NBC network schedule, though the station airs an alternate live feed of NBC Nightly News at 7 p.m. (rather than 6:30 p.m. as with most NBC stations in the Eastern Time Zone), due to a longtime hour-long 6 p.m. newscast. The weekend edition of the network's newscast airs at its usual 6:30 p.m. time slot. Like network flagship WNBC, it airs Meet the Press an hour-and-a-half later than most NBC affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone due to a two-hour Sunday morning newscast. WRC-TV previously housed It's Academic, which premiered in 1961 and is the longest-running game show in television history according to the Guinness Book of World Records (as of October 29, 2022, it is now aired on PBS member station WETA-TV). Sam and Friends, Jim Henson's late-night precursor to Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, got its start on WRC-TV on May 9, 1955. WRC-TV served as the production facilities for the original run of The McLaughlin Group from its premiere in 1982 until May 2008, when the production facilities moved to Tegna Inc.-owned CBS affiliate and WRC-TV's rival WUSA and it remained until the original show's ending in 2016. Sports programming WRC-TV has been the over-the-air home of Washington Commanders (formerly the Washington Redskins) preseason games since 2009. Before the Comcast–NBC Universal merger, games were only shown in standard definition on WRC, with actual rights-holder CSN Mid-Atlantic (now NBC Sports Washington) exclusively airing the high definition broadcast. Until 2021, the station also aired Washington Capitals games through NBC's broadcast contract with the NHL; this included the team's Stanley Cup Finals victory in 2018. News operation WRC-TV presently broadcasts 45 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 7 hours, 35 minutes each weekday; three hours on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays). By 2001, WRC's newscasts had all been rated number one in the market, with some of the success attributed to Jim Vance and Doreen Gentzler, who anchored together from 1989 until Vance's death in 2017. Vance had been with Channel 4 since 1969, and was promoted to anchor three years later. In the May 2010 sweeps, it placed first at 5:00 a.m., 6:00 a.m., 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. in total viewers, and first at 6:00 a.m., 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. in the 25–54 demo. It still leads most time slots today, although WTTG's morning news and WJLA's 11:00 pm news have given it