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The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial terrestrial radio and television network owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles (at 10 Universal City Plaza), Chicago (at the NBC Tower), and Philadelphia (at the Comcast Technology Center). NBC is one of the Big Three television networks, and is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting; it became the network's official emblem in 1979.

Founded in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), NBC is the oldest major broadcast network in the United States. At that time, the parent company of RCA was General Electric (GE). In 1932, GE was forced to sell RCA and NBC as a result of antitrust charges. In 1986, control of NBC passed back to General Electric (GE) through its $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. GE immediately began to liquidate RCA's various divisions, but retained NBC. After the acquisition by GE, Bob Wright became chief executive officer of NBC; he would remain in that position until his retirement in 2007, when he was succeeded by Jeff Zucker.

In 2003, French media company Vivendi merged its entertainment assets with GE, forming NBC Universal. Comcast purchased a controlling interest in the company in 2011, and acquired General Electric's remaining stake in 2013. Following the Comcast merger, Zucker left NBCUniversal and was replaced as CEO by Comcast executive Steve Burke.

NBC has twelve owned-and-operated stations and nearly 223 affiliates throughout the United States and its territories, some of which are also available in Canada and/or Mexico via pay-television providers or in border areas over-the-air; NBC also maintains brand licensing agreements for international channels in South Korea and Germany.

For many years, NBC was closely identified with David Sarnoff, who used it as a vehicle to sell consumer electronics. RCA and Sarnoff had captured the spotlight by introducing all-electronic television to the public at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair, simultaneously initiating a regular schedule of programs on the NBC-RCA television station in New York City. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared at the fair before the NBC camera, becoming the first U.S. president to appear on television on April 30, 1939 (an actual, off-the-monitor photograph of the FDR telecast is available at the David Sarnoff Library). The broadcast was transmitted by NBC's New York television station W2XBS Channel 1 (later WNBC-TV; now WNBC, channel 4) and was seen by about 1,000 viewers within the station's roughly 40-mile (64 km) coverage area from its transmitter at the Empire State Building.

The following day (May 1), four models of RCA television sets went on sale to the general public in various department stores around New York City, which were promoted in a series of splashy newspaper ads. DuMont Laboratories (and others) had actually offered the first home sets in 1938 in anticipation of NBC's announced April 1939 television launch. Later in 1939, NBC took its cameras to professional football and baseball games in the New York City area, establishing many "firsts" in television broadcasting.

Reportedly, the first NBC Television "network" program was broadcast on January 12, 1940, when a play titled Meet The Wife was originated at the W2XBS studios at Rockefeller Center and rebroadcast by W2XB/W2XAF (now WRGB) in Schenectady, which received the New York station directly off-air from a tower atop a mountain and relayed the live signal to the Capital District. About this time, occasional special events were also broadcast in Philadelphia (over W3XE, later called WPTZ, now known as KYW-TV) as well as Schenectady. The most ambitious NBC television "network" program of the pre-war era was the telecast of the Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia in the summer of 1940, which was fed live to the New York City and Schenectady stations. However, despite major promotion by RCA, television sales in New York from 1939 to 1942 were disappointing, primarily due to the high cost of the sets, and the lack of compelling regularly scheduled programming. During this period, less than 8,000 television sets were sold in the New York area, most of which were sold to bars, hotels and other public places, where the general public viewed special sports and news events. One special event was Franklin D. Roosevelt's second and final appearance on live television, when his speech at Madison Square Garden on October 28, 1940, was telecast over W2XBS to receivers in the New York City area.

Television's experimental period ended, as the FCC allowed full-fledged commercial television broadcasts to begin on July 1, 1941. NBC station W2XBS in New York City received the first commercial license, adopting the call letters WNBT. The first official, paid television advertisement broadcast by any U.S. station was for watch manufacturer Bulova, which aired that day, just before the start of a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball telecast on WNBT. The ad consisted of test pattern, featuring the newly assigned WNBT call letters, which was modified to resemble a clock – complete with functioning hands – with the Bulova logo (featuring the phrase "Bulova Watch Time") in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern (a photograph of the NBC camera setting up the test pattern-advertisement for that ad can be seen at this page). Among the programs that aired during the first week of WNBT's new, commercial schedule was The Sunoco News, a simulcast of the Sun Oil-sponsored NBC Radio program anchored by Lowell Thomas; amateur boxing at Jamaica Arena; the Eastern Clay Courts tennis championships; programming from the USO; the spelling bee-type game show Words on the Wing; a few feature films; and a one-time-only, test broadcast of the game show Truth or Consequences, sponsored by Lever Brothers.

