NBC radio

Presidents of NBC Entertainment

Weaver also created several series for the network, Today (in 1952), Tonight Starring Steve Allen (in 1954, the first program in the Tonight Show franchise), Home (1954) and Wide Wide World (1955). Weaver strongly believed that broadcasting should educate as well as entertain, and required NBC shows to typically include at least one sophisticated cultural reference or performance per installment – including a segment of a Giuseppe Verdi opera adapted in the comedic style of Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca's groundbreaking Your Show of Shows. Weaver did not ignore NBC Radio and gave it a shot in the arm in 1955, at a time when network radio was dying and giving way to television, when he developed NBC Monitor, a weekend-long magazine-style block featuring an array of news, music, comedy, drama and sports, with rotating advertisers and some of the most memorable names in broadcast journalism, entertainment and sports that ran until 1975 (20 years after Weaver's departure). Weaver departed shortly afterward, following disputes with NBC chairman David Sarnoff, who believed that his ideas were either too expensive or too highbrow for company tastes. His respective successors, Robert Sarnoff and Robert Kintner standardized the network's programming practices with far less of the ambitiousness that characterized the Weaver years.