[3] Dateline was the first "multi-night" franchise that "established brand power by 'stripping' editions," a strategy by NBC's entertainment division to place the program in the same time slot every week.

NBC capitalized on its relationship with CNBC and MSNBC by airing repackaged stories seen on past Dateline broadcasts on the retrospective series Headliners and Legends and Time and Again.

Dateline's footage showed a sample of a low-speed accident in which the fuel tank exploded; the explosion during the crash test would later be discovered to have been staged by an expert witness for hire against GM, Bruce Enz of The Institute for Safety Analysis.

Acting on a tip from someone involved with the Dateline crash test, investigators with FaAA searched through 22 junkyards in Indiana before finding the charred wreckage of the GM pickups.

[6] It was also later revealed that the Dateline report had been dishonest about the fuel tanks rupturing and the alleged 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) speed at which the collision was conducted.

On February 8, 1993, after announcing the lawsuit, GM conducted a highly publicized point-by-point rebuttal in the Product Exhibit Hall of the General Motors Building in Detroit that lasted nearly two hours.

[9][10] The General Motors lawsuit and the subsequent settlement were arguably the most devastating blows for NBC in a series of reputation damaging incidents during the 1990s and early 2000s.

In August 2007, Dateline reporter Michelle Madigan attempted to secretly record hackers admitting to crimes at that year's DEF CON in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[13] To Catch a Predator was a special series of reports, hosted by Chris Hansen, featuring hidden camera sting operations that bust potential sex offenders who carry out online chats with children with the intent of luring them to meet in person and engage in illegal sexual activity.

The stings are conducted in partnership with Perverted-Justice, and begin for each potential offender with recordings of online chats of him with a "decoy" employed with the organization, posing as minor, generally between the ages of 12 and 15.

The Widower takes viewers behind the scenes of a decade-long investigation into Thomas Randolph, an eccentric Las Vegas man accused of killing his wife Sharon.

With hundreds of hours of exclusive footage, Dateline NBC veteran producer Dan Slepian captures the confounding murder investigation that soon reveals Sharon was Randolph's sixth wife - and the fourth to die under mysterious circumstances.

[22] The Friday night edition of Dateline features special emphasis on true crime stories, which previously included the "To Catch a Predator" series.

These included Dateline: Survivor, in which a person recounts a near-death experience and their eventual rescue; Dateline Timeline, in which a popular product, person and music single are shown/played that viewers are invited to guess what year it was from; State of the Art, explaining how a special effect or stunt in a movie was technically accomplished; Consumer Alert, in which common consumer complaints or issues (such as food safety and products of suspect quality that may be dangerous) are investigated, Dateline Hidden Camera Investigation, a story using hidden cameras to focus on an issue of public concern; and Newsmakers, light interviews with major figures in politics, entertainment, and business, as well as regular people in the news.

In the 1990s, a common week would feature several "signature segments," breaking news, updates on past stories shown on the program, multi-part investigations, and interviews.

Repackaged hour-long true crime episodes of Dateline air on various cable and satellite channels such as Investigation Discovery, E!, USA Network (E!

On September 25, 2017, Dateline began airing archived true crime-focused episodes in daily broadcast syndication; the NBC branding is completely removed.

[29] Dateline is broadcast in Canada, mainly through NBC and MyNetworkTV affiliates from U.S. border cities (such as KING-TV and KZJO in Seattle, WDIV-TV and WADL in Detroit, and WGRZ-TV and WNYO-TV in Buffalo, New York) that are widely available in that country; until the fall of 2022, new editions of the show were not simulcast on a Canadian network nationwide, though many of the same Canadian counterparts to the cable networks mentioned in the syndication section air the repackaged Dateline on... episodes as a part of their own schedules (especially those containing domestic stories), and some other American stations airing in Canada carry the Dateline syndicated package outside of network hours.

Since the fall of 2022, Citytv simultaneously airs new episodes of Dateline with NBC in Canada (with domestic advertising), a rarity as Canadian networks do not generally simulcast American newsmagazines.