1956 trade with Westinghouse

1956 trade with Westinghouse

In 1956, NBC sought to get an owned-and-operated television station in the Philadelphia market, so it forced a station ownership/call sign swap with Westinghouse Broadcasting. NBC acquired Westinghouse's KYW radio and WPTZ television in Philadelphia (which became WRCV-AM-TV, for the "RCA Victor" record label) while Westinghouse received NBC's WTAM-AM-FM and WNBK television in Cleveland (all of which took the KYW call signs).^[22] Westinghouse also received $3 million in cash compensation.^[23]
After Westinghouse expressed its unhappiness with the arrangement, the United States Department of Justice took NBC to court in late 1956. In a civil antitrust lawsuit filed against NBC and RCA, Westinghouse claimed the network threatened to pull their TV affiliation from Westinghouse's Philadelphia and Boston stations, and withhold an affiliation from their Pittsburgh TV property if Westinghouse did not agree to the trade.^[24] In August 1964 NBC's license for WRCV radio and television was renewed by the FCC—but only on the condition that the 1956 station swap be reversed.^[25] Following nearly a year of appeals by NBC, the Supreme Court declared the trade null and void in June 1965; the KYW call letters were moved back to Philadelphia with Westinghouse while NBC rechristened the Cleveland stations as WKYC-AM-FM-TV, a derivative of KYW.^[26] NBC kept ownership of the Cleveland radio stations until 1972 before selling them off to Ohio Communications;^[27] the AM station reverted to its original WTAM call sign in July 1996.

Major League Baseball (1957-1975)

In 1957, NBC Radio won the rights to broadcast the Major League Baseball All Star Game and World Series from Mutual Radio, who had held exclusive rights since 1942 and 1939 respectively for both events. It gave NBC sole control of the big events in baseball as they had been exclusively airing both the All Star Game and World Series on television since 1947. NBC ended its radio association with baseball after the 1975 season in order to clear space for its 24 hour "News And Information" service programming, though it would continue broadcasting on the television side until 1989 (while splitting coverage with ABC in all but the first year of that period). ^[28]

Monitor

Main article: Monitor (NBC Radio)

NBC Radio's last major programming push, in 1955, was Monitor, a continuous, all-weekend mixture of music, news, interviews and features with a variety of hosts, including such well-known television personalities as Dave Garroway, Hugh Downs, Ed McMahon, Joe Garagiola and Gene Rayburn. The potpourri also tried to keep vintage radio alive in featuring segments from Jim and Marian Jordan (in character as Fibber McGee and Molly), Ethel and Albert and iconoclastic satirist Henry Morgan.
Monitor was a success for a number of years, but after the mid-1960s, local stations, especially in larger markets, became increasingly reluctant to break from their established formats to run non-conforming network programming. After Monitor went off the air in early 1975, there was little left of NBC Radio beyond hourly newscasts, news-related features and the half-hour-long Sunday morning religious program The Eternal Light. This, combined with ABC Radio's split into four separate radio services in 1968, left NBC outnumbered with their affiliate count in comparison to ABC, CBS Radio and Mutual.

Other programming attempts

NBC "News and Information Service" logo

Later in 1975, NBC launched the NBC News and Information Service (also referred to as "NIS"), which provided up to 55 minutes of news per hour around the clock to local stations that wanted to adopt an all-news format.^[29] Not surprisingly, NIS achieved clearances on NBC's FM stations in New York (WNBC-FM, which became WNWS), Chicago (WJOI, the former WMAQ-FM which was renamed WNIS) and San Francisco (KNAI, the former KNBR-FM). WRC in Washington also picked it up, migrating their Top 40 format onto FM sister station WKYS (which would be blown up weeks later in favor of disco music). Other major affiliates for the NIS service included WBAL-FM in Baltimore, KHVH in Honolulu, and KQV in Pittsburgh.^[30][31]
The NIS service attracted several dozen subscribers, but not enough to allow NBC to project that it would ever become profitable, and it was discontinued after two years.^[32] (KQV, however, has successfully retained their all-news formats with local production to the present day.) After the demise of NIS, NBC installed a talk radio format at WRC and went with music on the FMs in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, respectively renaming them as WYNY, WKQX, and KYUU.
Near the end of the 1970s, NBC started "The Source", a modestly successful secondary network that provided news and short features to FM rock stations. In 1981, NBC created NBC Talknet, an advice-oriented talk radio network designated for the late night hours. It was one of NBC's most successful ventures in years and lasted well into the 1990s, led by advice host Sally Jessy Raphael (until her 1987 departure) and personal finance talker Bruce Williams.
NBC made its final radio station acquisition around this time: it bought Boston beautiful music outlet WJIB in 1983 from General Electric, which was divesting itself of its radio properties.^[33]