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[[
The National Broadcasting Company, owned by NBCUniversal (a unit of Comcast and General Electric), is the United States' oldest radio and TV network. NBC-TV is famous for its peacock logo, whose original purpose was to promote the network's "living color" broadcasts. For this reason, NBC is sometimes known as "The Peacock Network" or just "The Peacock". Originally founded by set manufacturer RCA to provide people who bought their radios something to listen to, NBC once had two radio networks — NBC Red and NBC Blue. In 1943, NBC Blue was split off in an antitrust lawsuit, and would go on to become [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]].
NBC was the first to take color television seriously; CBS had dabbled in it, but their system (which was more complex and required manually switching between black-and-white and color modes) was only ever experimented with for a few years before NBC's all-electronic system took off. NBC also had a tight grip on much of the U.S. radio landscape; they held up the adoption of FM radio for years (and ruined its inventor) because of fear it would put their mostly-AM network out of business. Due to the FCC not allowing non-broadcast companies to own both radio and television assets (General Electric had bought NBC in 1986), NBC finally exited the radio business in the late 1980s, selling what was left of the old NBC Red to Westwood One and the radio stations to various companies (most of them went to Emmis Communications). The former AM flagship WNBC 660 is now WFAN, an NYC sports station.
It has the most famous address in all of broadcasting - 30 Rockefeller Center, [[Big Applesauce|New York, NY]] 10012- with not one but ''two'' shows named after it; ''[[30 Rock]]'', a [[Sitcom]] about [[Write What You Know|TV comedy writers]] and ''[[Rock Center]]'', a [[Prime Time News]] [[Magazine Show]].
Despite the name, NBC does not possess [[Nuclear War|Nuclear, Biological and Chemical]] weaponry.
=== 1977-1981: NBC lays an egg (the Silverman era) ===
Before 1977, NBC had typically run a solid #2 to [[CBS]]. This all changed as [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]], with its popular [[Jiggle Show|Jiggle Shows]] and epic [[Miniseries]], shot from last place to #1, leaving NBC with "older" shows like ''[[Little House on the Prairie (TV series)|Little House On the Prairie]]''. NBC hired Fred Silverman, the executive who had been responsible for ABC's turnaround, as president and CEO, and he tried gimmick after gimmick trying to increase ratings. Some of the biggest flops in their history, such as ''[[Supertrain]]'', ''[[Pink Lady ...And Jeff]]'', and [[Dork Age|the 1980-81 season]] of ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', date from this era, with only a few successes (''Real People'', ''[[Diff'rent Strokes]]'') to speak of. The final straw was the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, which prompted the US Olympic team to boycott the [[Olympic Games|1980 Moscow Olympics]] — and NBC, having pretty much bet the farm on Olympic programming that year, found itself broadcasting an event that Americans, without the home team to root for, couldn't care less about (it only did a grudging [[Clip Show]] to keep the diehards who could care less about politics happy). Between RCA funding pie-in-the-sky projects like the SelectaVision video disc, the shift in TV sales from US brands to Japanese brands <ref>indeed, some of ''RCA's own products'', specifically their VHS [[VCR|VCRs]], were already being made in Japan by Panasonic</ref>, and NBC's continued poor performance, some people wondered if the network would be shut down or sold off to keep RCA from going bankrupt.
Indeed, even much of NBC's ''own staff'' thought little of Silverman. On ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', series writer and occasional performer [[Al Franken]] satirized Silverman in a 1980 Weekend Update commentary titled "A Limo For The Lame-O" (part of an ongoing series of commentaries about the 1980s being "the Al Franken decade"), calling Silverman "a total unequivocal failure" and showing a chart of the top 20 network shows, pointing out that there were no big N's on the list; he further said that because of this, Silverman didn't deserve a limo but Franken himself ''did''. Silverman, ostensibly ''not'' one to take a joke, nixed Lorne Michaels' request that Franken succeed him as executive producer of ''SNL''... which not only killed any hope of the 1980s truly being the Al Franken decade, but caused Michaels to be replaced with Jean Doumanian instead, leading to ''SNL'''s [[Dork Age]] in the 1980-81 season.
