January 14th, 1952: "This Is 'Today' On NBC"

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Yesterday (January 14th) marked the 65th anniversary of the premiere of NBC’s “Today Show”, the first early-morning show on network television.

As far as I know, only one TV station in the entire country was broadcasting during the 7-9 A.M. time period that would become home to “Today”: WPTZ-3 Philadelphia (later WRCV and now KYW), which broadcast a show titled “Three To Get Ready”. I had read that while the show did have some news and weather segments, it was mainly an entertainment show hosted by future cult TV legend Ernie Kovacs.

The show’s local success prompted NBC executive Sylvester “Pat” Weaver that perhaps there was room for an early-morning network television program. But instead of being mainly entertainment, Weaver decided that such a show should instead be mostly news, information, and features with a little entertainment (indeed, in recent years, there have been periodic outdoor “mini-concerts”, usually on Friday mornings, featuring some of the biggest names in music, staged outside “Today”‘s Rockefeller Center studios in New York).

Selected as the show’s first host was Dave Garroway, whose easygoing manner on-camera (but several published reports over the years suggested that Garroway wasn’t as pleasant off-camera as he appeared on the television screen) was considered a plus for an early-morning show. Basically, seeing him was a subconscious sign that “The world didn’t come to an end last night. We’re still here, we’re going to have a great day, and let’s find out what happened in the world overnight…”.

NBC first had to convince nearly all their affiliates to sign-on early in the morning to pick-up “Today”, and had to convince one affiliate (WPTZ) to drop their successful local early-morning show to carry the network offering.

“Today”‘s ratings started slowly, but picked-up in 1953, thanks to three events: One, the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin (which broke after the morning newspapers that day had been printed); “Today” was able to provide in-depth coverage. Second, the arrival of chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs as “comic relief” (he would get dropped in 1957; reportedly due to biting several on-air and behind-the-scenes staffers). Lastly, that June was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. While transoceanic broadcast satellites were still almost a decade away, “Today” carried the sound portion of the coronation along with still photos sent by shortwave radio-facsimile. Also joining the show that year was Frank Blair, brought-in to anchor news updates each half-hour. Blair would stay with the show for 22 years.

Over the years, some major legends in television were hosts, co-hosts, or regulars. Among them were Jack Lescoulie, John Chancellor, Edwin Newman, Hugh Downs, Joe Garagiola, Frank McGee, Jim Hartz, Jane Pauley, Tom Brokaw, Willard Scott, Gene Shalit, John Palmer, Bryant Gumbel, Deborah Norville, Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira, Al Roker, and Savannah Guthrie.

The longest-tenured host or co-host in “Today” history is current co-host Matt Lauer; he’s celebrating his 20th anniversary as co-host this month (and anchored the news segments for a few years prior to that).

The best-known host or co-host is Barbara Walters, who joined the show as a writer around 1960, did a few on-air features in the early sixties, and was promoted to be the lead female personality in 1964. Although not officially becoming co-hostess until 1974, she was often considered by viewers as a de facto co-hostess from the mid 1960’s-onward. Walters left in 1976 to join ABC; while her stint co-anchoring that network’s evening newscast (with Harry Reasoner) was a ratings disaster (the pairing lasted just 20 months), she did rebound to host a series of successful interview specials and later developed (and frequently moderated) a daytime talk-show titled “The View”.

“Today”‘s success prompted other networks to try to get their own piece of the 7-to-9 A.M. pie. CBS was the first to try, launching “The Morning Show” in 1954 with Walter Cronkite (already well-known as CBS’s anchorman for special events and breaking news) as host. The “Tiffany Network” has tried many different formats over the years, but has seldom been a competitor in the early-morning news race. I believe the current version (“CBS This Morning” with Charlie Rose, Norah O’Donnell, and Gayle King) has done better in the ratings than almost any news/infotainment program CBS has ever put in that time slot.

ABC’s first try at an early-morning news/infotainment show was the short-lived “AM America”, which lasted nine or ten months in 1975. It’s successor, “Good Morning America”, became the first network morning show to seriously challenge “Today” in the ratings. By 1980, “GMA” had moved into number-one, and while “Today” eventually overtook it (in the mid 1990’s) and enjoyed a nearly two-decade streak at number-one, “GMA” hasn’t been worse than a close second in the morning news ratings race.

In recent years, all three network morning shows have faced tough competition from local morning news shows (usually, but not always) on Fox-owned-or-affiliated stations. With more time for local news (and especially local traffic reports and weather forecasts), some of these local shows draw more viewers in their respective cities than any of the three network morning shows.

But “Today” got there first, and even those working on competitive network and local morning shows will have to admit that “Today” proved that people were willing to watch television at 7 in the morning.