The collection consists of selected records of the nation's oldest broadcasting network, which was founded in 1926 as a programming service and which continued to operate for many years as a subsidiary of RCA. Although incomplete at the highest levels, the collection offers representative coverage of day-to-day operations in advertising, public relations, research, sales, television, and news and public affairs broadcasting from the 1930's through the 1950's. Included are numerous internal memoranda, correspondence, reports, logs, scripts, promotional material and publications, scenic designs, photographs, and a few production files; legal and financial records are scarce. There are partial indexes to prominent correspondents, NBC employees, and program titles.

The collection includes a small group of Organizational Charts and Lists and then is arranged into three main parts: integrated central files, primarily 1926-1942 (100 feet); more recent, functionally-arranged office files (244 feet); and a library of scripts (99 feet) and recordings.

The CENTRAL FILES contain correspondence, primarily with individuals and organizations outside NBC; internal exchanges between departments, affiliates, and owned and operated stations; and files on the early development of television. Many subjects are treated including programming; relations with sponsors, advertising agencies, radio personalities, foreign broadcasters, and governmental agencies; governmental regulation; competition with CBS; and news, educational, and religious broadcasting.

The OFFICE FILES relate to the Advisory Council, which reviewed network policy and standards; several corporate-level executives; and the Public Relations, Corporate Relations, Operations, Public Affairs, Radio, Television, and the Owned-and-Operated and Spot Sales Divisions.

Corporate executives represented include John F. Royal, vice-president for programming, international relations, and television during the 1930's and 1940's, and Niles Trammell and Sylvester L. Weaver, Jr., each of whom was both president and chairman of the board. Several other executives who rose to prominence are represented by papers filed with the departments with which they were affiliated.

Public Relations records (36 feet) include papers of William F. Brooks, vice-president in charge; Richard A.R. Pinkham, vice-president for advertising; and Sidney H. Eiges, vice-president for press and publicity, and records generated in the advertising, continuity acceptance, and press and publicity subdivisions of the department. Topics treated include audience, broadcast, and station promotion; newspaper and magazine advertising; censorship; and relations with advertising agencies and affiliates. Numerous advertising kits and samples of publicity materials are included. One box of continuity acceptance records may be used only with the permission of the director of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Corporate Relations files (12 1/2 feet) consist chiefly of information on various studies and reports on television audience characteristics and sales effectiveness which were prepared or commissioned by the research and planning section of the department and files of Easton Woolley, director of station relations during the 1940's.

Operations files (18 feet) consist of fragmentary records generated in the business and administration, engineering, facilities operations, and integrated services divisions. (Earlier related operations records are filed with the television records). Included are the papers of William S. Hedges, vice-president for integrated services. Among the miscellaneous documentation are engineering logs and monthly reports; floor plans, scenic designs, and proper lists for programs aired from the New York studios during the 1950's; reports of New York technical directors; operational files for Wide, Wide World; and copies of miscellaneous corporate publications and speeches by NBC executives collected by the network library.

The records of the Spot Sales and Owned-and-Operated Stations Division include material on sales and program arrangements and other day-to-day relations between the network and its owned and affiliated stations. Prominent are the papers of John M. Gaines and Carleton D. Smith, both of whom served as vice-presidents. Actual station files include logs of WMAQ, the company-owned station in Chicago, and office correspondence, logs, and news scripts of the WNBC/WNBC-TV, the network's flag station in New York City. Notable among the WNBC/WNBC-TV records are papers generated by Ted Cott and Hamilton Shea, two station managers, and production files for the Open Mind, a public affairs program.

Public Affairs records are extensive (50 feet) and include material on the news and special events, public service, and sports subdivisions, as well as papers generated by Davidson Taylor, vice-president in charge, and William F. Brooks, vice-president for news and special events. News and special events files include information on the writing and gathering of news stories and film, the coordination of domestic and foreign correspondents, and the development of mobile broadcasting. Also included are production files from producers Reuven Frank, Eliot Frankel, Irving Gitlin, Gerald Green, and Ted Mills for programs such as Background, Chet Huntley Reporting, Frank McGee Report, Nation's Future, and Outlook. Public service materials are useful for examination of religious and educational broadcasting. This section includes production files generated by Doris Ann, Wade Arnold, and Dorothy Culbertson for programs such as Catholic Hour, Continental Classroom, Frontiers of Faith, Living, and NBC University Theatre. The sports files are small, though there are some papers and scripts pertaining to the work of announcer-sports director Bill Stern.

Radio Network files (16 feet) divide into two smaller sections, programming and sales, and papers of network vice-presidents Ted Cott and William J. Fineshriber, Jr. The sales records include a selection of contracts, presentations, and exchanges with advertisers and advertising agencies; the programming files contain miscellaneous routine material, with the production files created by Albert L. Capstaff for Monitor being perhaps the most notable. Also included are two boxes of correspondence from Sidney N. Strotz and Clarence N. Menser, two vice-presidents for programming during the early 1940's.

