Live at Five (WNBC TV series)
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Live at Five is WNBC-TV's 5 p.m. weekday newscast broadcasting from NBC Studio 6B at 30 Rockefeller Center. A mix of news, features and interviews. The Live at Five concept was first introduced in 1979 by WNBC News Director Ron Kershaw and Bob Davis. Their first anchors were Pia Lindstrom and Melba Toliver. Jack Cafferty joined the anchor chair a few months later.
Live at Five was born of necessity. The 5 p.m. broadcast was part of a two-hour early news block called NewsCenter 4 which combined features and hard news, and attempted to compete with its competitors' old movies and syndicated programing. When ratings crumbled in 1980, WNBC decided to pour resources into its 6 p.m. newscast, which would feature its best reporters, while the 5 p.m. newscast would be more of an interview and lifestyle show with news headlines at the top of the show.
In October 1980, Sue Simmons joined the WNBC and Live at Five team from Washington's WRC-TV. She has had several co-anchors, or as Sue called them "anchor husbands", including Jack Cafferty, Tony Guida, Matt Lauer and Jim Rosenfield. From 1980 to 1991, legendary NBC announcer Don Pardo of Jeopardy! and Saturday Night Live fame did the talent introductions and other voice overs, usually live in the studio.
In the 1980s, the show was the talk of the town with guests ranging from Jimmy Carter to Orson Welles to Little Richard. The show's impressive guest lineup was fodder for a running joke on Late Night with David Letterman, which taped across the hall in Studio 6A at 30 Rockefeller Center, where Letterman complained that Live at Five got better guests than he did. Today, the show still maintains an impressive guest lineup, with everyone from Broadway stars to NFL football stars to politicians coming to Studio 6B to be interviewed.
Live at Five was originally cancelled in November 1991. Its replacement was "News 4 New York at 5", anchored by Simmons and Chuck Scarborough. This format didn't stay long, however - Simmons was paired with Matt Lauer for a new iteration of Live at Five, originating from NBC's Today Show Window on the World studios. Shortly afterwards, Live at Five was moved back to 30 Rock and adopted a more news-based format, which it has retained ever since. Today the show is called NewsChannel 4 Live at Five.
In 2005, Jim Rosenfeld jumped ship to return to WCBS-TV. His replacement is Perri Peltz, who worked for WNBC in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Interestingly though, the 5 p.m. edition of WABC-TV's Eyewitness News has two female anchors Diana Williams and Sade Baderinwa, and in April 2006, WCBS switched to the two females at 5pm format with Roz Abrams and Mary Calvi until November 6, 2006.
Several stations throughout the United States attempted to copy the Live at Five format or just rebranded their newscast "Live at Five" or some variant thereof. However no station reached the success, quality of guests, or national prominence that WNBC, the originator of the concept, did.