The first regularly scheduled American television newscast in history was made by NBC News on February 21, 1940, anchored by Lowell Thomas (1892–1981), and airing weeknights at 6:45 p.m.

[3] In June 1940, NBC, through its flagship station in New York City, W2XBS (renamed commercial WNBT in 1941, now WNBC) operating on channel one, televised 30¼ hours of coverage of the Republican National Convention live and direct from Philadelphia.

Due to wartime and technical restrictions, there were no live telecasts of the 1944 conventions, although films of the events were reportedly shown over WNBT the next day.

About this time, there were irregularly scheduled, quasi-network newscasts originating from NBC's WNBT in New York City (WNBC) and reportedly fed to WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia and WRGB in Schenectady, NY.

In 1948, NBC teamed up with Life magazine to provide election night coverage of President Harry S. Truman's surprising victory over New York governor Thomas E. Dewey.

In 1950, David Brinkley began serving as the program's Washington correspondent, but attracted little attention outside the network until paired with Chet Huntley in 1956.

"[8] NBC president Robert Kintner provided the news division with ample amounts of both financial resources and air time.

[5] In 1956, the network paired anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and the two became celebrities,[6] supported by reporters including John Chancellor, Frank McGee, Edwin Newman, Sander Vanocur, Nancy Dickerson, Tom Pettit, and Ray Scherer.

[9] During much of its 14-year run, it exceeded the viewership levels of its CBS News competition, anchored initially by Douglas Edwards and, beginning in April 1962, by Walter Cronkite.

"[7] Other reporters who covered the movement for the network included Sander Vanocur, Herbert Kaplow, Charles Quinn, and Richard Valeriani,[10] who was hit with an ax handle at a demonstration in Marion, Alabama in 1965.

[7] On November 22, 1963, NBC interrupted various programs on its affiliate stations at 1:45  p.m... to announce that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas.

Eight minutes later, at 1:53:12  p.m......, NBC broke into programming with a network bumper slide and Chet Huntley, Bill Ryan and Frank McGee informing the viewers what was going on as it happened.

About 40 minutes later, after word came that JFK was pronounced dead, NBC suspended regular programming and carried 71 hours of uninterrupted news coverage of the assassination and the funeral of the president—including the only live broadcast of the fatal shooting of Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, by Jack Ruby as Oswald was being led in handcuffs by law-enforcement officials through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.

[14] NBC's ratings lead began to slip toward the end of the 1960s and fell sharply when Chet Huntley retired in 1970; he died of cancer four years later, in 1974.

Despite the efforts of the network's eventual lead anchor, the articulate, even-toned Chancellor, and an occasional first-place finish in the Nielsens, Nightly News in the 1970s was primarily a strong second.

[5] By the end of the decade, NBC had to contend not only with a powerful CBS but also a surging ABC, led by Roone Arledge.

Tom Brokaw became sole anchor in 1983, after co-anchoring with Roger Mudd for a year, and began leading NBC's efforts.

On that occasion, NBC News laid off several of its in-house reporters, such as Kevin Corke, Jeannie Ohm, and Don Teague.

[24] On March 27, 2012, NBC News broadcast an edited segment from a 911 call placed by George Zimmerman before he shot Trayvon Martin.

The editing made it appear that Zimmerman volunteered that Martin was black, rather than merely responding to the dispatcher's inquiry, which would support a view that the shooting was racially motivated.

"[26] On December 13, 2012, NBC News reporter Richard Engel and his five crew members, Aziz Akyavaş, Ghazi Balkiz, John Kooistra, Ian Rivers, and Ammar Cheikh Omar, were kidnapped in Syria.

[41][51] In March 2024, NBC News hired Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2017 to 2024.

She made false claims of voter fraud after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, which she sought to overturn.

[52][53][54][55] After NBC hired her during her interview on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, McDaniel backtracked on her claims, saying that Biden won the 2020 election "fair and square" and condemned political violence.

In a statement, NBC News said, "We're disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we've used for many decades".

Small (1979–1981), Lawrence Grossman (1985–1988), Michael Gartner (1988–1993), Andrew Lack (1993–2001), Neal Shapiro (2001–2005), and Steve Capus (2005 – March 5, 2013).

In August 2013, Deborah Turness assumed the role as President of NBC News, becoming the first woman to head the division.

It has been available on iHeartRadio, iHeartMedia's online live audio and podcasting platform, on different supports (Web and smartphone apps) since July 2016.

In addition, the facility produced a 24-hour news service aimed at Latin American viewers called "Canal de Noticias, NBC.

After five years of not airing it in the Philippine airwaves, both NBC Nightly News and Today returned in November 2020 as the launch programs of TAP TV (NBC Nightly News was later moved to its sister network TAP Edge from January to October 2021, until they returned it to the said network in October 2021).