January 14, 1952
NBC Today: The Entire World As It Happens
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September 7, 2027 will mark 100 years from the day when electronic television made its first appearance on Earth. To generate interest in the Centennial, this website and accompanying podcast are going to Count Down the Top 100 Milestones from the First 100 Years of Television over 100 weeks until September 7, 2027.
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Born in Los Angeles in 1908, Sylvester L. “Pat” Weaver, Jr. grew up amid the creative new industries of the 20th century: film, and radio.
His father, Sylvester Sr., was a retired U.S. Naval officer who operated a roofing business, but his mother was Eleanor Isabel Dixon, a former silent film actress with strong ties to the world of Hollywood.
After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1930 with a degree in English, Pat returned to Los Angeles. It didn’t take long working for his father to realize that he much preferred the creative life he had discovered in college. He returned east to New York and found work writing advertising copy for radio programs, where he quickly demonstrated a knack for combining the arts of persuasion and entertainment.
By the 1940s, Weaver was working for Young & Rubicam, one of Madison Avenue’s most influential advertising agencies. During the period when broadcasting was still dominated by “single sponsor” programming, Weaver began advocating for what he called the “magazine” approach, wherein multiple advertisers could buy commercial segments – which gave the networks more creative control over their content.
In 1949, NBC president Niles Trammell hired Weaver to be the network’s vice president of programming. A long-tenured veteran of the network, Trammell had survived the “Paley raids” that lured away top talent and hit shows like Amos ‘n’ Andy to CBS, but rather than stay on to rebuild, he stepped down in 1951.1 Having already established his bona fides, Weaver was elevated to president of NBC, leaving him free to implement his new approach to programming and sponsorship.
Broadcasting has always been perceived by the public as a “programming” medium – a source of entertainment, news and information. But the true mission of commercial broadcasting has always been not to deliver programs to the audience, but to deliver the audience to the advertisers. With advertising in the driver’s seat it was often the ad salesmen who rose through the industry’s executive ranks. Weaver was not strictly an ad salesman, but his grasp on the mechanics of the business put him in a unique position to redefine the industry.
By the time of Pat Weaver’s ascent, the major networks (at the time NBC, CBS, and DuMont) had established beachheads through much of the broadcast day. The evenings – “prime time” – were filled with prestige dramas, variety shows, and the big-name performers who drew large national audiences.2 The afternoons offered the soaps and game shows aimed squarely at homemakers. Late nights occasionally aired experimental programming.
That left the early mornings, an empty quarter randomly filled with test patterns, local news, old movies, or low-budget talk shows. The networks had yet to crack the code that could switch televisions on at sunrise and keep them glowing all day.
That unclaimed frontier is where Pat Weaver’s “magazine” model found fertile ground.
The challenge was figuring out what kind of program would appeal to the morning audience. Weaver figured it should be credible enough to deliver the news, yet light enough to accompany breakfast; nimble enough to pivot from a political interview to a cooking demonstration; and intimate enough to feel like a friend who had dropped in for coffee.
With that formula on the drawing board, Pat Weaver decided that after January 14, 1952, every day on NBC would begin with Today.
To give his new morning program a touch of gravitas, Weaver built a set with the kinetic aesthetic of a bustling newsroom inside the RCA Exhibition Hall on West 49th Street in Manhattan3. Floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street turned passersby into an informal outside-the-studio audience. In the background, clacking typewriters, ringing phones, and reporters roving between desks conjured the illusion that Today was plugged into the news cycle – lending just the jolt of “up and at ’em!” Weaver hoped would get people tuning in to NBC first thing in the morning.
To host the inaugural episodes of Today, Weaver turned to Dave Garroway, by then a familiar veteran of radio and television with a relaxed, conversational style who one critic called “the man with the soft sell.”
Garroway started his career as a page at NBC in New York before returning to his native Chicago in the late ’30s, where he became a popular radio announcer and disc jockey. In 1948, NBC tapped him to host Garroway at Large, a prime-time TV variety show out of Chicago that showcased his innate ability for putting guests at ease. Looking to set a tone closer to a conversation over coffee than a formal newscast, Garroway’s gift for projecting warmth through the camera made him Weaver’s first and only choice to launch Today.
When Today went on the air at 7:00 AM Eastern, Garroway welcomed viewers to a new kind of program – “a day-to-day picture of the entire world as it happens.”
With that first morning broadcast, Weaver’s “magazine” model went into high gear: segments rotated between news and commentary, human-interest features, kitschy home-making tips, and fluffy entertainment. All of the content was under NBC’s direct editorial control, and multiple advertisers bought time in blocks just like they would purchase pages in a glossy weekly like Life or Look. Companies like General Electric and American Tobacco were quick to buy in, eager to reach the new audience Today promised to deliver.
However, despite all of Pat Weaver’s meticulous planning, Today‘s dawning was less than stellar.
In 1952, Americans mostly attuned to TV in the evenings had yet to adopt the habit of switching their set on before breakfast. Mornings were still for coffee and radio, newspapers, or just getting out the door. Many NBC affiliates didn’t even air the program, still preferring their own local content. Some critics lauded the new format but doubted it would change long-established household habits. Weaver had created a new “daypart” but still had to convince people to try it.
It turned out what he needed was not a congenial, cultured host but… a monkey.
About a month after Today launched, Garroway brought on his first “co-host” – a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs. Dressed in miniature suits, Muggs posed with celebrities who gamely took part in his antics. The gimmick worked: ratings climbed, advertisers warmed to the show, and J. Fred Muggs became a merchandising phenomenon. Garroway reportedly resented being upstaged by a simian, but Muggs bought Today the time it needed to establish a footprint in Weavers new realm.
The mix of news, interviews, features, remotes, and the occasional spectacle became the template for all the network morning show that followed, like ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s Morning News. It provided the template for local variations as well.
By the late-1950s, Today had rearranged America’s morning routines, carving one more notch into television’s grip on the country and its postwar culture.
What began as a gamble in an “empty quarter” of the broadcast day reigns on as one of the longest-running programs in television history. Like its older sibling Meet The Press, for more than 70 years Today has anchored NBC’s mornings through wars, elections, cultural shifts, and technological change. Hosts from Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters to Bryant Gumbel and Savannah Guthrie have come and gone, but the format has remained remarkably resilient.
For some 30 years, Today’s juggernaut remained unchallenged atop the morning ratings. ABC’s Good Morning America first overtook Today in the early 1980s. The top spot has traded hands several times since.
Pat Weaver had set out to fill a neglected daypart, and in doing so, created an institution. But in his mind, mornings were just the beginning. There was still one more frontier to conquer: late night. And we’ll get to that in a future installment of the Countdown to the Centennial.
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The first ten minutes of the first episode of Today:
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1 Trammel was essentially “collateral damage” in the Paley raids. Rather than stem the exodus or spearhead the rebuilding, he partnered with the Cox and Knight newspaper families in 1952 to help establish WCKT, a new station in Miami that quickly signed on as an NBC affiliate.
2 According to Merriam‑Webster, the first known use of “prime time” in the context of television or radio—the period with the largest audience—appeared in 1947
3 In June 1994, Today moved from its original home in the RCA Exhibition Hall at 49th Street and Fifth Avenue to Studio 1A, on the ground floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, directly across the street from the original location.
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