- published: 14 Jun 2016
- views: 1937
Dateline NBC, or simply Dateline, is a weekly American television newsmagazine/reality legal show that is broadcast on NBC. It was previously the network's flagship news magazine, but now focuses mainly on true crime stories with only occasional editions that focus on other topics. The program airs Fridays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time (9:00 p.m. Eastern for special two-hour editions) and on most Sundays, outside of NFL football season, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time; special Saturday editions also occasionally air during the fall and winter months. Two-hour feature-length editions sometimes air on any given scheduled evening, often to fill holes in the primetime schedule on the program's respective nights due to program cancellations.
Dateline is historically notable for its longevity on the network. The program debuted on March 31, 1992, initially airing only on Tuesdays, with Stone Phillips and Jane Pauley serving as its co-anchors. Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric joined the program when the previously separate newsmagazine Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric was converted into Dateline Wednesday. Gradually, the program expanded with the addition of a third night (on Monday) in 1994 and a fourth night (on Friday) in 1997, peaking at five nights of airings each week (eventually adding a Sunday edition) in mid-1999 and 2000. The number of nights that the program aired on began to be reduced with the rise of equally-economic and popular reality television programming and the result of viewer exhaustion with the multiple-night format. Editions first began to be removed in the spring of 2001, with the main Tuesday slot being eliminated in 2003.
Charles Milles Manson (born Charles Milles Maddox, November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in the California desert in the late 1960s. Manson and his followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations over a period of five weeks in the summer of 1969. In 1971 he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the murders of seven people: actress Sharon Tate and four other people at Tate's home; and the next day, a married couple, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca; all carried out by members of the group at his instruction. He was convicted of the murders through the joint-responsibility rule, which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes committed by fellow conspirators in furtherance of the conspiracy's objective. His followers also murdered several other people at other times and locations, and Manson was also convicted for two of these other murders (of Gary Hinman and Donald "Shorty" Shea).