NBC at 100: Pat Weaver's Ad Breaks, Tartikoff's Turnaround and Versant

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NBC was founded in May 1926 as a radio network by RCA alongside General Electric and AT&T, and it ran the NBC Red and NBC Blue networks while RCA built the radios people listened on. In 1932 the government forced General Electric to divest RCA and NBC on antitrust grounds, and by 1939 NBC was pioneering commercial television. In the 1950s executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver replaced single-sponsor programs such as The Colgate Comedy Hour with his magazine concept: the network owned the show and sold 30 or 60 second slots to many advertisers, the model still used today. He launched Today in 1952 and in 1954 the franchise that became The Tonight Show, and required a cultural element in each installment, slipping Verdi opera into Your Show of Shows. In 1956 the peacock logo announced programs "in living color" to sell RCA's color television sets.

When Johnny Carson ended weekend reruns, Dick Ebersol and Lorne Michaels filled the gap in 1975 with NBC's Saturday Night, since ABC owned the Saturday Night Live name for a Howard Cosell show. In the 1980s Brandon Tartikoff, head of entertainment at 32, took NBC from last to first with Miami Vice and Knight Rider, leading to the 1990s run of Seinfeld, Friends, ER and Frasier. Jeff Zucker later turned to Fear Factor and The Apprentice with Donald Trump, and NBCi, launched in 1999, folded within a year. Ownership passed from GE in 1986 to NBC Universal in 2004 and Comcast by 2013, and in 2026 Comcast announced cable spinoffs into Versant. Ronan Farrow's reporting described harassment, NDAs and pressure from Harvey Weinstein; Matt Lauer was fired, NBC cut ties with Trump in 2015, and 2019 reports said it paid a firm to lobby Wikipedia edits.

• Tartikoff's two-word memo "MTV cops" is credited with launching Miami Vice.
• Knight Rider's talking car was pitched to carry dialogue for David Hasselhoff.
• Tartikoff rejected Michael J. Fox for Family Ties, saying his face would never sell lunchboxes; Fox later mailed him a lunchbox with his face on it.
• Zucker supersized hit sitcoms to run 10 minutes past the half hour so viewers would miss the start of rival shows.
• The 2015 split with Trump included the Miss Universe pageant, which NBC co-owned.