NBC Radio Network
US radio network, business division of National Broadcasting Company
The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network (also known as the NBC Red Network from 1927 to 1942) was an American commercial radio network which was in continuous operation from 1926 through 1999. Along with the NBC Blue Network, it was one of the first two nationwide networks established in the United States. Its major competitors were the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), founded in 1927, and the Mutual Broadcasting System, founded in 1934. In 1942, NBC was required to divest one of its national networks and so it sold NBC Blue, which was soon renamed the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). After this separation, the Red Network continued as the NBC Radio Network.
For the first 61 years of its existence, NBC was owned by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) with New York City radio station WEAF (renamed WNBC in 1946, WRCA in 1954 and again as WNBC in 1960) as its flagship station. Following the emergence of television as the dominant entertainment medium and much of NBC Radio's talent migrating both to CBS and NBC television, the network made multiple investments in programming in hopes of retaining relevance. These included the weekend program umbrella Monitor (1955–1975), the all-news focused NBC News and Information Service (1975–1977) and the talk radio service NBC Talknet, all of which encountered varying degrees of success and failure.
Following General Electric's purchase of RCA in late 1986, GE sold the NBC Radio Network to Westwood One in 1987. Westwood One had acquired Mutual in 1985 and gradually, the operations of both networks were combined.
“NBC Radio Network” enters the record as uS radio network, business division of National Broadcasting Company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Radio, Network and radio can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“NBC Radio Network” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Radio, Network and radio provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q58037172. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1942, 1926 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “NBC Radio Network” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.