NBC’s News and
Information Service (NIS) began on June 18, 1975 with the boast “The Most
Important Day in Radio History.” When NIS died eighteen months later, it was
known as one of the biggest turds in American radio history. What happened to the 24/7 news network?
Common wisdom is
that NIS failed because it “was ahead of its time” and was too expense, both of
which are partially true. According to a
former NIS staffer who asked not to be named, NIS failed because of “Lack of imagination
and poor execution.” Plus it sounded awful – “group-think” at its worst. (Scroll
down to hear what NIS sounded like.)
Forty years later,
NIS could have been a major news source that might have challenged NPR News.
THE NIS STORY
 |
| Jack Thayer |
In the fall of 1974
NBC Radio was trailing the other big nets ABC, CBS and Mutual. NBC’s O&O (Owned and Operated) FM
stations were languishing. The radio division, run by Jack Thayer, needed a big
new idea.
ABC Radio had revolutionized the business of
network radio when, in 1969, they began feeding four different newscasts each
hour designed for specific formats. At the time most radio stations
carried network newscasts. ABC’s bold
move allowed them to quadruple its number of affiliates.
Thayer held
brainstorming sessions to determine NBC’s next big thing. According to the
former NIS staffer several scenarios were considered. One option, pushed by
younger folks, was a live hourly version of Earth News, a counter-culture news
service delivered to stations via scripts and transcription discs.
At that time FM
listener penetration in many markets was beginning to top AM stations. NPR was
just getting started; their only national news program at the time was a
90-minute version of All Things
Considered. This was before Morning
Edition – some NPR stations didn’t even sign on until Noon.
 |
| Alan Walden |
In 1976 a 24/7
national news service was a new idea.
This was before CNN. The model
was local news & weather AMs such as 1010 WINS, KNX and KFWB. So NIS was
breaking new ground and the eyes of the biz were on them.
Thayer decided to
turn the project over to Alan Walden, an old-school AM radio personality, who
was successful running WBAL-AM in Baltimore.
THE ROLL OUT OF NIS
On February 10, 1975, The New York Times broke the news about
NBC’s NIS 24/7 news network that would make
full use of the resources of NBC News. At a news conference Thayer said NIS
would feed affiliates 50-minutes per hour of content. Stations would need to
pay $15,000 per month in the largest markets, $750 per month in the smallest
markets plus mandatory commercial carriage. Thayer predicted NIS would have
affiliates in 75 of the top 100 markets.
Walden went to work
building the NIS staff of over 200 people. Many of the founding staff came from
AM news powerhouses like 1010 WINS, WCBS and KNX.
Walden crafted a
format clock with something for everybody: Headlines, features, commentaries,
vox pop and interviews, all sliced and diced into short chunks of time to fit in the tight clock.
When NIS debuted on
June 18, 1976, it had fewer than 50 affiliates. Even some of NBC’s O&O FMs
refused to carry it. Many stations
balked at the high cash fees and onerous commercial requirements. So NBC began
marketing NIS as an updated version of Monitor,
a weekend news service that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s.
By Spring 1976,
most of the NIS affiliates were old beat up AM stations, many former Top 40
giants like KRUX in Phoenix, KUDL in Kansas City and WPOP in Hartford. The
ratings weren’t great.
I looked up the
Spring 1976 Arbitron ratings published by Duncan’s American Radio found on the
American Radio History website [link], a truly amazing historical resource. At
that time NIS was on 10 FM stations and 25 AM stations in rated markets. Only 19 stations were in the top 100 radio
markets.
There were also
audio quality issues. Andy Denemark, now Executive VP for Programming at United
States, joined NBC in 1980 to market The
Source, NBC’s service for AOR stations. Some people at The Source
previously worked at NIS and told Denemark about technical faults at NIS:
[NIS was] delivered on phone lines in those
days... a 5k equalized line into major markets, a 3.5k un-equalized line into
smaller towns. The high cost of those “webs” of wires (for which the phone
company charged by mileage) was outrageous.
According to
Arbitron, NIS stations had around 2,000,000 estimated weekly cumulative listeners. Most of them only used the NIS overnight. The end was in sight.
The New York Times
reported on November 4, 1976, NBC had pulled the plug on NIS. There were fewer
than 70 affiliated stations. NIS had
lost more than $20,000,000 (close to $400,000,000 in 2016 dollars). Heads rolled.
