NBC Nightly News

The program succeeded the Huntley-Brinkley Report upon the retirement of Chet Huntley[?] in 1970. At first, a troika of anchors, John Chancellor[?], Frank McGee, and David Brinkley presented the news on a rotating basis.

McGee left several months after the show began to anchor the morning news program NBC Today Show[?], but died shortly after assuming the morning news duties of cancer. The anchor rotation was continued for a brief period with Chancellor and Brinkley; but pressure from the NBC sales department ended the rotating anchor experiment.

By that time, Chancellor was unable to attract the viewers Walter Cronkite was attracting on the CBS Evening News. During his tenure as NBC Nightly News anchor, he never was able to break the grip Cronkite had on the American news viewer, despite NBC's various changes to the show.

Tom Brokaw currently anchors NBC Nightly News. His presence attracted viewers, and during the 1990s, NBC Nightly News battled for the viewership lead with ABC World News Tonight, anchored by the urbane Canadian Peter Jennings[?]. The once-dominant CBS Evening News, anchored by Dan Rather and hobbled by corporate cost cutting, slid to third place in the viewership wars.