Meet the Press

Overview

Meet the Press began as an advertisement. In 1945, Lawrence Spivak — co-creator of the show alongside its first moderator, Martha Rountree — launched it as a radio program on the Mutual Broadcasting System, designed as a vehicle to promote The American Mercury, the money-losing magazine founded by H. L. Mencken that Spivak then owned (MediaVillage). Two years later it moved to NBC television, debuting November 6, 1947 — before a million American homes even owned a TV set — and became what that same history calls television’s longest-running program (MediaVillage). A show invented to sell magazines outlived the magazine business that invented it.

The format and its firsts

The original idea was disarmingly simple, and at the time entirely new: politicians and public figures answering unscripted questions from a panel of journalists (MediaVillage). Rountree’s own credo for the format was blunt: “I think it is important that the public should hear its elected officers speak out and take their stand in answer to direct questions without preparation or oratory. There is nothing so refreshing as unadorned conversation” (MediaVillage). The format produced genuine scoops. In 1949, a U.S. general disclosed on the program that the Soviet Union had likely built an atomic bomb; in 1950, Republican Thomas Dewey said he wouldn’t run for president again and first suggested Dwight Eisenhower as his party’s nominee; all three Kennedy brothers appeared, as did Martin Luther King Jr. (MediaVillage). In 1954, the show became the first news program to broadcast in color (MediaVillage).

Success bred imitation — and by 1990 the imitators were winning. Under moderator Garrick Utley, the Washington Post had declared in 1987 that “MTP is no longer at the top of the talk-show ratings race,” and viewership had fallen to an estimated 2.6 million from 10 million in 1967 (MediaVillage).

Success bred imitation. CBS launched Face the Nation in 1954; ABC answered in 1960 with Issues and Answers, which ran until 1981, when it was replaced by This Week with David Brinkley — the program that lives on, several host changes later, as simply This Week (MediaVillage). The rivalry is still the industry’s measuring stick: NBC’s own ratings releases track Meet the Press head-to-head against ABC’s This Week (NBC News).

The modern show is Tim Russert’s invention. Taking over in 1991, Russert — also NBC’s Washington bureau chief — replaced the panel format with one-on-one interviews, usually playing a subject’s own words back to them, and expanded the broadcast from 30 minutes to an hour (MediaVillage). At his sudden death in 2008, the program had been the top-rated Sunday political talk show for 353 of the previous 354 weeks (MediaVillage). Every president since Kennedy has appeared on the show — Donald Trump as a candidate in February 2016 and from the White House in June 2019 (MediaVillage).

The Welker era

Kristen Welker took the moderator’s chair on September 17, 2023, succeeding Chuck Todd (Adweek). She arrived with a national profile: she had moderated one of the 2020 presidential debates to strong reviews and had filled in for Todd on the program before taking it over (Adweek). NBC describes her as the program’s 13th moderator and the first journalist of color to moderate a Sunday public affairs program, leading a show that has now set the political agenda for more than 75 years (NBC News). The newsmaker pipeline continues: in February 2025, NBC announced an exclusive interview with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz for the February 9 broadcast (NBC News).

The ratings battle with ABC’s This Week is one Welker has been winning. In August 2026, Meet the Press ranked #1 among Sunday public affairs shows in the key A25-54 demographic, averaging 2.466 million total viewers — and on August 30 it led ABC by 114,000 viewers, extending a streak of outperforming ABC to 24 consecutive months (NBC News). The franchise has also stretched beyond Sunday mornings into Meet the Press NOW, a weekday streaming edition on NBC News NOW (NBC News).

What this profile does not claim

It does not repeat the frequently cited “first sitting president on a live TV news program” claim for Gerald Ford’s 1975 appearance — the only sources found were third-party TV listings, below this profile’s verification bar. It does not enumerate every moderator between Rountree and Welker. It does not assert that the show is the longest-running under every possible definition; the claim is attributed to MediaVillage’s retrospective history. And its ratings figures are a snapshot — August 2026 Nielsen data from NBC’s own release, not an independent audit of the full season.