Long-Running Nightly News Program Unveils New Logo

By Michael Hein

NBC News just changed up the look for an iconic show, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. The show has been on the air since 1970 and has had minimal changes to its graphic design since at least 2015, according to a report by Variety. Now, the show has a brand new logo with a unique function for digital viewers.

The Nightly News logo now shows the NBC peacock symbol over a large uppercase letter "N" with a diagonal slash through it, doubling up the letter to hint at the show's alliterative title. The logo will split down this line whenever a new chyron or headline appears on the show, which NBC said is meant to distinguish it from the competition. In an announcement by the network, executive Marc Greenstein said that he hoped the new design would create some continuity across different devices and platforms for viewers who might watch Nightly News on broadcast TV, the NBC app or on YouTube where it streams for free.

"We want to meet people where they want to consume our products," Greenstein said. "We wanted to be a little more modern, a little more accessible." The new look will be less cluttered overall, with the intent of putting more focus on anchor Lester Holt as he reads the news or on the footage being shown.

The new logo even has a name – Tinker, named after former NBC chairman Grant Tinker. NBC plans to unveil the new graphic on Thursday and then put it into full-time use on Monday, June 19. Thursday will be the 75th anniversary of NBC's nightly news program on TV, and the network is pulling out all the stops.

NBC Nightly News premiered in August of 1970 replacing a similar daily news show called The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Early on, the show had a rotating cast of anchors and one of its defining characteristics was that it had a news desk in Washington D.C. and another in New York City so that reporters were always close to the action. Still, the show did not really become a heavy hitter in the industry until Tom Brokaw became the anchor in 1982.

Brokaw anchored NBC Nightly News until 2004 when the job passed to Brian Williams. Williams held the job until 2015 when he was caught in a lie about his time in Iraq covering the war for NBC. Williams claimed that he had been in a helicopter shot down by enemy fire when in fact he had been in a helicopter that made a controlled emergency landing due to a sandstorm. The scandal outraged veterans and NBC ultimately chose to reassign Williams, who is now an anchor on MSNBC instead.

Since then, Lester Holt has been the lead anchor on NBC Nightly News and it looks like he will hold that job through the upcoming changes to its look and format. NBC Nightly News airs on weeknights at 6:30 p.m. ET on NBC and is available to watch on the NBC News app, the website or on the network's YouTube channel.

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