NBC Talknet - History

History

Prior to the late 1970s, AM radio was still largely dominated by all-music formats. Many individual radio stations had introduced some talk programming to their lineups, but it was almost universally locally produced. The concept of national talk radio, broadcast over a radio network, had not been tried. In 1978, Larry King began broadcasting six hours of talk programming nightly on the Mutual Broadcasting System. His success in the field proved to radio programmers that there was an audience for both late-night talk programming and national talk radio programming. Both NBC and ABC were quick to enter the late-night talk radio market. ABC launched a nightly block of programming called TalkRadio and NBC launched Talknet.