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=== 2000-present: NBC crashes and burns; the Late Night War; sale to Comcast ===
After the year 2000, ratings on NBC started to slip across the board, and the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s gave way to years of seemingly intractable poor performance. The once-invincible Thursday night block (currently composed of ''[[Community]]'', the U.S. version of ''[[The Office]]'', ''[[Parks and Recreation]]'', and ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'') now faces stiff competition in the [[Ratings]] by ''[[Survivor]]'' and ''[[CSI]]'' on [[CBS]] and by ''[[Grey's Anatomy]]'' on [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]], causing the network to slip into fourth place with ratings more like those on [[The CW]] than on the other three major networks. However, this comes with a consolation prize: NBC has been praised by viewers and critics for frequently pulling off cases of [[Network to the Rescue]], protecting critically- and cultly-adored shows even if they are struggling in the ratings (as evidenced by how they refused to cancel ''30 Rock'' and ''The Office'' in their early seasons). The network seemed to be coming back with the success of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', but a [[Seasonal Rot|troubled Seasons 2-3]] caused the show's ratings to sink like a rock, ultimately turning the big-budget series into a financial vacuum for the network that led to its cancellation after Season 4.
In 2009, in an effort to cut costs and get back on track, NBC made the controversial (and, in hindsight, [[What an Idiot!|utterly stupid]]) decision of giving [[Adored by the Network|Jay Leno]] five [[Prime Time]] slots per week for a new [[Variety Show]], ''The Jay Leno Show''<ref>Basically, his ''[[The Tonight Show]]'' in a 10:00 PM slot featuring a segment that rips off one from a [[Top Gear|certain British automotive show]].</ref>. This was the first time that a network scheduled the same show five nights a week since [[The Fifties]], and the [[Internet Backdraft|response]] was both immediate and brutal. TV fans cried [[Ruined FOREVER]] at NBC's decision, saying that it was a lose-lose situation for both the network and for television in general. If ''Leno'' failed, NBC would've surrendered a third of its [[Prime Time]] lineup to the network's biggest flop since ''[[Supertrain]]''... but if it succeeded, then the other networks, pressed by falling ratings and advertiser revenue, would follow NBC's lead, making even more cuts to scripted programming in favor of more [[Reality Show|reality shows]]. Feeling that the loss of only one network was preferable to what they saw as the corruption of the entire TV landscape, many people actively cheered for ''Leno'' to fail.
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Whereas [[Disney|Touchstone Television]] and [[Paramount|Paramount Television]] eventually took on corporate names to match their partners (ABC Studios and CBS Television Studios respectively), NBC's in-house productions like ''[[Smash]]'' and ''[[30 Rock]]'' now go out under the [[Universal|Universal Television]] banner alongside actual Universal-produced series like ''[[House MD]]'' and ''[[Parenthood]]'' (as does ''[[The Office]]'', a genuine NBC/Universal co-production).
=== NBC's Olympic coverage ===
Having sparred with CBS for coverage contracts through [[The Nineties]], NBC has been the American broadcast home for the [[Olympic Games]] since 2000, something that they are notoriously bad at. Their coverage of the 1992 Barcelona Games included three pay-per-view channels that most people weren't willing to pay for, and it was suspected that NBC's coverage was deliberately made terrible to get people to buy the package. Though the company's cable sister channels allow for multiple events, their Olympic coverage focuses on sports that have a lot of media attention, or a sport Americans happen to be particularly competitive at. In an average Summer Games, you'll see a lot of Men's Swimming or Women's Gymnastics, not nearly as much Softball or Archery. NBC has been accused of creating a [[Human Interest Story]] narrative to competitions, and [[Creator Provincialism|focusing almost entirely on Team USA]] to the wide exclusion of other nations. (Their promos for golf's Ryder and Presidents Cups aren't much less partial.) During the 2010 Winter Games in [[Stargate City|Vancouver]], NBC was also accused of exploiting the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, constantly replaying footage of his fatal crash.
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Finding other methods to watch the Olympics is becoming increasingly common among fans, and those in the northern border states just watch the Games from Canada and miss all the squabbling and complaining (thank you, [[CBC]]). NBC itself is glad to subsidize this process by maintaining a website where full live video is available...presuming your ISP has paid for the privilege. They own network called Universal Sports which features Olympic sports 24/7, which moved from broadcast digital subchannel distribution at the start of 2012 to cable-only (much to the relief of viewers, as in that guise the video quality seemed to be worse than a web stream due to limited bandwidth). When the United States Olympic Committee dared to suggest they wanted to create their own cable network with Comcast, NBC's whining to daddy (in this case, the International Olympic Committee) made sure that idea was quashed very quickly.
Things may get better soon. After the firing of Dick Ebersol, the new regime at NBC Sports promises that they will no longer delay Olympic programming as in the past. Since NBC Universal
=== Other ventures ===
NBC is a partner in the video site [[Hulu]] (along with News Corp., Comcast, and The [[Walt Disney]] Co.), which hosts free (albeit with commercial interruption) videos of many of its past and present shows.
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