UPDATE 9am 6/4/16: NIS staff found out they were :toast" at a staff meeting conducted by Dick Wald, then the head of NBC News, the morning after they covered the 1976 election.
The notion that the staff found out NIS was cancelled from the news wires is a mistaken urban legend.
UPDATE 9am 6/4/16: NIS staff found out they were :toast" at a staff meeting conducted by Dick Wald, then the head of NBC News, the morning after they covered the 1976 election.
The notion that the staff found out NIS was cancelled from the news wires is a mistaken urban legend.
After NIS folded,
there was never another serious attempt at a commercial 24/7 news service. Now
NBC is out of the radio news businesses.
WHAT NIS SOUNDED LIKE
As I said above, I
think it sounded awful. Give a quick listen to a two-minute scoped version of
NIS on WNWS-FM, New York, during afternoon drive in August 1976.
UPDATE 2pm 5/3/15: According to Jim Farley, who was at NIS and now is at WTOP, this aircheck was afternoon drive. However my source for the audio says it was a tape of the 6pm hour.
UPDATE 2pm 5/3/15: According to Jim Farley, who was at NIS and now is at WTOP, this aircheck was afternoon drive. However my source for the audio says it was a tape of the 6pm hour.
Direct link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDXXqqo4_sc&feature=youtu.be
HYPOTHETICAL “WHAT COULD
HAVE BEEN”
The following is completely
conjecture.
The former NIS staffer
(who did not want to be identified) mentioned that one alternative plan for
what became NIS was to create an alternative news service for Album Oriented
Rock (AOR) stations. Rock on FM in 1976
was becoming a major success. Stations like WNEW and WPLJ in New York, KMET and
KLOS in LA and WXRT in Chicago dominated listening by folks under 40. What if instead of an AM clone like NIS, NBC
would have set up a specialized news service for AOR and other contemporary
rock stations.
Suppose NBC had
decided to bring in programming folks who understood the potential for FM news
to reach younger listeners with a more modern presentation style and
sensibility. In 1976 key creators of NPR such as Jim Russell and Jay Kernis
were guns for hire. Both had worked in
commercial broadcasting and both new how to do a start up with a lean budget.
Suppose they
attracted the best and brightest young reporters and storytellers.
Suppose it was
still in business when MSNBC got a life in the mid 2000s.
Suppose Rachel
Maddow (a seasoned radio vet with Air
America) did a TV, online and FM simulcast truly using the resources of NBC
News. I think it would have worked.
I recall hearing NIS on WRC in DC. The need to share the distribution lines with the primary network resulted in this somewhat ridiculous situation: When NBC news sought to broadcast a bulletin, the "all news" station would have to "stand by" and the NIS announcer vamp -- "we interrupt our continuous news coverage to await this special bulletin from NBC News"
ReplyDeleteKen, enjoyed your NIS review. Only serious air check I remember making on NIS was the fall of '76 when I was visiting in Palm Springs. That market had an affiliate, and as a news-junky I listened many hours every day. I remember the audio was a "from the broom closet" sound...........a problem most networks had in those days, with telephone line delivery. Our listening habits weren't used to that much information, all the time, in that era.......but if you loved Monitor and liked to keep up on info.....the NIS was a nice choice. I've often thought back to that concept, as we find stations "hunting" for unique formats in today's radio environment. Thanks for the thoughtful piece.
ReplyDeleteLots of inaccuracies here. I was there from the beginning to the end. One example:
ReplyDelete"According to Denmark the NIS staff found out they were “toast” WHEN IT CAME OVER THE WIRES. Ugh." Wrong. The announcement was made in the NIS Newsroom by NBC News President Dick Wald. ---Jim Farley
That "scoped" version of NIS was definitely not afternoon drive. This sounds like overnights. Drivetimes and other weekday hours had dual anchors. ---Jim Farley
ReplyDeleteThanks to Jim Farley! I posted his corrections as updates in the story.
ReplyDeleteI was a regular fan of NIS (via WNWS-FM New York) and used the various sounders to keep track of my schedule. I got to know certain jingles, promos and rejoiners based on where was was on my way to college (from my home in Roslyn,NY to Garden City, NY). I liked the concept, it was a departure from 1010 WINS and WCBS NewsRadio 88. I agree, had NBC given it a bit more time and thought, it would have been another CNN, but for radio.