Prior to the first commercial television broadcasts and paid advertisements on WNBT, non-paid television advertising existed on an experimental basis dating back to 1930. NBC's earliest non-paid television commercials may have been those seen during the first Major League Baseball game ever telecast, between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds, on August 26, 1939 over W2XBS. In order to secure the rights to televise the game, NBC allowed each of the Dodgers' regular radio sponsors at the time to have one commercial during the telecast. The ads were conducted by Dodgers announcer Red Barber: for Ivory Soap, he held up a bar of the product; for Mobilgas he put on a filling station attendant's cap while giving his spiel; and for Wheaties he poured a bowl of the product, added milk and bananas, and took a big spoonful. Limited, commercial programming continued until the U.S. entered World War II. Telecasts were curtailed in the early years of the war, then expanded as NBC began to prepare for full-time service upon the end of the war. Even before the war concluded, a few programs were sent from New York City to affiliated stations in Philadelphia (WPTZ) and Albany/Schenectady (WRGB) on a regular weekly schedule beginning in 1944, the first of which is generally considered to be the pioneering special interest/documentary show The Voice of Firestone Televues, a television offshoot of The Voice of Firestone, a mainstay on NBC radio since 1928, which was transmitted from New York City to Philadelphia and Schenectady on a regular, weekly basis beginning on April 10, 1944. The series is considered to be the NBC television network's first regularly scheduled program.

The NBC television network grew from its initial post-war lineup of four stations. The 1947 World Series featured two New York City area teams (the Yankees and the Dodgers), and television sales boomed locally, since the games were being telecast in the New York market. Additional stations along the East Coast and in the Midwest were connected by coaxial cable through the late 1940s, and in September 1951 the first transcontinental telecasts took place.

While rival CBS broadcast the first color television programs in the United States, their system was incompatible with the millions of black and white sets in use at the time. After a series of limited, incompatible color broadcasts (mostly scheduled during the day), CBS abandoned the system and broadcasts. This opened the door for the RCA compatible color system to be adopted as the U.S. standard. RCA convinced the FCC to approve its color system in December 1953. NBC was ready with color programming within days of the commission's decision. NBC began the transition with a few shows in 1954, and broadcast its first program to air all episodes in color beginning that summer, The Marriage.

During a National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Chicago in 1956, NBC announced that its owned-and-operated station in that market, WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV), had become the first television station in the country to broadcast its programming in color (airing at least six hours of color broadcasts each day). In 1959, NBC premiered a televised version of the radio program The Bell Telephone Hour, which aired in color from its debut; the program would continue on the NBC television network for nine more years until it ended in 1968.

By 1963, much of NBC's prime time schedule was presented in color, although some popular series (such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which premiered in late 1964) were broadcast in black-and-white for their entire first season. In the fall of 1965, NBC was broadcasting 95% of its prime time schedule in color (with the exceptions of I Dream of Jeannie and Convoy), and began billing itself as "The Full Color Network." Without television sets to sell, rival networks followed more slowly, finally committing to an all-color lineup in prime time in the 1966–67 season. Days of Our Lives became the first soap opera to premiere in color, when it debuted in November 1965.

As of 2021, NBC provides 87 hours of regularly scheduled network programming each week. The network provides 22 hours of prime time programming to affiliated stations Monday through Saturdays from 8:00–11:00 p.m. (7:00–10:00 p.m. in all other U.S. time zones) and Sundays from 7:00–11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time (6:00–10:00 p.m. in all other time zones).

Daytime programming is also provided weekdays at 1:00 p.m. in the form of the one-hour weekday soap opera Days of Our Lives (the scheduling of the program varies depending on the station, although it is initially fed to affiliates at 1:00 p.m. Eastern). NBC News programming includes the morning news/interview program Today from 7:00–11:00 a.m. weekdays, 7:00–9:00 on Saturdays and 7:00–8:00 on Sundays; nightly editions of NBC Nightly News (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into the program's time slot), the Sunday political talk show Meet the Press, weekday early-morning news program Early Today and newsmagazine Dateline NBC. Late nights feature the weeknight talk shows The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers, and an overnight replay of Today with Hoda & Jenna. On Saturdays, the LXTV-produced 1st Look and Open House NYC air after Saturday Night Live (replays of the previous week's 1st Look also air on Friday late nights on most stations), with a Meet the Press encore a part of its Sunday overnight schedule.

The network's Saturday morning children's programming time slot is programmed by Litton Entertainment under a time-lease agreement. The three-hour block of programming designed for 14– 16-year-old teenage viewers is under the umbrella branding of The More You Know, based on the network's long-time strand of internally-produced public service announcements of the same name. It premiered on October 8, 2016, giving Litton control of all but Fox's Saturday morning E/I programming among the five major broadcast networks.

Sports programming is also provided weekend afternoons at any time between 12:00 and 6:00 p.m. (9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m., or tape-delayed in the Pacific Time Zone). Due to the unpredictable length of sporting events, NBC will occasionally pre-empt scheduled programs (more common with the weekend editions of NBC Nightly News, and local and syndicated programs carried by its owned-and-operated stations and affiliates). NBC has also held the American broadcasting rights to the Summer Olympic Games since the 1988 games and the rights to the Winter Olympic Games since the 2002 games. Coverage of the Olympics on NBC has included pre-empting regularly scheduled programs during daytime, primetime, and late night.

NBC is currently the home to only one daytime program, the hour-long soap opera Days of Our Lives, which has been broadcast on the network since 1965. Since NBC turned back an hour of its then two-hour daytime schedule to its affiliates as a result of the September 2007 expansion of Today to four hours, the network currently ties with The CW for the fewest daytime programming hours of any major broadcast television network.

