[Jeffhs]

The peacock never left NBC-TV, except perhaps for a short time when the network was using its "N" logo in the '80s. I think there may have been a copyright issue with the latter, as an educational TV network in Nebraska was using an "N" logo, almost identical to NBC's, at roughly the same time NBC-TV was using theirs. This may have been why NBC eventually abandoned the "N" (and later the so-called "proud N") logo and brought back the peacock. NBC may have wanted to go back to its early days of color broadcasting in the 1950s through the early seventies, in which they showed a much larger, elaborate peacock (with an announcer saying "the following program is brought to you in living color on NBC") before every color program they broadcast. The newest iteration of the NBC peacock shows a much smaller version of the bird, with the NBC chimes, of course, and the words "NBC Presents" directly below the peacock.

The peacock is being shown on NBC today probably because it was so well known and recognized in the network's early days of color television. Let us not forget NBC was America's first national TV network, being introduced 65 years ago, when color TV was still very new in north America; most people seeing NBC's color logo in the 1950s through about the 1980s were seeing the bird in black and white. (I was one of them, as my family never had color TV until the early 1970s.) The only time the peacock is not shown is before NBC's world news broadcast at 6:30 p.m. EST, and before NBC News special reports, the latter having its own logo; at all other times, the bird is shown in all its glory (albeit, as I said, much smaller than the original peacock) just before the program begins. Even NBC's signature "Tonight Show" is preceded by the peacock, but that is the last time the bird is shown until the next day, in prime time.