A World in Color

My wife often watches her own husband's broadcast on our kitchen computer screen, after 10 at night, when the day's work is done. My high-school-age son will occasionally catch a glimpse. My daughter at college says she enjoyed my last appearance on "The Daily Show." I don't want to ask when she last watched "Nightly News."

Our audience today is smaller, but it is fiercely loyal and expects a serious newscast. Friends report a new dynamic in their lives: as they get older, they find themselves watching the newscast they grew up with--when they're home to see it. Venerable names like Google notwithstanding, the three network evening newscasts still represent the largest single news audience in the nation.

On that Christmas Eve night in 1968, we turned on our new television set at the moment when the Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis after orbiting the moon for the first time. The first color television picture in our home was of our world. There was no way I could know, inside our cramped, glowing den on that cold night in upstate New York, that I would someday circle that very same planet several times over as a journalist. I remain fascinated at what television has to offer, and the places it can take me.

Williams is the managing editor and anchor of the "NBC Nightly News."

© 2006