Election Night 1972 NBC News Highlights

Here is about 15 min or so of Election Night highlights from 1972. I don't have the full night from NBC Yet, but I do have ABC's coverage. If I can get 500 dollars to give to the Vanderbilt Archive I will, but not yet. NBC had the best coverage in 72, from the sets to the reporting. NBC also had the first PC for election coverage as well.

Love NBC's theme song for EN, it's so evil sounding, it gives me chills thinking about it because of what happened to Nixon.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• NBC
• News
• Election
• Night
• 1972
• Highlights
• Nixon
• McGovern
• Landslide
• Computers

[joebradio]

after watching this -- compared to the ABC and CBS footage from that night -- Chancellor did seem to have the smoothest deliverly -- I always thought he was a bit underrated since he was always in "Uncle Walters' shadow. It looked like Cronkite droned on a bit -- and Smith and Reasoner did Okay considering their limited resources .. Of course, the way people watched election returns was a bit different way back then

[efan2011]

@joebradio I agree with you, Chancellor is/was severely underrated. He was always the consummate reporter of the network newsman and women of the 1970's. He also came up with the idea of the state map that every channel has now, so he more or less changed it for the better.

Cronkite was very anti-Nixon, CBS as a whole was too. They tried to hide their bias but couldn't, Dan Rather was the worst of the bunch. NBC was to the Center in those days, and ABC was center-right

[efan2011]

@joebradio And here's one more piece of trivia I found: NBC almost beat CBS in the ratings that night. NBC was only about .2% of the overall rating off the lead. CBS had 36.6 Million folks watching, NBC had 36.4, and ABC was far behind with 16.2. It just shows how close the ratings race really was. NBC got revenge in 1976 by beating CBS because of the new map the network had in the studio. That was a smart move of Chancellor to do. Sorry for rambling so much!

[RayNDeere]

The American Independent Party candidate John Schmitz is the father of Mary Kay Letourneau

[efan2011]

@RayNDeere

Yep, and he also had his fair share of problems as well.

[harrymannjr10001]

when you get NBC's '72 election coverage let me know.

[vitoduval]

Colson said Nixon turned the TV off and said something petty

[vitoduval]

Nixon couldn;t stand John Chancellor

[altfactor]

At 5:45 of this clip, Tom Pettit reported that Nixon's campaign team expected him to carry 48 states (except Massachusetts and West Virginia).

They were close; they only lost Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.