NBC holds the broadcast rights to several annual specials and award show telecasts including the Golden Globe Awards and the Emmy Awards (which is rotated across all four major networks each year). Since 1953, NBC has served as the official U.S. broadcaster of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. CBS also carries unauthorized coverage of the Macy's parade as part of The Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS; However, as NBC holds rights to the parade, it has exclusivity over the broadcast of Broadway and music performances appearing in the parade (CBS airs live performances separate from those seen in the parade as a result), and Macy's chose to reroute the parade in 2012 out of the view of CBS' cameras, although it continues to cover the parade. NBC began airing a same-day rebroadcast of the parade telecast in 2009 (replacing its annual Thanksgiving afternoon airing of Miracle on 34th Street). In 2007, NBC acquired the rights to the National Dog Show, which airs following the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade each year. The network also broadcasts several live-action and animated specials during the Christmas holiday season, including the 2014 debuts How Murray Saved Christmas (an animated musical adaptation of the children's book of the same name) and Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas (a stop-motion animated special based on the 2003 live-action film Elf).

NBC has twelve owned-and-operated stations and current and pending affiliation agreements with 223 additional television stations encompassing 50 states, the District of Columbia, six U.S. possessions and two non-U.S. territories (Aruba and Bermuda). The network has a national reach of 88.91% of all households in the United States (or 277,821,345 Americans with at least one television set).

Currently, New Jersey is the only U.S. state where NBC does not have a locally licensed affiliate. New Jersey is served by New York City O&O WNBC-TV and Philadelphia O&O WCAU; New Jersey formerly had an in-state affiliate in Atlantic City-based WMGM-TV, which was affiliated with the network from 1955 to 2014. NBC maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in a few smaller markets, such as Binghamton, New York (WBGH-CD), Jackson, Tennessee (WNBJ-LD) and Juneau, Alaska (KATH-LD), that do not have enough full-power stations to support a standalone affiliate. In some markets, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a co-owned/co-managed full-power television station.

Portions of New Hampshire receive NBC programming via network-owned WBTS-CD, licensed to serve Nashua; while nominally licensed as a low-power class A station, it transmits a full-power signal under a channel share with the WGBH Educational Foundation and its secondary Boston station WGBX-TV from Needham, Massachusetts, and serves as the NBC station for the entire Boston market. Until 2019, NBC operated a low-powered station in Boston, WBTS-LD (now WYCN-LD), which aimed to serve as its station in that market while using a network of additional full-power stations to cover the market in full (including Merrimack, New Hampshire-licensed Telemundo station WNEU, which transmitted WBTS on a second subchannel); NBC purchased the Nashua station (formerly WYCN-CD) in early 2018 after the FCC spectrum auction, and in 2019 relocated WYCN-LD to Providence, Rhode Island to serve as a Telemundo station for that market.

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NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal News Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations report to the president of NBC News, Noah Oppenheim.

NBC News aired the first, regularly scheduled news program in American broadcast television history on February 21, 1940. The group's broadcasts are produced and aired from 30 Rockefeller Center, NBC's headquarters in New York City.

The division presides over America's number-one-rated newscast, NBC Nightly News, and the longest-running television series in American history, Meet The Press, the Sunday morning program of newsmakers interviews. NBC News also offers 70 years of rare historic footage from the NBCUniversal Archives online.

NBC News operates a 24-hour cable news network known as MSNBC, which includes the organization's flagship daytime news operation, MSNBC Live. The cable network shares staff and editorial control with NBC News.

NBC News provides content for the Internet, as well as cable-only news networks CNBC and MSNBC. It produces a twice-daily show called Stay Tuned for Snapchat's Discover platform.

NBC News Channel is a news video and report feed service, similar to a wire service, providing pre-produced international, national and regional stories some with fronting reporters customized for NBC network affiliates. It is based in Charlotte, North Carolina with bureaus in New York City at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Washington, D.C. on North Capital Street NW, and in Los Angeles at the Brokaw News Center on the Universal Studios Hollywood Lot. Its headquarters in Charlotte are connected to the studios of Charlotte NBC affiliate WCNC-TV. NBC News Channel also served as the production base of NBC Nightside and "Canal de Noticias, NBC".

Most of NBC's news television programs use "The Mission" by John Williams as their theme. The composition was first used by NBC in 1985 and was updated in 2004.

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NBC Nightly News (titled as NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt for its weeknight broadcasts since June 22, 2015) is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News, the news division of the NBC television network in the United States. First aired on August 3, 1970, the program is currently the second most watched network newscast in the United States, behind ABC's World News Tonight. NBC Nightly News is produced from Studio 3C at NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City. Select Los Angeles-based editions broadcast from The Brokaw News Center in Universal City, California, or when broadcasting from Washington, D.C., either from the NBC News bureau based at WRC-TV in the Tenleytown neighborhood, or NBC's secondary studio overlooking Capitol Hill.

Since 2015, the broadcast has been anchored by Brian Williams on weeknights, José Díaz-Balart on Saturday and Kate Snow on Sunday. Previous anchors have included John Chancellor, David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw and Lester Holt.

