Remembering 'NBC News Overnight' - The Best TV News Show Ever

Linda Ellerbee is retiring from television after a more than 40-year career. She's accomplished much, including a notably long stint at Nickelodeon where she created specials designed to put important news topics of the day in context for kids.

But for many fans - myself included - it's difficult to hear Ellerbee's name and not instantly think about the majestically wonderful hour-long late night newscast, NBC NEWS OVERNIGHT.

Young television fans might not realize that as recently as the late 1980s, many local TV stations went off the air during the middle of the night. Following the success of LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, NBC News head Reuven Frank launched NBC NEWS OVERNIGHT, primarily as an inexpensive way to expand the network's programming deep into the overnight hours.

While Frank might have visualized a show that was basically a bunch of re-purposed news clips tied together by live anchors, NBC NEWS OVERNIGHT was something much more. It was an wry, intelligent and magnificently written news program, so much so that jurors of the duPont Columbia Awards as "possibly the best written and most intelligent news program ever."

Original OVERNIGHT host Lloyd Dobyns had previously been hired by Frank to co-host the late night news-magazine WEEKEND, which NBC aired once a month when SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was on hiatus. The network later moved the show opposite CBS powerhouse 60 MINUTES, with predictably catastrophic results. But when the show moved to Sundays, it added Linda Ellerbee as a co-anchor and it was immediately clear that NBC had something special.

NBC NEWS OVERNIGHT was very similar to WEEKEND, including the sharp, sometimes poetic writing and an odd appreciation of pop culture and things not so "newsy." For an example of that, see this clip of the show below:




For all of his talent, Dobyns was apparently increasingly uncomfortable with the quirky style of the show and he was replaced a few months into the show's run by Bill Schechner. He clicked impressively well on-camera with Ellerbee and the result was a show that still stands as one of the best nightly newscasts in the history of television. In fact, for a show that only lasted 17 months (from July 5, 1982 to December 3, 1983), its style influenced nearly every late night news program which had aired since.

Below you'll find portions of the final episode of OVERNIGHT, which gives you a good idea of just what viewers have been missing all of these years since the show was cancelled: