Broadcast Pioneers

Frank McGee (1921-1974) was an American television journalist, best known for his work with NBC News beginning in the late 1950s. McGee had a great talent for descriptive language, often giving viewers a vivid word picture of the day's events. 

McGee began his broadcast career with Shawnee radio station KGFF, working as an advertising salesman, commercial copywriter, music librarian, disc jockey, and news editor. He joined WKY-TV in Oklahoma City in 1950 and is remembered by a generation of Oklahomans as Mack Rogers, the name he used as the local newsman. McGee moved to Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 to head the WSFA-TV news operations. This led to a post on NBC’s Washington, D.C. news staff in 1957. NBC transferred McGee to New York where he was an anchor on major assignments and such NBC programs as World Wide 60, Today, and the Nightly News show. In 1960, he moderated the second debate between presidential candidates John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C. 

During the middle to late 1960s, The Frank McGee Report was a well-known program broadcast early Saturday and Sunday evenings. It was set up to be a traditional newscast and it would include topics and McGee's commentary. After Chet Huntley's retirement in 1970 ended the Huntley-Brinkley Report, McGee became one of three anchors on the newly renamed NBC Nightly News, along with John Chancellor and David Brinkley. McGee moved to The Today Show in 1971, replacing Hugh Downs. He attempted to transition Today into a more serious news presentation, not an entertainment show. McGee was once acclaimed for his "exemplary leadership in his profession in dealing candidly and constructively with the cutting edge of change and controversy."