The program is broadcast live over most NBC stations from 6:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time seven days a week; the "Western Edition" of the program occasionally features breaking news and/or updated information on news stories covered during the original telecast for Pacific Time Zone viewers. Its current theme music, "The Mission" (which debuted in 1985) was composed by John Williams.

NBC Nightly News replaced The Huntley–Brinkley Report in August 1970 upon Chet Huntley's retirement. At first, David Brinkley, John Chancellor, and Frank McGee rotated duties as anchors. At least one, usually two, and very rarely all three anchored the program on a given night. Except for the few nights when one of the men solo anchored, each evening's program included one anchor based in New York City and one in Washington, D.C., as had been the case on the Huntley-Brinkley Report. Brinkley's appearances were always from Washington and McGee's were always from New York. Chancellor moved between those two cities depending on his partner for the evening.

In addition to Brinkley as a holdover from the Huntley-Brinkley Report, McGee had earned praise for his anchoring or co-anchoring of space flights, and Chancellor had also earned praise as McGee's co-anchor for the space missions of Apollo 12 and Apollo 13.

With network executives perceiving the instability of this arrangement as a factor in Nightly News losing audience share to the CBS Evening News, NBC discontinued the rotation arrangement, and McGee eventually took over for Hugh Downs as host of Today. Chancellor became the sole anchor of the program on August 9, 1971, with Brinkley providing a three-minute commentary segment, "David Brinkley's Journal," from Washington several times a week.

On February 4, 2015, Williams apologized on the program for having “conflated” on numerous occasions an account that he had been aboard a Chinook helicopter shot down by enemy fire from a rocket-propelled grenade while covering the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he was in fact aboard a helicopter that followed behind it. This came after he received criticism by U.S. soldiers for embellishing the story when a segment from the January 30, 2015 broadcast recounting the incident was posted on the program's Facebook page. The revelation spurred negative press towards Williams, including some asking for him to be fired by NBC News, although Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, stated that “persecuting [Williams] over this mistake will do little to help our veterans and service members”.

Amid that controversy and questions over Williams' claims that made regarding his experiences while reporting from New Orleans on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, including that he contracted dysentery from accidentally ingesting flood water, the news division decided to launch an internal investigation into the matter that would be conducted through its investigative unit. On February 7, 2015, Williams stated in a memo to NBC News staff that he would take himself "off the daily broadcast for the next several days," with Lester Holt substituting for him on the weeknight broadcasts.

On February 10, 2015, Williams was suspended without pay for six months due to the scandal which arose after he came under fire for fabricating a story about his reporting on the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. Williams claimed to have been reporting in Iraq in 2002 when the helicopter he was traveling on was hit by an RPG and he was forced to land. He had told the story several times, including his appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman and on Nightly News itself only a few nights before several war veterans who had been with Williams in 2002 claimed that Williams had not been present at the time of the crash, but showed up about an hour later to report on it. Williams issued an apology, saying he had "misremembered" the story in his head and it had been a genuine accident, but many critics accused Williams of fabricating the story and called for his resignation. Williams later announced that he would be taking some time off because he had become "too much a part of the news." NBC announced that weekend anchor Lester Holt would anchor the program in the interim. Williams returned in August, after his suspension ended.

NBC first offered a Saturday evening newscast in 1961, with Sander Vanocur anchoring the NBC Saturday Night Report. Four years later, NBC correspondents Ray Scherer and Robert MacNeil were partnered at the anchor desk on The Scherer-MacNeil Report on Saturdays, continuing until 1967. At that time, the network replaced it with a second weekend airing of The Frank McGee Report, which had been airing on Sundays for several years by that point. The Saturday edition of the Report ran for about a year and a half.

On January 4, 1969, the Huntley-Brinkley Report was expanded to Saturday evenings, with the main anchors working solo on alternating weeks. When lower-than-expected ratings occurred, the network pulled the pair off Saturdays and assigned others such as McGee and Vanocur to anchor the broadcast. On August 2, 1970, two days after the weekday Huntley-Brinkley broadcast ended, the network expanded its evening newscast to Sundays, which also replaced the Sunday broadcast of The Frank McGee Report. For the first year after the Sunday broadcast began, Chancellor, Brinkley and McGee rotated on the program as they did on weeknights; there were no separate weekend anchors. The Saturday and Sunday broadcasts were respectively titled NBC Saturday Night News and NBC Sunday Night News until sometime in the 1970s, when they adopted the NBC Nightly News name.

When Chancellor became sole anchor of the weeknight editions in August 1971, a separate anchor was named for the weekend editions.

The weekend editions may occasionally be abbreviated or preempted due to NBC Sports telecasts (such as golf tournaments, Notre Dame football games and Thoroughbred Racing tournaments) that overrun into the program's time slot. During NFL Season, the Sunday editions air live in every time zone at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, immediately prior to Football Night in America and NBC Sunday Night Football.

Bill Hanrahan handled the announcing duties for the newscast until his retirement in 1983, as he had done for the predecessor Huntley-Brinkley Report. The next announcer for the program was long-time NBC staff announcer Howard Reig. He retired to Florida in 2005, but a recording he had made before his retirement was used on the program until December 14, 2007. When the show was broadcast on remote or a new substitute anchor was used, Reig recorded a new introduction in a Miami studio. Since 2007, the weekend editions have been voiced by Bill Wolff, who had also worked occasionally on special weekday editions when Reig was unavailable. On December 17, 2007, the weeknight broadcast introduced an opening by Academy Award winning actor/producer Michael Douglas until it was discontinued on June 18, 2015 and was replaced by Wolff.

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Early Today is an American early morning television news program that is broadcast on NBC. The program features general national and international news stories, financial and entertainment news, off-beat stories, national weather forecasts and sports highlights. As of 2017, it is anchored by Frances Rivera and Phillip Mena.

Early Today is the only early morning network newscast on any of the three largest U.S. television networks (NBC, ABC or CBS) that is not produced jointly with an overnight news program (NBC has not aired an overnight newscast since the 1998 cancellation of NBC Nightside, which aired alongside Early Today during the latter program's first few months).

Early Today premiered on September 9, 1999 as a replacement for NBC News at Sunrise, which NBC decided to cancel in April 1999 as part of a major shakeup of the network's daytime and early morning schedules (these changes included the launch of another Today-branded program, the short-lived talk show Later Today, as well as the cancellation of the long-running soap opera Another World). The Early Today title had previously been used for another early morning news program produced by NBC News from 1982 to 1983 (and was replaced by NBC News at Sunrise following its cancellation), which featured the hosts of NBC's Today at the time – Jane Pauley, Bryant Gumbel and Willard Scott.

Originally produced from the former Fort Lee, New Jersey facilities of NBC's sister financial news cable network, CNBC, and focusing on business and financial news (including a modified version of the CNBC Ticker that showed stock prices and weather forecasts for select U.S. cities), the program switched to a general news format in 2004. As part of this reformatting, production of the program was relocated to the Secaucus headquarters of MSNBC. Concurrently, former Saturday Today anchor Amy Robach replaced the program's original anchor Nanette Hansen.

MSNBC's First Look, which airs at 5:00 a.m. Eastern Time, is a repurposed version of the network newscast using the weathercasters and segments. Until 2013, the sports segment was produced from the Los Angeles studios of NBC owned-and-operated station KNBC, using either Fred Roggin or Mario Solis as anchors; the segment was recorded after that station's 11:00 p.m. Pacific Time newscast for later airing and to account for most West Coast sports results, but was aired without any differences on both First Look and Early Today (the segment is now conducted live-to-tape during both programs from the newsroom at NBC Studios). Some segments seen on Early Today are excluded from First Look, mainly the local weather cut-in (which does not appear at all on many NBC stations that broadcast Early Today, showing only a list of forecasts for seven randomly selected U.S. cities) and a local event barker featuring a promotion for an NBC affiliate serving the city where the event is being held, while a small number of stories seen on Early Today may not be seen on First Look.

Some NBC affiliates do not air the entire program, and a purposeful sign-off is made by the show's anchor at the 24-minute mark in order to allow stations to air an early weather segment or start their morning newscast early, while NBC carries a non-essential human interest or light news story to end the telecast for stations that carry the entire program. Since NBC's corporate parent NBCUniversal acquired part-ownership of The Weather Channel in 2008, weather forecasts used on the program incorporate the channel's branding and forecasts, although Early Today uses repurposed graphics systems from the defunct digital multicast weather network NBC Weather Plus, which provided forecasts for the program until it shut down in 2008.

The program had aired live at 4:30 a.m. Eastern Time until March 1, 2010, when the initial broadcast of the show was moved to 4:00 a.m. Eastern to allow stations in the Eastern Time Zone to begin their morning newscasts at 4:30 a.m. with an Early Today lead-out; previously without the new schedule in some cases, the NBC All Night repeat of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon would inexplicably lead into local news with five minutes cut off the former program if the default NBC schedule, in addition to one local half-hour program, was followed by an affiliate in the overnight hours. As of 2019, the show is now offered live as early as 3:00 a.m. Eastern.

As of 2019, the program broadcasts three unique half hour shows at 3:00, 3:30 and 4:00 a.m. Eastern Time and is then tape delayed in a continuous half-hour loop until 8:00 a.m. Eastern (the show produces an additional half hour live at 6:30 a.m). Subsequently on September 11, NBC discontinued same-date reruns of CNBC's Mad Money from its late night schedule in order to accommodate the earlier live broadcast (before that date, Early Today was first broadcast live at 4:00 a.m. ET). As a result, some NBC affiliates that did not choose to fill the time period formerly occupied by the Mad Money replays with syndicated programs or infomercials following the change now air Early Today in the form of two separate editions or as a 90-minute to 2½-hour loop – in which case, the program competes against ABC's World News Now and the CBS Overnight News, effectively resulting in Early Today acting as NBC's de facto overnight network newscast, especially west of the boundary of the Central Time Zone.

