Rock Center with Brian Williams was an American weekly television newsmagazine that was broadcast by NBC and hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. It debuted on October 31, 2011, and aired on Mondays until January 30, 2012. It aired on Wednesdays starting February 8, 2012. It was produced in the Rockefeller Center's "Studio 3B", the same space as NBC Nightly News, and formerly that of the Today Show. Named after the location of the NBC News headquarters in the GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Center, the program was the first new NBC News program to launch in primetime since Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric debuted in 1993. Rock Center was designed to be more serious than NBC's existing prime time newsmagazine, Dateline NBC, which had increasingly delved into human interest and true crime stories, and had switched from a multiple-story format into a single story format. On May 10, 2012, NBC announced that Rock Center had been removed from the schedule for the remainder of the May 2012 sweeps period due to low ratings. Three days later, on May 13, 2012, NBC announced that Rock Center would be renewed for a second season during its 2012-13 upfront presentation. The series was also shown on MSNBC.
