV and WABC-TV for the top spot in the New York television ratings. This continued during a lean period for NBC as a whole. WNBC's hallmark over the years has been strong coverage of breaking stories and a straight news products that also feature light-hearted and/or entertainment elements (i.e. Live at Five and Today in New York). Many of WNBC's personalities have been at the station for over 20 years. Chuck Scarborough has been the station's main anchor since 1974. From 1980 to 2012, he was teamed with Sue Simmons at 11 p.m., and the two were together longer than any anchor team in New York City television history. Senior correspondent Gabe Pressman has been at the station since 1956, except for a seven-year stint (from 1972 to 1979) at WNEW-TV (now WNYW).

WNBC-TV was the first major-market station in the country to have success with a 5 p.m. newscast, adding that program to its Sixth Hour show at 6 p.m. in 1974 and renaming all its local newscasts NewsCenter 4 (Three other NBC owned-and-operated stations in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, also adopted the NewsCenter name). The moniker remained until September 1, 1980, when they were renamed News 4 New York. Shortly before then the 5 p.m. time slot was renamed Live at Five, and the hour was reformatted from a straight news program into a mix of news and celebrity interviews. Live at Five eventually became the most-successful local program in New York City, a feat that resulted in landing the show's cast on the cover of New York magazine.

For most of the time from 1980 to 1990, WNBC-TV used various themes written by Edd Kalehoff. His theme for News 4 New York was based on a synthesized version of the NBC chimes, with a graphics package featuring a lightning bolt striking its logo from 1980 to 1990, a fancy die-cut "4". In 1992, the station began calling itself 4 New York and the campaign song, written by Edd Kalehoff, was quickly adopted as the theme for the newscast. The theme was briefly brought back after the September 11, 2001, attacks. In 1995, after the station rebranded itself as NBC 4 and its newscasts as Newschannel 4, Kalehoff wrote a new theme called "NBC Stations" featuring the NBC chimes, the chime sequence is the musical notes G-E-C. It remained in use for eight years, along with a graphics package using a simple red line for the lower thirds.

The 2003 graphics package was created by Emmy Award-winner Randy Pyburn of Pyburn Films. Pyburn has produced several promotions for the station and the now-defunct Jane's New York specials hosted by former WNBC reporter Jane Hanson. The graphics package was also used on other NBC stations. The music was written by Rampage Music and featured a brassy version of the NBC chimes, and lower thirds featured a shimmering peacock (fellow NBC O&O KNTV adopted the theme in 2007 and currently uses the same variant of LA Groove used by WNBC). In March 2008, concurrent with the restoration of the 4 New York branding, the newscasts began to be called News 4 New York once more.

Many WNBC personalities have appeared, and have also moved up to the NBC network, including: Marv Albert, Len Berman, Chris Cimino, Darlene Rodriguez, Maurice DuBois, Tony Guida, Jim Hartz, Janice Huff, Matt Lauer, Al Roker, Scarborough and Tom Snyder. In the past, Albert, Berman, DuBois, Guida, Roker, Lauer, Scarborough and Snyder have worked at Channel 4 and at NBC at the same time. Huff, Rodriguez and Cimino currently do both. One popular monthly feature is Berman's "Spanning the World", a reel of odd and interesting sports highlights from the past month, including a recorded introduction and closing by legendary NBC staff announcer Don Pardo. This segment airs on Today on a monthly basis.

When Simmons joined the station in early 1980, she was paired with Scarborough on both the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts. However, for most of the time until 2005, WNBC-TV's weeknight anchor rotation had Simmons and another male anchor (including Jack Cafferty, Guida, Lauer, and briefly Scarborough) at 5 p.m.; Scarborough and various anchors (John Hambrick, Pat Harper, and Michele Marsh among them) at 6 p.m.; and Scarborough and Simmons together at 11 p.m. That changed in 2005 as Live at Five anchor Jim Rosenfield jumped back to WCBS-TV, where he had once been the noon and 5 p.m. anchor and took on the role as lead anchor for their 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.

Former reporter Perri Peltz returned to WNBC to co-anchor Live at Five with Simmons, making New York City one of the few large markets with two female anchors on an evening newscast. The move harkened back to three decades earlier, when the station paired Pia Lindström with Melba Tolliver on its 5 p.m. news hour, creating one of the first all-female anchor teams on a major-market American television station. It was short-lived as Simmons and Peltz were both displaced from Live at Five because of changes in the station's early evening news line-up that went into effect on March 12, 2007: David Ushery and Lynda Baquero became co-anchors of a truncated, thirty-minute-long Live at Five broadcast, followed by Peltz with a thirty-minute, soft-news program, News 4 You. Simmons was moved to co-anchor at 6 p.m. with Scarborough. On September 13, 2006, WNBC became the first New York City television station to broadcast its newscasts in high definition. In early May 2007, WNBC brought back its popular campaign song "We're 4 New York", composed by Kalehoff, after nearly six years off air (after the September 11, 2001, attacks).

