When Kristen Welker was named host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 2023, she went back and re-watched pivotal episodes and interviews conducted by the show’s legendary moderator Tim Russert.
Russert, who died in 2008, reinvented “Meet the Press” in 1991 when he moved away from the show’s original press conference format and turned it into a show known for its one-on-one conversations with politicians and newsmakers.
“I wanted to revisit so many of those moments,” Welker says. “And what struck me was the interviews that he did that were for the history books, like interviewing former vice president Dick Cheney at Camp David after the U.S. had gone to war, and also some of the lighter moments on the show — like when he interviewed Yogi Berra, they talked about some of his famous sayings and their shared love of baseball and sports, and how that was so much a part of the American experience.”
“Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in television history. It launched as a radio show in 1945 before moving to the fledgling NBC television network in 1947. That means the show will hit its 80-year milestone next year, just a year after NBC marks its 100th. “We like to go big here at NBC, so we’re already talking about it,” Welker says of the anniversary.
