NBC Nightly News is turning 75 this week. Meghan Rafferty is executive producer on the program, the only female E.P. on the three evening broadcast newscasts.
Rafferty joined NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt as senior producer in 2017 and has been executive producer since 2021. Before coming on board at NBC News, she spent a decade at CNN, where she produced The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Amanpour. She had interned on NBC’s Weekend Today back in 2006.
Rafferty described her role on Nightly News as a “dream job.”
“I love being able to inform so many Americans every evening and really help communicate the most important stories of the day to them,” she said.
NBC Nightly News won the Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast in 2022. Through June 4 in 2022-2023 season-to-date ratings, per Nielsen, ABC’s World News Tonight has averaged 8,201,000 total viewers, NBC Nightly News has 6,856,000 and CBS Evening News has averaged 4,974,000. In the 25-54 demo, ABC has 1,318,000, NBC has 1,113,000 and CBS 782,000.
For their part, CBS and ABC have also spent 75 years in the evening news game.
Rafferty spoke with B+C about NBC Nightly News’s milestone, how the newscast has evolved over the years, and how Lester Holt sets it apart.
An edited transcript follows.
BC: When you were an intern on Weekend Today, did you foresee a day when you would be exec producer on one of NBC’s newscasts?
Meghan Rafferty: Weekend Today was my first broadcast experience, and I loved every minute of it. It changed the course of my career. I definitely feel like that started the wheels turning on wanting to work in visual journalism. I just really loved the way that what we do communicates to viewers. That changed my life. The executive producers and the senior team at the time, I definitely dreamed of someday being able to follow in their footsteps.
BC: How has Nightly News evolved since you came on board six years ago?
MR: What I learned during the pandemic especially is just to lean into that depth that viewers are craving, try to answer those questions that people have, and really capitalize on original reporting, which is what NBC News is doing widely. It’s a great time to be the EP, because there's so much to partner on with investigations, and there's just so much reporting happening. That's really what I want.
What I strive every night to do is give viewers those most urgent breaking stories at the top of the show, but then also something that they might not expect, that they might not know, with our in-depth features in the later bits. That's what I love, weaving that all together every night. Working with those teams on those stories for months and months — it's a really cool experience.
BC: What does Nightly News offer that its competitors maybe don't do?
MR: It's that depth. We try to remember that people are getting information all day long. And so I really try to make sure that we have something that's distinct, that has original reporting, that has something exclusive, that has an interview that you won't see anywhere else. That's what I'm trying to give viewers, something that every night if they tune into Nightly, they're getting something different than what they've seen all day.
BC: With so many news sources outside of the evening newscasts available to consumers, do you wrestle with how to find and offer something different?
MR: What I try to do is just really focus on what we're able to give viewers because of the strength of our news organization. We have so many reporters, we have so much content being driven out of NBC News, and that's such a strength. There have always been a lot of [news] papers and sources and websites. But I think that what makes us so special is that we drive a lot of that journalism internally. And so when you see NBC News, you're getting something that is well reported. You're getting something different. You're getting a trusted brand, but you're also getting something that we're doing ourselves.
It's something to be very proud of.
BC: How did the pandemic change the way the broadcast comes together?
MR: I really try to center myself in thinking about what viewers across the country want–what they need to know, what they're curious about. That curiosity during the pandemic was just such a moment because I realized, we always know what we do is so important. Our job is to inform and to hold people accountable. That mission became so clear during the pandemic, and I just really try to make the time for that depth, make the time to answer those questions that people have, and remember that we have a very important mission and job to do, as far as informing people.
The pandemic also made us better collaborators–it broke down a lot of walls for us. It made us closer together, with our teams in different places, but it also made us realize the importance of working together and the strength of it. We all came closer together as an organization, and I think it's only made us stronger.
BC: Tell me about the stress of calling the shots on a live newscast. Does that get easier over time?
MR: I've worked in news for such a long time and I really just enjoy it. I love those moments up until the broadcast. I love covering breaking news. I love the months-long investigations.
I don't get stressed, I just get very focused.
BC: Any changes coming up, whether it's a new segment, new talent, anything new and different for Nightly News?
MR: What we just did, we're gonna keep doing, which I really love. We sent Lester to Florida two weeks ago. We planned a two-day, in-depth trip there to capitalize on getting Lester not just at the forefront of a hurricane or a disaster, but really return to a story. We want to keep doing that.
We went to Fort Myers Beach. We spent months getting it together–an in-depth piece on insurance struggles that people were having on the ground there. And we got such an outpouring for doing it. We partnered with our affiliates on the ground, and we had the reporters contribute to the program.
We want to keep doing that, especially within the U.S. Going to our viewers and meeting them where they are, and telling the stories that resonate with viewers all around the country–it takes Lester out of the studio and gets him on the road, in the field as the reporter. Obviously we'll send him to all the breaking news that we do already, but he just really shines in the field.
It’s a great way of going and seeing it for ourselves. It was very powerful doing that in Fort Myers Beach, seeing the rubble piled up, the houses that are condemned, eight months [after Hurricane Ian]. We're excited to do more of those trips.
BC: Tell me something about Lester that viewers may not know.
MR: He loves music and the depth of his knowledge about music, whether it's rock or jazz, it's just really astounding. We recently had John Fogerty on the show. He came into 30 Rock and played a jam with Lester. He actually got the play on stage with Fogerty at Radio City. It's just really cool to see that side of Lester because he is such a great musician and really appreciates other great musicians. Seeing the passion that Lester has for the arts is really a lot of fun.
BC: How would you describe Lester performing on stage? Similar to how he is on the set?
MR: He is calm, cool and collected. I love working with him because he's so smart and he cares so much about what we do and how we do it.
