The Final Hour of NBC Radio's News & Information Service (NIS) (1977)
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- Опубліковано 4 бер 2017
- The final hour of NBC Radio's News & Information Service, on May 29, 1977. Only 32 stations were likely carrying this last hour, on a Sunday night in the middle of Memorial Day Weekend. NIS was NBC's attempt at a national all-news radio network. It launched on June 18, 1975.
It's a shame that the original NBC Radio Network no longer exists.
Maybe NIS was years ahead of it's time.
Under FCC rules at the time, NBC Radio couldn't air NBC Radio and NIS simultaneously (except for special event and breaking-news coverage) because of rules banning a company owning multiple networks. NBC (and ABC with it's four "sub-networks") got around this rule by running each network sequentially---meaning that only one network was on the air at any given time.
Cameron Swayze was the son of legendary News Anchor, John Cameron Swayze. That was his on air name, his real name was John Cameron Swayze, Jr.
Thank you very much for posting this. As a former news anchor for a small market station in Maine that carried NIS this brought back some great memories. I remember that clock well.
Thank you for sharing this! I have three hours from the first day of NIS from June 18, 1975 and ever since I found that, I've always been looking for other recordings from this fascinating experiment in news radio history that didn't get its chance to develop properly. Having the last NIS broadcast is a nice bookend to the extant material there is of NIS.
This was a great idea. And it had pizzazz. Closest we have now is a news roundup from NPR with wimpy voices. No authority.
I love that final sounder you hear during the "end credits." It sounds very NBC, if that makes sense. It reminds me a lot of the NBC Nightly News sounder. I wish a clean version of this sounder existed. I have listened to the ones available, but none of them matches that one, exactly.
Thank you for this! I was listening when the New York flagship of the News and Information Service, WNWS-FM, stopped carrying the network at midnight on New Year's Eve, 1976. As 1977 began, the station turned into "Y97" and played Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night." It's good to be able to hear how NIS finally went out.
I'm sitting here listening at work to the network that defined the very start of my career. Tears came to my eyes with that final sounder. NBC NIS was way ahead of its time... and it is an absolute shame it didn't make it. I feel so fortunate to have worked for NIS affiliates for most of the time it was operational. Also thankful for still being in news radio all these years later!
4:10
Great to hear the final-hour of NBC's NIS Radio Service... forty years ago this month. What makes it even more special to me... is that I was sitting at the Audio-Console (A Gates-Harris 'Executive' Mixer) in the Control Room of WINZ-AM in Miami, FL, one of the remaining 32 affiliates still left with NIS up to the very end. I played that last hour of NIS on the air... in May of 1977 with the local News Breaks read by the Anchors there of course. I was on my Board-Op shift at the time.
Fun fact: After leaving WBAL, Alan Walden ran for mayor of Baltimore in 2016!
Great memories of this very unique "experiment" in radio. If you listen to NBC News Radio through iHeart Radio today, it is very similar in presentation. If only the internet was available back then, NIS could have survived.
I've been hoping to hear something from the NIS upon knowing about it through the Internet. It sounded promising. I hope to hear more of this, especially earlier ones. Thank you very much for sharing this.
Charles McCord.
I remember NIS clearly as a child...... Bob Schmidt, Dallas Thompson, Charles McCord and the others..... highly professional. I think it was on KLYX in Houston if I remember correctly. I truly believe that NIS was well ahead of it's time.
And the awesome voice of Alan Walden signing it off. Wow...
Wow, May 29, 1977--I was just literally a baby then, not even a month old!!! Quite fascinating to hear this, definitely a piece of American radio broadcasting history here. And recorded in very good quality, definitely not at all sounding like it was recorded from a then-standard AT&T Long Lines-furnished "5k telco" audio network landline feed at an affiliated local station back then (maxing out at 5 KHz audio response for those wondering, hence "5k", and also used for network TV audio prior to 1978); I'm guessing this must've been recorded at NBC Radio's facilities directly then? Too bad NIS didn't take off like NBC wanted it to--I guess the world wasn't ready for an all-news radio network yet back then?
Love this!