History of NBC

• National Broadcasting Company
• An American commercial broadcast television and radio network
• Headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center
• Additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago+
• Sometimes referred to as "Peacock Network", due to its stylized peacock logo, originally created for its color broadcasts
• RCA and David Sarnoff captured the spotlight by introducing all-electronic television to the public in 1939–40 at New York World's Fair
• The day after the fair, May 1, four models of RCA television sets went on sale to the general public in various New York City department stores
• The first NBC Television "network" program was broadcasted on January 12, 1940 when a play entitled "Meet The Wife" was televised
• Most ambitious NBC television "network" program of pre-war era was the telecasting of the Republican National Convention in summer of 1940
• Television set sales in New York in the 1939–1940 period were disappointing, due to the high cost of the sets, and the lack of regular programming
• Most sets were sold to bars, hotels and other public places, where the public viewed sporting and news events
• Television's experimental period ended, the FCC allowed full commercial telecasting to begin on July 1, 1941
• Although commercial telecasting began on July 1, 1941, there had been experimental, non-paid advertising on televisions as far back as 1930
• NBC's earliest non-paid, television commercials may have been seen during the first Major League Baseball game ever telecast, between Brooklyn and Cincinnati, on August 26, 1939 over W2XBS
• The post-war 1940s and early 1950s brought success for NBC. Television's first big star, Milton Berle, whose Texaco Star Theatre began in June 1948, drew the first large audiences to NBC Television
• RCA convinced the FCC to approve its color system in December 1953
• NBC began with some shows in 1954, and that summer broadcasted its first program to air all episodes in color, The Marriage
• By 1963, much of NBC's prime time schedule was in color
• In the fall of 1965, NBC achieved 95% color programming in prime time
• Rival networks followed more slowly, committing to 100% prime-time color programming in the 1966–67 season. Days of our Lives was the first soap opera to premiere in color
• The late 1960s brought big changes in the programming practices of the major television networks