''Weekend'' was an
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
television
news magazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio, or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories in greater depth than newspapers or new ...
hosted by Lloyd Dobyns.
''Weekend'' combined investigative reporting with light feature stories.
The show premiered Saturday Oct 19, 1974 and ran through 1979. ''Weekend'' aired the first Saturday night of each month from 11:30 PM to 1 AM Eastern time. Reruns of ''
The Tonight Show
''The Tonight Show'' is an American late-night talk show that has been broadcast on NBC since 1954. The program has been hosted by six comedians: Steve Allen (1954–1957), Jack Paar (1957–1962), Johnny Carson (1962–1992), Jay Leno (1992–2 ...
'' ran on the remaining Saturday nights of each month.
Season 2 opener aired Saturday October 4, 1975. The following weekend was the premiere of comedy skit show ''
NBC's Saturday Night''. Due to the popularity of ''Weekend'', that first ''SNL'' included a skit named "''
Weekend Update''". This "tip-of-the-hat" to ''Weekend'' has been part of every SNL show since.
By the end of season 1, ''Weekend'' had attracted a
cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The latter is often called a cult classic. A film, boo ...
. Fans dubbed the first weekend of each month a ''Weekend'' weekend. "Is this a ''Weekend'' weekend?" was often heard around office water coolers.
More
The program was hosted by
Lloyd Dobyns, who also did much of the reporting. The show's creator and executive producer was past (and future) president of
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...
,
Reuven Frank
Reuven Frank (December 7, 1920 – February 5, 2006) was an American broadcast news executive.
Life and career
Born Israel Reuven Frank (he later dropped his first name) to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, he earned a bachelor's degree in so ...
.
Together, Dobyns and Frank were largely responsible for the distinctive writing and quirky style of the program. The opening theme was the guitar intro to "Jumpin' Jack Flash
"Jumpin' Jack Flash" is a song by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released as a non-album single in 1968. Called "supernatural Delta blues by way of Swinging London" by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine, the song was seen as the band's retu ...
" by The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...
. As a forward-focused executive, Frank brought in a woman, Clare Crawford-Mason, as the show's producer.
In 1978, after four years of critical success and moderately good ratings for that hour, NBC moved ''Weekend'' to prime time
Prime time, or peak time, is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television shows. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
. After airing once a month in various time slots in September, October, and November, the network placed the program weekly on Sunday nights at 10 P.M. Eastern time starting in December 1978. Linda Ellerbee
Linda Ellerbee (born Linda Jane Smith; August 15, 1944) is an American journalist, anchor, producer, reporter, author, speaker and commentator, noted as longtime Washington correspondent for NBC News and host of '' NBC News Overnight''. She is ...
was added as Dobyns' co-host and co-lead reporter. Placed against strong programs on ABC and CBS, the show eventually died of poor ratings. A few years later, Ellerbee and Dobyns reunited to anchor another late-night NBC news program, ''NBC News Overnight
''NBC News Overnight'' was a television news program on the NBC television network that aired weekday mornings from 1:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. Central) Mondays through Thursdays and 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 ...
''.
The program was known for an offbeat format, a somewhat less serious tone than such programs as ''60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style o ...
''; comic relief included the use of humorous images (e.g., a trio of magazine covers, ''New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
'', ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'',
and the completely fictitious ''New Yorkest''), and the occasional animated cartoon, such as '' Mr. Hipp''. At the end of each broadcast, until the program began airing weekly, a sequence would be played of a rotating phonograph
A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...
record with voiceover
Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique used in radio, television, filmmaking, theatre, and other media in which a descriptive or expository voice that is not part of the narrative (i.e., non- ...
explaining when the next broadcast would take place.
In the spring of 1978, when ''Weekends late-night run ended, Dobyns noted that "Your Subscription Has Expired", but stated that ''Weekend'' would be back that fall, in prime-time.
At the end of the last broadcast in 1979, the voice intoned, "...there will be no more ''Weekends''."
References
{{reflist
1974 American television series debuts
1979 American television series endings
1970s American television news shows
NBC late-night programming
NBC News
Peabody Award–winning television programs
1970s American late-night television series