Nbc News

NEW YORK -- There may be no better predictor that NBC News is about to declare an election's winner than the face of political director Chuck Todd. Twice in two weeks, Todd was brought onto MSNBC to explain why NBC News hadn't declared a winner in a presidential primary when other news outlets had -- only to be interrupted by the network making its projection. "I just think it's amusing," said Todd, who appeared sheepish when it happened with John McCain's win in Florida.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has agreed to stay at the cable news network for four more years in a deal that gives him a broader role at NBC News, network executives said Thursday. The outspoken former sportscaster, whose nightly news program "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" has helped buoy the ratings of the third-place cable news channel, will now also contribute essays to "NBC Nightly News" and host two prime-time specials annually on the broadcast network.

NBC officials Monday named Alexandra Wallace, the No. 2 executive in the news division, as the new executive producer of "NBC Nightly News." The move comes as ABC's "World News" has strongly challenged the top-ranked evening newscast in recent weeks. Wallace, who has had oversight of the broadcast for the last year, will continue in her role as vice president, adding the daily production of the program to her portfolio. She replaces John Reiss, who left his post last week.

The oversized U.S. Postal Service envelope was addressed simply to "NBC," and might have been overlooked in the jumble of mail flooding into the television network's Rockefeller Center headquarters Wednesday if a sharp-eyed mail carrier hadn't noticed the return address: "Blacksburg, Va." The sender: "Ishmael." Those clues were enough to alarm the Postal Service employee, who flagged the mailroom when he dropped it off about 11 a.m.

NBC's decision to broadcast portions of Seung-hui Cho's angry rants triggered a storm of condemnation Thursday from viewers and victims' relatives, illuminating the treacherous middle ground between exposure and exploitation in a fast-moving news cycle.

NBC News has tapped Mark Whitaker, the former editor of Newsweek, to be the news division's second-in-command executive, officials announced Tuesday. Whitaker, who will have oversight of the network's daily newsgathering operations, ran Newsweek for eight years. Most recently, he was editor in chief of new ventures at Washingtonpost .Newsweek Interactive.

It's double-duty for NBC's Lester Holt. The co-anchor of the weekend edition of "Today" will also now anchor the Saturday and Sunday editions of "NBC Nightly News," the network announced Wednesday. Holt replaces former weekend anchor John Seigenthaler, who left NBC last month after his contract was not renewed amid newsroom belt-tightening. Holt will continue filling in on the weekday editions of the morning and evening news programs and do work for MSNBC.

NBC Universal's plan to reorganize its news operations as part of a companywide streamlining serves as a vivid indication that the technological forces squeezing newspapers have spread to TV. By consolidating units of its cable and broadcast news divisions and paring its staff, NBC hopes to free resources to devote to serving viewers who have embraced the Internet as a source of information. "All the trends indicate that we need to realign," said NBC News President Steve Capus.

NBC News employees are bracing this week as the network news division undergoes a pre-Thanksgiving round of layoffs, part of a corporate-wide restructuring announced last month. In the first phase of job cuts at the network news division, about 40 employees are expected to be given pink slips by Wednesday.

NBC News said Monday that its reporters and anchors would begin referring to the ongoing sectarian strife in Iraq as a "civil war," a move that reflects the news media's use of increasingly stark language to characterize the escalating violence gripping the country. NBC's decision, which came after a particularly deadly series of retaliatory attacks in Baghdad, makes it the first television network to officially adopt the term "civil war," a description the Bush administration has resisted.