First aired on August 3, 1970, the program is currently the second most watched network newscast in the United States, behind ABC's World News Tonight.

Previous anchors have included John Chancellor, David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams and Kate Snow.

Among other news items, he covered the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, EDSA Revolution, Loma Prieta earthquake, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Hurricane Andrew.

[citation needed] As anchor, Brokaw conducted the first one-on-one American television interviews with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[citation needed] By 1997, NBC Nightly News had solidified its first place standing in the ratings, a spot it would retain solely for ten years.

The once-dominant CBS Evening News, anchored by Dan Rather, had lost a substantial portion of the audience it held during the Walter Cronkite era and slid to third place (where it still remains as of 2017[4]) in the viewership wars.

On September 11, 2001, Brokaw joined Katie Couric and Matt Lauer around 9:30 a.m., following the live attack on the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and continued to anchor all day, until after midnight.

Brokaw's final broadcast took place on December 1, 2004, ending 22 years on the Nightly News desk and a 21-year run as the network's chief newsman – a record tenure in NBC's history.

Brian Williams, a frequent substitute for Brokaw for NBC Nightly News, succeeded him as the program's permanent anchor on December 2, 2004.

The program held onto the #1 ratings spot among the network evening newscasts from Williams' first day, averaging about 10 million viewers each week until February 2007, when it slipped behind its closest competitor World News with Charles Gibson.

With the transition to Williams, the show recognized its past in its opening seconds, with small photos of past anchors and sets and the voices of John Cameron Swayze, Huntley, Brinkley, Chancellor, and Brokaw, as well as an orchestral version of the "G-E-C" NBC Chimes serving as an intro bumper, before going into the opening headlines summary read by Williams; this montage was discontinued on September 17, 2007 except for weekends and nights with substitute anchors until October 2007.

On December 4, 2006, Nightly News was presented with "limited commercial interruptions" through a sponsorship arrangement with Philips, marking the first time in its 36-year history that the newscast experimented with reduced advertising.

This came after he received criticism by U.S. soldiers for embellishing the story when a segment from the January 30, 2015, broadcast recounting the incident was posted on the program's Facebook page.

[11][12][13] On February 10, 2015, Williams was suspended without pay for six months due to the scandal which arose after he came under fire for fabricating a story about his reporting on the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.

[16] On June 18, 2015, NBC News and MSNBC chairman Andrew Lack announced that Lester Holt would become the main anchor of NBC Nightly News on a permanent basis effective on June 22, 2015, Holt was on a scheduled vacation on the day of the announcement, with Today presenter Savannah Guthrie serving as interim anchor of the broadcast that week.

[17] Holt previously served as interim anchor of the weeknight broadcasts from August 6, 2013 to September 2, 2013, when Williams went on medical leave from NBC News in order to undergo knee replacement surgery.

[21] On June 27, 2016, NBC Nightly News switched to a full 16:9 letterbox presentation, with the existing graphics package being re-positioned for the 16:9 format.

On October 10, 2016, the newscast debuted an entirely new on-air look with graphics originally optimized for the full 16:9 presentation, including a new program logo replacing variations of the previous one that had been used since November 8, 1999.

The rebrand includes a new on-air graphics scheme intended to create fewer distractions from the content of stories, as well as a new stylized “N” emblem (reminiscent of the network's 1979–86 "Proud N" logo) that can be split apart to display headlines, and is better-suited for digital platforms.

Four years later, NBC correspondents Ray Scherer and Robert MacNeil were partnered at the anchor desk on The Scherer-MacNeil Report on Saturdays, continuing until 1967.

For the first year after the Sunday broadcast began, Chancellor, Brinkley and McGee rotated on the program as they did on weeknights; there were no separate weekend anchors.

The weekend editions may occasionally be abbreviated or preempted due to NBC Sports telecasts that overrun into the program's time slot.

Weekend anchors have included the following: Bill Hanrahan handled the announcing duties for the newscast until his retirement in 1983, as he had done for the predecessor Huntley-Brinkley Report.

On December 17, 2007, the weeknight broadcast introduced an opening by Academy Award winning actor/producer Michael Douglas[31] until it was discontinued on June 18, 2015, and was replaced by Wolff.

Some of the package's contents were shown, albeit copied from the originals and edited for profanity, on the April 18, 2007, edition of NBC Nightly News, with anchor Brian Williams and NBC chief justice correspondent Pete Williams (no relation to Brian) examining the package's contents in the opening moments of the broadcast.

[citation needed] NBC's Seattle, Spokane, Detroit, Buffalo, Minneapolis, Boston, Plattsburgh and Bangor affiliates are separately available through most Canadian cable companies.