ReplyDeleteI believe NIS was ahead of its time. The daytime quality if content was outstanding. I was a radio news director of a traditional AM station carrying NBC, but monitored NIS for hours at a time in the Newsroom. The staff quality was high and the presentation excellent. Better signals-and more of them--coupled with marketing money, might have turned the corner. NIS was a well kept secret to most of the nation.
ReplyDeleteGayle,
DeleteI agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. I worked at KURV and we joined at the beginning and road it out to the end.
There's a lot here to chew on. Much of it ridiculous. The quote "biggest turds in American radio history" should really destroy any credibility of the article to start with. Who the hell writes something like that? Compared to what? The 3 stations that signed up for ABC's SuperJock format that folded the Friday before it was supposed to go on the air? Ed Wynn's Amalgamated Broadcast System, the network that folded in 5 weeks? A turd, by nature, is shitty. NIS wasn't. The quality of NIS, where I was a weekend and substitute anchor, was amazing. Describing Alan Walden as old-school and only mentioning WBAL instead of the industry leading and award wining newsrooms at WNEW and WNBC is disingenuous on a good day. As for the sound, it was equal to all network broadcasts at the time, and yes, in just a few years after RKO pushed everyone to jump into satellite broadcasting it would have sounded a hell of a lot better.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that going young would have been better is just ignorant. Having been the first anchor hired at ABC News to change ABC-FM News from beautiful music sounding to AOR rock youth oriented I know the trajectory of that all too well. It would have worked for a few years but as the FCC allowed stations to drop news requirements it would have met the fate of NBC's The Source and other young news formats in that it would have lacked clearance and the low commercial inventory demands of FM music stations would have doomed affiliations. NIS really fell victim to a change in leadership at RCA that didn't like long range investments [they would have dropped TV early too. For a similar case history see SNC, The ABC-Westinghouse TV cable news channel that was killed because some idiot thought only one such channel could make money] and the usual problem with all 24/7 formats including music. Stations for the most part use such plug and play formats as a set it and forget it and did not build on it with local news. Also, as with so many such formats they did nothing to market it. I think only KQV in Pittsburgh really put in any sort of effort. As for people finding out from the wires it was over, maybe if someone was away at the time [remember it was before cell phones, e-mails, texts and the internet] but I got calls both from Alan Walden and Jo Moring, so that claim just wasn't true for the vast majority of us who were proud to be any part of NIS.
Gil, I was the ND in Kansas CIty for NIS affiliate KUDL and we did bust our balls to get the format and the integration with network right - it sounded great and I loved the time. Just 2 cents from and old radio news guy - Best
DeleteBob Read (ex-APR, ex-Mutual and ex-NIS)
I loved working at NIS (Jim Farley hired me). There was one other technical issue that helped kill it. Just as the net was about to break 100 affiliates - rumor had it that Westinghouse was going to join us - NABET went on strike. Engineering was critical to our operation, and nobody but the engineers knew how to do it. So the quality we delivered to stations was dreadful. Also, I was not there when the shutdown was announced; I had worked on election coverage all night and was home in bed. But I was told that Dick Wald came to the newsroom and told the staff in person.
ReplyDeleteYou never forget this stuff. NIS was a challenging but amazing experience for me as a journalist. I got to delve into topics in depth in ways no other radio format - including NPR would allow. We produced thirty part series on major public policy issues, case in point, "The Cost of the Campaign Promises" in which we analyzed the economic costs of the campaign pledges made by the candidates. No one did that. We did. And yes, I was the editor on the morning after election coverage when Dick Wald walked into the newsroom and tapped his clipboard on the producer's turret, saying something like, "Boys and Girls, last night NBC had the best radio coverage of an election since the advent of television. But NBC is getting out of the all-news radio business." And that was how it really went.
