NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News airs from Studio 3B, located on floor 3 of the NBC Studios in the GE Building, which is located in the Rockefeller Center of Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It currently claims the highest ratings for its morning, evening, and Sunday interview programs. Its current president is Steve Capus.

The first American television newscast in history was made by NBC News on February 21, 1940, anchored by Lowell Thomas and airing weeknights at 6:45 pm. In June 1940, NBC, through its flagship station in New York City, W2XBS (renamed commercial WNBT in 1941, now WNBC) operating on channel one, televised thirty and a quarter hours of coverage of the Republican National Convention live and direct from Philadelphia. The station used a series of relays from Philadelphia to New York and on to upper New York State, for re-broadcast on W2XB Schenectady (now WRGB), making this among the first "network" programs of NBC Television. Due to wartime restrictions, there were no live telecasts of the 1944 conventions, although films of the events were reportedly shown over WNBT the next day.

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network," due to its stylized peacock logo, created originally for color broadcasts.

Formed in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), NBC was the first major broadcast network in the United States. In 1986, control of NBC passed to General Electric (GE), with GE's $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. GE had previously owned RCA and NBC until 1930, when it had been forced to sell the company as a result of antitrust charges.

After the 1986 acquisition, the chief executive of NBC was Bob Wright, until he retired, giving his job to Jeff Zucker. The network is currently part of the media company NBCUniversal, which is a joint venture of Comcast and General Electric since 2011 (and before that, jointly owned by GE and current Universal Music Group parent Vivendi). As a result of the merger, Zucker left NBC and was replaced by Comcast executive Steve Burke.

News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third-party or mass audience.

One theory claims that the English word "news" developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of "new". In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German neues. Similar developments are found in the Slavic languages – the Czech and Slovak noviny (from nový, "new"), the cognate Polish nowiny and Russian novosti – and in the Celtic languages: the Welsh newyddion (from newydd) and the Cornish nowodhow (from nowydh).

Before the invention of newspapers in the early 17th century, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires.

The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC). This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure.