Live at Five (WNBC TV series)
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 Rosenfeld. For most of the 1980s, legendary NBC annoucer
Don Pardo 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
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. This now has the top 3 newscasts at 5pm with a dual female anchor team, with only the last place team (
WNYW) having a male and a female co-anchor team.
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.
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WNBC: Perri Peltz Returns To WNBC As Co-Anchor, Live At Five
