GE NBCU Innovation: NBC & Universal Pictures Partnership Story
skip to secondary navigationWhen NBC joined forces with Universal Pictures in May 2004, it made headlines as a global media powerhouse with enormous influence in the industry. But the fact is that both companies had a remarkable history of collaboration and innovation long before the deal was inked.
The story of Universal began in 1906 when German immigrant Carl Laemmle opened his first nickelodeon theater. Three years later, he established the Independent Moving Picture Company of America, thus becoming involved in all three phases of film: production, distribution and exhibition. On March 15, 1915, Laemmle officially opened the gates to Universal City, the world's first self-contained community dedicated to moviemaking. Among the thousands of visitors in attendance that day was Thomas Edison, founding father of the General Electric Company. In October 1915, Edison returned to Universal City to dedicate the studio's state-of-the-art electric studio.
At about the same time, in New York City, a young Russian immigrant named David Sarnoff wrote a memo to his manager at the American Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company In his "Radio Music Box" memo, Sarnoff imagined a world connected by wireless communication that would bring information and entertainment into the home. This audacious vision would become reality in 1926 with the first broadcast of the National Broadcasting Company.
Through the remainder of the twentieth century, these two companies, Universal Studios and NBC, would create extraordinary legacies of accomplishment in the exciting new worlds of motion picture production and distribution, location-based entertainment, and radio and television production and broadcasting.
The partnership of NBC and what would become Universal Television extends as far back as September 6, 1950, with the television broadcast premiere of Stars Over Hollywood. Other memorable joint creative efforts include the 1957 westerns Wagon Train and Tales of Wells Fargo; The Virginian, the first 90-minute series, in 1962; the first made-for-television movie, See How They Run, in 1964; the groundbreaking NBC Mystery Movie series of the early seventies; and hit dramas such as The Rockford Files, Miami Vice and Law & Order.
On May 12, 2004, these parallel histories of the two companies converged, in the creation of a powerful new media entity, NBC Universal.