NBC announces name for Tom Llamas’ daily streaming newscast

NBC News has announced the name of Tom Llamas‘ daily streaming newscast.

The show, which starts Sept. 20, 2021, will be named “Top Story with Tom Llamas” and stream live from 7 to 8 p.m. eastern on Peacock.

Top Story with @LlamasNBC will take viewers on a fast-paced and visual journey to the front lines.

We’ll explore topics, places and people that viewers don’t always get to see.

Premiering Monday at 7p.m. ET on @NBCNewsNow. pic.twitter.com/3hOjJsenGh

— Top Story with Tom Llamas (@TopStoryNBC) September 17, 2021

It will also be available on The Roku Channel, YouTube TV, YouTube, Fubo, Xumo, Pluto, Tubi and NBC News’ apps on Roku, Fire TV and Apple TV. 

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“Llamas will take viewers on a fast-paced and visual journey to the front lines of the story, covering breaking news and major domestic and international headlines from around the globe,” according to NBC.

“Top Story” marks NBC News Now’s first daily primetime streaming program. 

“The goal of this show is to amplify the best of NBC News and the reach of our reporting teams all over the world,” said Llamas in a statement. “We hope to keep viewers engaged by sharing a variety of impactful and interesting stories with a deeply journalistic lens.”

For a logo, the network is using a sans serif all caps font that uses white and bright blue. There’s an underscore accent at the end of “Story” and the “with” part is stylized as “w/Tom Llamas” without a space, according to the key art the network released ahead of the premiere.

In that art, it appears the title of the show is set in NBC’s proprietary font Wordmark, which was introduced as part of the new MSNBC graphics package in March 2021 and the NBC News Now logo, while the host name line is in Founders Grotesk, the font NBC News uses on its website.

The two fonts are very similar in many ways, but a key giveaway that there are two at play here are the “S”s — with Wordmark’s having slight angles on each end, as opposed to the ones parallel with the baseline in Founders.

The choice of “Top Story” is interesting given NBC’s promise of offering a fast paced newscast that will presumably cover multiple stories, not all of which can be the “top story.” 

It’s possible NBC plans to use the branding schema CNN’s “The Lead” uses, labeling various stories as “The Politics Lead,” “The National Lead” and so on.

“Top Story” is slated to originate from NBC News’ headquarters in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. 

Mike Solmsen is the executive producer of “Top Story” while Janelle Rodriguez is the SVP of Editorial for NBC News and executive-in-charge of NBC News Now.

NBC News made headlines in May 2021 when it lured Llamas away from ABC News, announcing he would become a national correspondent for the network and helm a streaming nightly newscast. 

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