The longest-running early-morning network television program, the Today show premiered on NBC on January 14, 1952, just months after the first live coast-to-coast television broadcast in the United States. Aired live from New York at 7 a.m. Mondays through Fridays, the two-hour show—the prototype of the news-magazine format—added a live Saturday program in the 1990s. By the late 1990s, nearly half a century after its origin, the Today show was still relying on its original format: a combination of news, interviews with leading newsmakers, features on topics such as health, personal finance, and food, and entertainment segments.

Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, who developed Your Show of Shows and the Tonight show, created the Today show as a type of broadcast news magazine that could be watched in segments while viewers ate breakfast or prepared to go to work or school. It premiered when television sets were a rarity and...