ReplyDeleteThe original W-CAR AM 1130 in Detroit ran it for a time. That was before Hy Levinson, W-CAR's original owner sold it to Gene Autry's Golden West Broadcasters. If I'm remembering correctly, the late Cliff Mosley, who worked as a reporter at W-CAR when I started in September of 1977, had worked in New York at NIS, and told me it was before its time. W-CAR had to come up with their own news/talk format when the plug was pulled on NIS. It struggled, and then after Autry bought it, switched to an AC format where we struggled, eventually going Country hiring Deano Day and a couple former WDEE jocks with new calls as WCXI AM 1130 Country Pure 'n Simple. That worked well for a few years with good numbers. The news department stayed solid and won awards - some of the news people moving eventually to WWJ and WJR.
ReplyDeleteA few reasonable conjectures have been advanced to explain the short life of NBC, but failure cannot be attributed to the quality of service. Outstanding reporting was routine. Edward Brown, ex NIS staffer
ReplyDeleteAlan Walden is running as the Republican candidate for Mayor of Baltimore in the Fall election. I don't think a Republican has ever been elected Baltimore mayor in modern history.
ReplyDeleteYou can download the full unscoped version of the WNWS-FM New York aircheck here:
ReplyDeletehttp://jeff560.tripod.com/sounds/wnws_aug_9_1976.mp3
Sounds like overnights to me. The unscoped version of this aircheck includes a local weather break (at the 13:50 minute mark) which starts with; “And a pleasant good morning everyone”.
You can’t really argue about the audio quality without knowing what kind of device the aircheck was recorded on. Obviously, there were reception issues creating some FM noise at the time of this recording. Did NIS originate from Rockefeller Center? Is it possible that WNWS-FM would have received a direct audio feed from upstairs?
Scotty (June 7, 2016), all of the NBC local and network radio and TV properties operated out of 30 Rock. WNWS and WNBC Radio news shared the same newsroom and staff on the 2nd floor, with the AM and FM air studios next to each other. NIS was on the 5th floor, along with the traditional NBC Radio Network and hourly news operation. Network and local staff were generally separate, except when the network wanted to air a locally-staffed story. In those instances, the WNWS/WNBC Radio newsroom essentially functioned as the network's New York bureau. Don Rollins and I co-anchored morning drive on WNWS, with the late Will Spens anchoring mornings on WNBC. (Don Imus had his own cast of characters and staff for "Imus in the Morning," including the late Carlton Jerome "Flash" Gourdine, Sr. as engineer/board operator and Charles McCord as head writer and semi-autonomous newscaster.) WNBC and WNWS were NBC owned and operated stations with local management, sharing the same building with network and owned-stations management, and everyone worked for the same parent company, NBC. It made for some interesting conflicts sometimes, despite the hierarchical corporate structure.
DeleteI remember NIS in Norfolk over WKLX 1350 (later rebranded WNIS migrated to 790 AM) and retained all news format after demise of NIS. I was a teen who was obsessed with radio under the hood stuff. Was always taken back why it failed to catch on till i read this article. Yes - ahead of time. CNN tried Headline News feed -- but that eventually was pulled. I think radio is so "personal" and local that a national live feed that filled the hour would have challenges. For its time, I thought it was top notch NBC quality. FM News has only been a reality in past 10 years or less. Yes -- ahead of time. The fact NBC O & O's never bought in was definately a bad omen from corporate. It needed some big powerhouses (WMAQ, WNBC, WRC, KNBC, KPRC, KSD affiliates to help). Enjoyed this article and comments from insiders! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWRC AM was NIS - correction.
DeleteAfter NIS's demise, a few either returned to 1010 WINS or joined them, either within the immediate time period or a few years therefrom: Dave Henderson, Dick Kulp and Rosemary Frisino-Toohey. (In Henderson's case for sure, it was a return - and in stark contrast to several ex-WINS staffers who, in or around 2011, defected to the ultimately ill-fated FM News 101.9 and found themselves all but blackballed by WINS.) As well, Rudy Ruderman who also worked at NIS, was doing business reports for WINS in the early '80's. On the local (New York) end, one of those working at WNWS News 97 was Mitch Lebe; recently he was handling occasional weekend evening anchoring at WINS, nearly six decades after beginning his career there as "The Teenaged Disc Jockey," and in-between accruing a long and distinguished Hall of Fame career, mostly in news and at stations up and down the dial including WCBS Newsradio 88(0) and Bloomberg 1130.
ReplyDeleteOne WINS'er, pre-1975, who also toiled at NIS was Gary Alexander.