Television Network files (43 feet) also divide into program and sales sections (the second being somewhat more fully represented) and files of Noran Kersta and Carleton D. Smith, both directors for television operations during the late 1940's, and Edward Madden, a vice-president for television operation and sales during the early 1950's. These files provide extensive documentation on the early day-to-day development of television by the network. Programming material includes papers from such executives as Charles C. Barry and Michael H. Dann, who were responsible for the development and sale of new programming ideas during the 1950's, and Samuel Chotzinoff, supervisor of classical music broadcasting. Production files largely represent the work of Mort Abrahams on Producers' Showcase. Although the sales files are generally routine in character, they include papers of John K. Herbert and Walter D. Scott, two executives who later rose to prominence within the corporate structure.

The SCRIPT AND RECORDING LIBRARY is also incomplete, although many titles have partial representation. Best represented in the script section are Big Show, Don Ameche's Real Life Stories, Emphasis, Ford Theatre, From These Roots, Great Moments in History, Great Plays, Home Is What You Make It, Howdy Doody, Huntley-Brinkley Report, Jack Armstrong-All American Boy, News on the Hour, Pepper Young's Family, Today, True Story, and Your United Nations. Most complete among the recordings are America United, American Forum of the Air, Author Meets the Critics, Meet the Press, and Viewpoint. Numerous other titles are unprocessed.

How to Use the Collection:

For most effective use of the National Broadcasting Company Records, the researcher may find it helpful to take time for a preliminary understanding of the provenance and overall arrangement of the papers, as it was the original deposit agreement, the character of NBC's record practices, and the nature of the records themselves that determined many of the omissions and peculiarities of the collection.

During the 1940's NBC instituted a records management program, the so-called Central Files, the purpose of which was to provide for centralized storage of papers not in everyday use and to provide for orderly destruction of documents after their value had ended (usually, but not always, a retention period of seven years). Although the primary emphasis at NBC was on records disposal, throughout this period one group of papers was retained for its historic value; this is the portion of the collection now designated by the title Central Files. In 1958 NBC entered into an agreement with the Mass Communications History Center of the State Historical Society whereby materials were made available to the center as they were authorized for destruction. Some types of documentation were specifically excluded, however, such as financial and legal records and David Sarnoff's papers. At no time was provision made for systematic, wholesale transfer of archival materials. This agreement was in force between 1958 and 1974, and during this period the center staff was free to make selections from the records which they deemed valuable. In some cases in which materials were routine or extensive only a sample was brought from the NBC offices in New York. Those materials which were not brought to the Society building were destroyed by NBC. Thus the present collection represents not the complete NBC Archives, but rather a selection of papers from those records which were authorized for destruction and offered to the center during those years between 1958 and 1974.

With the exception of the script and recording library, the overall arrangement scheme of the collection corresponds closely to the arrangement of the papers under the NBC centralized storage program. There are some exceptions to this, but these primarily relate to the television network, the responsibility for which was moved repeatedly within the corporate structure. In these cases the records have been filed approximately as they would have been located within the corporate structure during the late 1950's. The arrangement of the collection may be readily glimpsed in the table of contents, but a researcher desiring a more detailed knowledge of corporate structure in historical perspective will find a number of charts and employee lists located in the first box of the collection.

Differences between the three parts of the collection (CENTRAL FILES, OFFICE FILES, and SCRIPT AND RECORDING LIBRARY) may be briefly stated. The Central Files consist of older papers, primarily 1926-1942, with some items as late as 1950, in which the various offices have been integrated into five types of subject files (correspondence and departmental, historical, station, and television files). The Office Files are more recent, primarily dating from the late 1940's and 1950's, and are functionally arranged. Scripts and program recordings unsupported by any supplementary documentation make up the third portion of the collection.

Each unit of the collection is separately described, with its particular container list following. This description provides information on the records' creator, their scope and content, and any peculiarities of arrangement. Within each unit the materials have been subdivided in the manner which seemed most appropriate.

Researchers using the office files will find that many of the same sub-categories appear repeatedly (advertisers, correspondents, departmental, program, subject, and station files). This scheme permits researchers to find a topic not only in its own functional location, but also to trace it in relation to other departments and divisions. The researcher interested in television news broadcasting in the 1950's, for example, will find the main records of news and special events executives and employees located in the Public Affairs Division, but further information can be found in other sections of the collection, and this information in some cases may fill in gaps within the primary records. Thus, some information on sales of the news programs to advertisers is located in the Television Network Sales Section and material on promotion of these programs may be found in the Public Relations Division. The same type of functional approach can be readily applied for tracing information on individuals or programs. In other cases, the researcher must be prepared to make other kinds of linkages. For example, significant amounts of program information is filed not under the name of the program or its star performer, but under the name of the sponsor or the advertising agency. Useful aids for obtaining such sponsor information are contained in the archival collections of A. C. Nielsen, C. E. Hooper, Inc., and the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting or in a file of Network Advertisers contained in the (1939-1954) papers of Sackett D. Miles, manager of NBC's radio sales services and traffic, and in Harrison B. Summers' A Thirty Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 1926-1956.

Arrangement within the Central Files is primarily chronological by year, and with the exception of the correspondence section, access is self-explanatory. For the correspondence section, there are two special indexes found at the end of Part 4 of this finding aid. The correspondents index list includes substantive references which are not listed in the container list under the correspondent's own name. The second index includes all scripts in the section, many of which were not aired or for which broadcast data could not be found.

The script library divides into radio and television sections, with individual programs arranged thereunder alphabetically by title. The only exception to this arrangement are those materials for which there was only a single broadcast. These titles are arranged alphabetically by name or supplied name under the heading "specials."