In early Autumn 2007, this brought additional changes to WNBC's early-evening lineup. On September 10, the station moved the newsmagazine series Extra to 5 p.m., and cancelled Live at Five. News 4 You remained at 5:30 p.m., but was replaced on October 15, 2007 with a traditional newscast, anchored by Simmons and Michael Gargiulo. The 6 p.m. newscast is now anchored by Ushery and Baquero, and New York Nightly News, a new half-hour newscast with Scarborough as sole anchor, debuted at 7 p.m..

Unfortunately, these changes did not result to an increase in WNBC's ratings in the November 2007 sweeps period. The most shocking of WNBC's ratings decrease is their 11 p.m. newscast as it fell to third place, behind WCBS and WABC. WNBC altered their 5 p.m.-6:00 p.m. hour on January 2, 2008, swapping the half-hour news at 5:30 with Extra. On March 9, 2009, with the launch of New York Nonstop on digital subchannel 4.2, New York Nightly News was moved to the subchannel and expanded to one hour, while Extra was moved back to 7 p.m. and the 5 p.m.-6 p.m. hour returned to a full hour of news. Still, WNBC's ratings have struggled: In the March 2009 sweeps period, its newscasts were a distant third in all time slots except weekday mornings.

On May 7, 2008, NBC Universal announced plans for a major restructuring of WNBC's news department. The centerpiece of the restructuring is the creation of a twenty-four-hour all-news channel, which operates on WNBC's second digital subchannel (4.2). Channel 4's current news operations were revamped and melded into the all-news channel, which serve as a "content center" for the station's various local distribution platforms. The digital news channel was launched on March 9, 2009. In the fall of 2008, WNBC started beta-testing a new website which is apparently poised to be one of the major platforms for their content center. On November 17, 2008, WNBC moved its news studio from Studio 6B to 7E and rolled out a new set design, graphics package and theme song written by veteran TV composer Frank Gari. This move comes after months of planning of the new content newsroom with its twenty-four-hour-news digital sub-channel.

On June 16, 2009, WNBC announced that its 5 p.m. newscast would be replaced in September by a one-hour daily lifestyle and entertainment show by LX.TV entitled LX New York. After this change, WNBC will, with only three hours per day of local news, have the shortest airtime devoted to local news of any station owned and operated by a "big 3" network. On July 30, 2009, WNBC introduced a new look to its websites. In the fall of 2009, WNBC began sharing its news helicopter with Fox owned-and-operated WNYW (channel 5) as part of a Local News Service agreement. The SkyFox HD helicopter operated by WNYW when used by WNBC was called "Chopper 4" on-air. This agreement ended in 2012, with WNBC returning to use its own helicopter upon the expiration of the contract. In the summer of 2010, The Debrief with David Ushery began to air on Sunday at noon on WNBC after launching on New York Nonstop; it now airs Sunday mornings at 5:30 a.m.

LX New York was renamed to New York Live on May 26, 2011 after a kick off party for all viewers the evening before; the show still has the same anchors and reporters. The program was set to move to 3 p.m. on September 12, 2011; at that time, WNBC would return to airing a 5 p.m. newscast. However, due to Hurricane Irene, the newscast's start date was moved up to Monday, August 29, 2011, with New York Live moving to 3 p.m. On November 18, 2011, WNBC launched a noon newscast that replaced The Rundown with Russell and Llamas as the anchors.

In December 2011, WNBC struck a news partnership with nonprofit news-reporting organization ProPublica. The organization, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2010, has already had partnerships with several media outlets including USA Today, Reader's Digest, HuffPost, and Businessweek. However, ProPublica's reports shall reach all NBC O&O stations, not just WNBC. This is part of larger efforts for NBCUniversal's television stations to partner with nonprofit news organizations following its acquisition by Comcast.

WNBC relocated from Studio 7E to Studio 3C on April 21, 2012. The studio was used by NBC Nightly News, which now originates from Studio 3B. Channel 4 also updated its graphics and switched to the "L.A. Groove" theme that has been in use by sister station KNBC. On March 7, 2012, WNBC announced that Simmons' contract had not been renewed and she left the station on June 15, 2012. In January 2013, the station expanded its Sunday 11 p.m. newscasts to an hour, possibly to compete with WABC who expanded their late news in January 2012.