In the mid 60s, Lin Broadcasting bought WBBF AM/WBBF FM in Rochester. The FM at the time was automated classical and had been since its sign-on at 101.3. The company swapped the CP for 92.5 to cover some public issues as 101.3 was reportedly a "non commercial" station. With the move to 92.5, they could then operate as a commercial station. The plan was to change formats and compete with WHAM-AM-then a full-service music and news station. WBBF AM was the Top 40 giant in town but couldn't quite pass WHAM's 50KW signal in the ratings. The plan to re-format WBBF-FM was met with an outraged classical music group who blasted the new company's plans to destroy the musical arts on radio. The format change was scrapped by Lin. In the late 70s, WBBF GM Dan Clayton had an idea. He could donate all of WBBF-FM's automation equipment, the music library and most of the staff to Public Broadcaster WXXI and be free to do what he wanted with the FM. To alleviate any potential problems he signed up the FM with NIS-providing an all-news product for Rochester that could hopefully damage WHAM's credibility. WBBF-AM had a pretty solid news department as well. The format ran on the FM until its demise. It wasn't the most dynamic product, but it filled a void-of sorts.
ReplyDeleteI worked as a teenager at the time at one of the smaller NIS affiliate stations. At the time, and now I still think the network sound, and news coverage was very good to excellent. The network broadcasters, writers and editors did a fantastic job, that has never been duplicated. Today as a older person, I look back and think, excellent broadcasting, lousy business plan. If our small market station was any example of other small market stations, there was no way NIS could be successful. Our station owner hired the cheapest people he could find. So you would up with a lot of untrained kids like me that sounded bad, wrote no better than we sounded, and could barely "rip and read" from the UPI or AP teletype. Our bottom of the hour local newscast was an identical copy of the top of the hour local news. Repetition became our middle name. Decades later, after a full career I can look back and see what was done well, and what was not done well.
ReplyDeleteFinding this a couple of years after you wrote the original piece. Thank you - for decades I thought I had only imagined NBC doing all news radio. In 1975 I got my first broadcast job, at WIGS radio in tiny Gouverneur NY. The owner, a wonderfully on the edge man, briefly had it in his head to do all news with just me, an 18 year old kid, as the local talent and NBC NIS as everything else. I remember quite clearly him showing me the NBC literature,including the clock for the hour. Somehow the moment passed, and for a short while, WIGS was a fine, small market station with adventurous tastes.
ReplyDeleteI was living in Tampa, Fla. when the first plans for NIS were announced. I wrote to them asking if the Tampa Bay area would have an NIS station. The reply I got said for competitive reasons which I've long since come to understand but didn't then, they could basically neither confirm nor deny. As it turned out, a station in Sarasota (WQSA, a daytimer at 1220 AM) did join NIS, but by then my family and I had moved up north to New England, which had several NIS stations, including WPOP, WEAN and WCSH. In fact, I heard it on the way up north, on WKLX and WNWS, during NIS' first week of operations in June 1975. I liked it. I think if NBC had stuck with it, it could have made it. I know ABC lost a ton of money in the first few years of the four-network setup, and stayed the course. The shutdown of NIS left a void in radio that has never been replaced.
ReplyDeleteI had a chance to work with NIS as a Production Assistant in Philadelphia during the Presidential Primary in 1976. The anchors were Bill Lynch, Mike Moss, and Camille Bohannon. They were first-class news professionals with incredible writing skills and on-air presence. I would venture a guess that in addition to the expense of carriage that the lack of local avails and ability to feature local news coverage would have made it somewhat unattractive, especially at the small market level. The quality of the product was not an issue in my mind.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the great article and memories it resurrected as well as thanks to all the people that have given us their experiences with the NIS network. I was the 6pm - Midnight, when we signed off, weekday anchor for WLBZ-AM in Bangor, Maine (affiliated with WCSH-AM Portland, Maine) for about a year while they were a NIS station, including its demise. We did our best to report the local and state news as we could as well as having High School Basketball games some nights. Eddie Owens was the GM/ND and would have me record a air check every couple of months and go over it with me to try to make us sound as professional as a small market station could. It actually did pretty well in the market. When the NIS canceled, the station went top 40 and I left. As a side note, WLBZ is now all sports station WZON owned by a certain horror writer from Bangor, Maine.
ReplyDelete