Overview
Weekend Today is currently the branding of the weekend editions of Today, an American morning news and talk program that airs daily on NBC. Weekend editions of Today, began with the launch of the Sunday edition of the program on September 20, 1987.
The Saturday edition of the program titled Saturday Today (started March 2022) broadcast live in alignment with the weekday editions of Today from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. (Since 2017, however, the Saturday broadcast is frequently shortened by a half-hour (sometimes even shorter/preempted due to earlier sports start times) to accommodate Premier League soccer matches or other sports events that start before 1:00 p.m. ET, allowing NBC stations to also accommodate programs from The More You Know block displaced from their normal timeslots to fulfill educational content quotas.) Some affiliates outside the Eastern Time Zone air it live, and others on tape-delay. Thus, it may air on some NBC stations as early as 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. local time.
Meanwhile, the Sunday edition, titled Sunday Today with Willie Geist since April 17, 2016, airs from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. ET. Some NBC affiliates choose to air local morning newscasts before and after both Saturday and Sunday editions of the program.
History
The Sunday edition of Today (titled Sunday Today) premiered on September 20, 1987, and was originally hosted by Maria Shriver and Boyd Matson, with Garrick Utley as news anchor and Al Roker as weather anchor. The program was broadcast from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., followed by Meet the Press. It was the second morning news program to run weekend editions, CBS previously attempted a six-day-a-week morning news program under the "Morning" banner in 1979, the only surviving remnant of which is the newsmagazine CBS News Sunday Morning.
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