It usually airs as a lead-in to local morning newscasts on most NBC stations, although in the few markets where a morning newscast is not produced by the station, it may air in a two- to three-hour loop immediately before the start of Today. The show may updated for any breaking news occurring before 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time, after which time any live breaking news requiring network-level coverage, at the station's local discretion in each time zone or network orders for live coverage, is under full oversight of Today and their staffers. Early Today and First Look are traditionally pre-empted during the Summer and Winter Olympic Games to allow the airing of overnight replays of NBC's primetime Olympic event coverage and live coverage on the NBC broadcast network and MSNBC, along with allowing stations to fulfill syndicated programming requirements where a distributor requires their programs to still air in some form with the open slot, albeit during the overnights.

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Today, also called The Today Show, is an American news and talk morning television show that airs on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was the first of its genre on American television and in the world, and after 68 years of broadcasting it is the fifth-longest-running American television series.

Originally a weekday two-hour program from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., it expanded to Sundays in 1987 and Saturdays in 1992. The weekday broadcast expanded to three hours in 2000, and to four hours in 2007 (though over time, the third and fourth hours became distinct entities). Today's dominance was virtually unchallenged by the other networks until the late 1980s, when it was overtaken by ABC's Good Morning America.

Today retook the Nielsen ratings lead the week of December 11, 1995, and held onto that position for 852 consecutive weeks until the week of April 9, 2012, when Good Morning America topped it again. Today maintained its No. 2 status behind GMA from the summer of 2012 until it regained the lead in the aftermath of anchor Matt Lauer's departure in November 2017.

The show's first broadcast aired on January 14, 1952 as the brainchild of television executive Sylvester Weaver, who was then vice president of NBC. Weaver was president of the company from 1953 to 1955, during which time Today's late-night companion The Tonight Show premiered. In pre-production, the show's proposed working title was The Rise and Shine Revue. The show was first supervised by Jerome Alan Danzig.

Today was the first program of its genre when it premiered with original host Dave Garroway. The program blended national news headlines, interviews with newsmakers, lifestyle features, other light news and gimmicks (including the presence of the chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs who served as the show's mascot during the early years), and local news updates from the network's stations. It has spawned several other shows of a similar type, including ABC's Good Morning America, and CBS' now-defunct The Early Show. In other countries, the format was copied – most notably in the United Kingdom with the BBC's Breakfast Time and TV-am's Good Morning Britain, and in Canada with Canada AM on CTV.

When Today debuted, it was seen live only in the Eastern and Central time zones, broadcasting for three hours each morning but seen for only two hours in each time zone. Since 1958, Today has been tape-delayed for the five other U.S. time zones (Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska and Hawaii–Aleutian). Partly to accommodate host Dave Garroway's declining health, the program ceased live broadcasts in September 1959, opting instead to broadcast an edition taped the previous afternoon punctuated with live newscasts each half-hour. The experiment, which drew criticism from many sides, ended when John Chancellor succeeded Garroway in July 1961.

Today was a two-hour program for many years, airing from 7:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. in all time zones except for Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, until NBC expanded the program to three hours (extending the program until 10:00 a.m.) on October 2, 2000. A fourth hour (which extended the program until 11:00 a.m.) was eventually added on September 10, 2007.

The program airs live in the Eastern Time Zone and on tape delay beginning at 7:00 a.m. in each of the remaining time zones. The remaining three feeds are frequently updated with minor fixes and repairs, and often, correspondents will tape updates that are then edited into the delayed feeds. NBC affiliates in some markets including in the east coast, such as WYFF in Greenville, South Carolina, air the third and fourth hours of Today on tape delay to accommodate live syndicated programmes airing at such times.

When breaking news stories warrant, Today will produce a West Coast edition by broadcasting parts of the show live for viewers there. In such an event, the live portion does not typically go beyond the 7:00 a.m. (Pacific Time) half-hour or the bloc before the first set of advertisements. Once completed, the remaining blocs/segments taped from the East Coast edition will follow. Throughout the live segment, the presenters will explicitly make some reference to the show being live on the west coast from time to time until the tape-delayed segments resume.

In some instances, when an NBC News Special Report of breaking news or a live event occurs during the Today show time slot in the eastern time zone, the show's anchors will assume hosting responsibilities and the show will go live across all time zones until such time when the Special Report segment finishes. At that point, viewers outside the Eastern Time Zone will return to regularly-scheduled programming (i.e. the segment of the Today Show feed already in progress in their corresponding time zone or their local newscast).

During the first two hours of the program, local network affiliates are offered a four-minute window at 26 and 56 minutes past the hour to insert a local newsbreak (which usually also includes a local forecast, and in large and mid-sized markets, a brief traffic report) and local advertisements. Certain NBC affiliates that produce an additional morning newscast for a sister station or digital subchannel may prerecord the local inserts aired during the first one to two hours of Today to focus production responsibilities on just one of their local channels.

During the week, the flagship hours of Today (7:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.) are co-anchored by Savannah Guthrie (2012–present) and Hoda Kotb (2018–present) alongside co-hosts Al Roker (weather anchor; 1996–present), Craig Melvin (news anchor; 2018–present), Carson Daly (feature anchor; 2013–present), and Natalie Morales (West Coast anchor; 2016–present).

From the show's inception, the idea of providing the latest news headlines has been critical to the function of the program. In that vein, there has always been at least one person on set whose job it is to prepare and deliver newscasts. In 1952, that person was called the "news editor" or (informally) "news chief". In modern parlance, the term "newsreader" or "news anchor" is preferred. Under the two-hour format, four newscasts were delivered, once every half-hour. Presently, there are five newscasts, delivered at the top of each of the first three hours and at the bottom of the first two hours. Some anchors, including Jim Fleming, Lew Wood, Floyd Kalber and John Palmer, were seasoned journalists before joining the program. Others, including Ann Curry, have used the position to increase their journalistic acumen, at times leaving the newsdesk behind to venture into the field.

For the program's first 25 years, weather reports were delivered by the host or newsreader. Dave Garroway illustrated the day's forecast by drawing fronts and areas of precipitation on a big chalkboard map of the United States, based on information gathered earlier in the morning from the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. Subsequent hosts John Chancellor and Hugh Downs dropped the chalkboard weather map concept, and instead read a prepared weather summary over a still image of a weather map. When the show converted to all-color broadcasts in 1965, weather maps were prepared and projected on a screen behind Frank Blair, who delivered the forecast immediately after his news summaries. Following Blair's retirement on March 14, 1975, Lew Wood took over the newsreader and weather reporting duties (using Blair's format). When Floyd Kalber became newsreader in 1976, Wood was relegated to weather, sports, roving reporter assignments, and presenting live on-air commercials until his departure in 1978.

The weather is reported every half-hour during the first three hours, though since Al Roker was named weather reporter on January 26, 1996, an interview is conducted by him in place of the national weather forecast at least once during the show, leaving only the local weather inserts by NBC stations.

Prior to Roker, Today weather reporters were Bob Ryan (1978–1980) and Willard Scott (1980–1996). Until Ryan's hiring, no one on the show had practical experience or academic credentials in meteorology. With NBC's purchase of The Weather Channel in 2008, personnel from that network frequently participate in Today forecast segments, at the site of a weather event or from the cable channel's suburban Atlanta headquarters, or as a fill-in for Roker. This lasted until ten years later when TWC was later acquired by Entertainment Studios.

NBC owned-and-operated stations and affiliates are given a 30-second window to insert a local forecast segment into the program following the national weather report; Roker's outcue for the local break is "That's what's going on around the country, here's what's happening in your neck of the woods," although in recent years, this outcue was used only during the second half-hour. During the first half hour, Roker simply uses "your local forecast" which appears after a 30-second commercial. Those not watching on an affiliate which provides local weather segments following the outcue (including international viewers, as well as NBC stations that do not have a news department) see a national summary of temperatures on a weather map.

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3rd Hour Today (sometimes called The 3rd), the current name for the third hour of Today, features anchors who appear in the first two hours of the program. After Megyn Kelly Today was cancelled on October 26, 2018, NBC announced that Today anchors would host the third hour. The new third hour premiered on October 29, 2018, with Hoda Kotb, Craig Melvin and Al Roker anchoring for the first 20 minutes from Studio 1A, reporting on the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, with Savannah Guthrie anchoring live from Pittsburgh.

After 20 minutes, the program continued with Jenna Bush Hager from Studio 6A, the former home of Megyn Kelly Today, where broadcasts of the third hour would begin to be based. Since its debut, the third hour has used a modified nameless opening title sequence compared to the other editions of Today. Various other Today and NBC News personalities filled in until January, when it was announced that the official hosts would be Al Roker, Sheinelle Jones, Dylan Dreyer and Craig Melvin. On December 4, 2018, an NBC News spokesperson confirmed that the third hour would move to Studio 1A to streamline the production process and create a more seamless broadcast. The last day at Studio 6A was January 4, 2019, with new broadcasts in Studio 1A beginning on January 7.

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Today with Hoda & Jenna (also known as the fourth hour of Today or simply Hoda & Jenna or H&J ) is an American daytime talk show on NBC, hosted by Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager. The program airs as the fourth hour of NBC's Today at 10:00 a.m. in all time zones (subject to local delay) as a "show-within-a-show" with its own hosts, opening sequence, theme music, and website. The Monday through Thursday editions of this portion of the program air live in the Eastern Time Zone and on tape delay elsewhere; the Friday edition is pre-recorded.

The program originally began as an expansion of Today, hosted by Ann Curry, Natalie Morales and Hoda Kotb. For 11 years, the program grew as its own distinct entity as Today with Kathie Lee and Hoda, after Kotb was joined by Kathie Lee Gifford on April 7, 2008. On December 11, 2018, Gifford and NBC announced that she would be leaving Today. On February 26, 2019, it was announced that Jenna Bush Hager would be succeeding Gifford as the new co-host.

The show's signature element is its opening "host chat" segment where the latest entertainment headlines and stories are discussed. This segment was called Today's Talk during the Kathie Lee and Hoda era of the program, however that name has not been used since Hager joined the program as co-host.

The show is most notable for its frequent use and display of wine on-air. Speaking about the wine, Gifford, in an interview with Variety, said: "People just assume we are drinking wine the whole time, but the reality is most days it just sits there." Gifford has also said that they have a sip once or twice but the wine is used mainly as a prop to be funny.

The show has had many recurring segments throughout its years. They include:
Ambush Makeover is a segment on Thursdays where select fans who show up in Rockefeller Plaza get a makeover.
iHoda Live, which succeeds the original iHoda, is a segment where Hoda brings in the artist of her favorite song of the moment to perform live. Joshua Radin was the first to perform.
Read With Jenna is a monthly on-air book discussion club in the style of Oprah's Book Club. The segment started in March 2019 when Hager chose the book The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin. Due to the size of the Today Show's audience, most of the books chosen by her have become instant best-sellers.

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Weekend Today is currently the branding of the Saturday edition of Today, an American morning news and talk program that airs daily on NBC. However, its name has been used to refer to all weekend editions of Today, which began with the launch of the Sunday edition of the program on September 20, 1987.

The Saturday edition of the program is broadcast live in alignment with the weekday editions of Today from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Some affiliates outside the Eastern Time Zone air it live, and others on tape-delay. Thus, it may air on some NBC stations as early as 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. local time.

Meanwhile, the Sunday edition, titled Sunday Today with Willie Geist since April 17, 2016, airs from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. ET. Some NBC affiliates choose to air local morning newscasts before and after both Saturday and Sunday editions of the program.

The Sunday edition of Today (titled Sunday Today) premiered on September 20, 1987, and was originally hosted by Maria Shriver and Boyd Matson, with Garrick Utley as news anchor. The program was broadcast from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., followed by Meet the Press. It was the second morning news program to run weekend editions, CBS previously attempted a six-day-a-week morning news program under the "Morning" banner in 1979, the only surviving remnant of which is the newsmagazine CBS News Sunday Morning. Garrick Utley replaced Boyd Matson as co-anchor on March 20, 1988. Shriver, weather anchor Al Roker and sports anchor Bill Macatee continued with the program. In 1989, production of Sunday Today moved to Washington, D.C. to allow Utley to also serve as moderator of Meet the Press.

On November 12, 1989, a special edition of Sunday Today featured Utley in Berlin covering the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier that week, with Shriver hosting from Burbank, California and Roker in New York City. At the end of the broadcast, Utley mentioned that Shriver was leaving the show to go on maternity leave. NBC News national correspondent (and eventual co-anchor of the weekday edition of Today) Katie Couric became substitute anchor during Shriver's absence.

Maria Shriver returned from maternity leave on April 8, 1990, to Sunday Today and announced that she would be leaving the show after that day's broadcast. Couric was named interim co-anchor until Mary Alice Williams became the new co-anchor later that month. Production of the Sunday program returned to New York City when Utley left Meet the Press in 1991.

On August 1, 1992, the Saturday edition made its debut with the reduction of NBC's children's programming block on Saturday mornings to the three-hour TNBC block, expanding the broadcast schedule of the Today franchise to seven days a week. The weekend editions were initially titled Saturday Today or Sunday Today, as applicable, in order to distinguish them from the weekday program. Beginning in the late 1990s, all editions of the program were officially titled Today, although Weekend Today was still sometimes used for promotional purposes. The Sunday program was once again titled "Sunday Today" when Willie Geist became solo anchor in 2016.

Amy Robach and Melissa Francis rotated as news anchor during much of the Brown and Holt era (2003–2007). From 1988, (when Garrick Utley became co-anchor) & 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, until 2012 (When Jenna Wolfe became news anchor) Weekend Today did not have a News Anchor. During that time, a different NBC News, CNBC, or MSNBC correspondent would fill that position each week. Lester Holt left the program in 2015 following his promotion to MSNBC where he became the network's chief anchor.

The weekend editions of Today are anchored by Peter Alexander and Kristen Welker on Saturdays, and by Willie Geist on Sundays. Peter Alexander was named co-host on October 27, 2018. Kristen Welker was named co-host on January 11, 2020. Meteorologist Dylan Dreyer delivers the forecast on both Saturday and Sunday editions. Occasionally, Kate Snow, Hallie Jackson, Morgan Radford, Frances Rivera, Harry Smith, Jose Diaz-Balart, Dave Price, Willie Geist and Geoff Bennett fill-in for Welker and Alexander, Hallie Jackson, Harry Smith, Kristen Welker, Morgan Radford and Geoff Bennett fill-in for Geist. NBC meteorologists Bill Karins, Dave Price, Maria LaRosa and Janice Huff fill-in for Dreyer.

The weekend broadcasts continue Today's format of covering breaking news stories, featuring interviews with newsmakers, reports on a variety of popular culture and human-interest stories, covering health and financial issues and presenting the day's national weather forecasts. As with the weekday edition, the program offers visitors to New York City the chance to observe the workings of a live television broadcast firsthand with its windowed studio at Rockefeller Plaza. Interaction with the crowd outside the studio is a major part of the program.

Weekend editions are tailored to the priorities and interests of weekend viewers – offering special series such as Saturday Today on the Plaza, featuring live performances by well-known and up-and-coming music acts and numbers from Broadway theatre productions outside the studio throughout the summer. The Sunday edition also features brief political discussions with Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, who also gives a preview of that show which airs within a few hours after Sunday Today.

Just like their weekday counterparts, the weekend broadcasts feature cut-ins to local stations for news and weather segments.