NBC News

Radio Origins

The formation of NBC was formally announced by its then owner, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in September 1926 as the first national radio network in the country. By early 1927, NBC was operating two “chains” or networks of stations, dubbed Red and Blue. Each covered most of the country by contracting with independent stations to act as local affiliates. It took years for programming to fill much of the day and early evening. Much of the network's eventual public affairs programming aired on the Blue network and lacked advertiser support. But news was not initially a part of NBC's programming strategy, which developed only slowly.

Honors for the first daily network newscast belong to journalist and adventurer Floyd Gibbons (1887–1939), whose The Headline Hunter half-hour program began on NBC in 1929 on a sustaining (no advertising support) basis, then moved to six nights a week in a 15-minute format sponsored by General Electric. Lowell Thomas and the News began on September 29, 1930, with NBC carrying it in the East, and CBS in the West (it soon reverted to NBC exclusively until 1947). The newscast by Thomas (1892–1981) would become one of the longest running radio programs, lasting into the 1970s on CBS.

A. A. “Abe” Schecter (1907–89) brought his print journalism background to NBC in 1932, first as a publicity agent, and starting in 1938 he directed the nascent news operation until departing in 1941. Under him, NBC News began to develop, though at first it was heavily reliant on feature stories that often were more entertainment than news. Virtually all of the broadcasts from overseas, carried by shortwave, were of educational or cultural interest rather than breaking news. There were no network foreign correspondents.

One early NBC hire was Max Jordan (1895–1977), who joined NBC part-time in 1931, serving as the network's representative in Europe, and becoming a full-time employee in 1934. Born in Germany, Jordan used his language abilities and widespread contacts to provide on-the-spot coverage of Germany's merger with Austria in 1936, and the Munich Crisis two years later. At 7:45 on the evening of September 29, 1938, NBC interrupted regular programming on its two networks, and Jordan provided the first report of the agreement between German, Britain, and France that dismembered Czechoslovakia. Other NBC reporters or stringers broke the early war news of the December 1939 sinking of the German battleship Graf Spee off Montevideo and the May 1940 German invasion of the Netherlands.

With growing military tension in Europe and in the Pacific, radio commentators came into their own. Listeners could tune to NBC to hear Hans von Kaltenborn (1878–1965) offering commentary five nights a week in prime time as of early 1939, sponsored by Pure Oil, or the conservative Upton Close (1894–1960), who broadcast from San Francisco during the early 1940s. At the end of the war, Max Jordan again achieved a major scoop when on the afternoon of August 14, 1945, he broadcast the first word that the Japanese had accepted the Allied surrender terms. The news was unofficial and would not be confirmed for three hours, but NBC's Jordan aired the first announcement. He went on to head the network's religious programming before becoming a Catholic monk in his final years.

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