Meet the Press Begins Its Television Run
On November 6, 1947, Meet the Press aired on television for the first time on NBC. The program, in which journalists question a public figure, had begun on radio two years earlier.
Published · Updated · 3 min read
From Radio to Television
Meet the Press began as a radio program on the Mutual network in October 1945. It was created by Martha Rountree, a radio producer, together with Lawrence E. Spivak, the publisher of the magazine The American Mercury, which the program promoted at first. In the format a guest answered questions from a panel of reporters. The show moved to NBC, and its first television broadcast was on November 6, 1947, from New York.
The Format
Each edition brought one guest, often a government official, a politician or an international figure, before a panel of newspaper and magazine reporters. The moderator introduced the guest and kept order. Rountree was the program's first moderator and its only female moderator until 2023, and she remained with it until 1953. Spivak served as a regular panelist and later as the host and producer, and he left the program in 1975, when President Gerald Ford was his guest on a one-hour edition.
A Sunday Fixture
Meet the Press settled into a weekly Sunday slot and became part of American political coverage. Its moderators after Spivak include Bill Monroe, Roger Mudd and Marvin Kalb, Tim Russert, who moderated from 1991 until his death in 2008, David Gregory, Chuck Todd and, from 2023, Kristen Welker. Presidents and candidates have appeared, and the program has often been used to announce official positions. NBC states that Meet the Press is the longest-running program on American television.
Records and Archives
Over its history the program changed with the medium. It moved from black-and-white to color, added interviews conducted by satellite from other countries, and later became available online. The Library of Congress describes Rountree as the person who developed the original idea for the program and who hosted it in its early years.
The Early Television Years
Accounts of the first television edition name James A. Farley, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as the guest. The program is produced in Washington, D.C., and has been broadcast on Sundays for most of its history. Its original format of a panel of reporters questioning one guest later gave way, in many editions, to interviews conducted mainly by the moderator. Other Sunday interview programs followed the same idea. CBS began Face the Nation in November 1954, and ABC started This Week with David Brinkley in 1981. The first television editions were broadcast live from New York, when only a small share of American homes owned a television set. NBC News now produces the program from its Washington bureau, and episodes are also distributed as a podcast.
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