NAB Show 2026 had plenty of industry business on the agenda on Tuesday, but the We Are Broadcasters program made room for reminders of why the work matters from Mo Rocca and Nate Bargatze, who were both honored and shared stories on the Main Stage.
NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt opened the program in which Rocca received the 2026 Library of American Broadcasting Foundation Insight Award, and Bargatze took home the 2026 NAB Television Chairman’s Award, followed by a fireside chat with NAB EVP of Industry Affairs and Innovation April Carty-Sipp.
Rocca, a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent since 2011 and regular panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, was introduced by Library of American Broadcasting Foundation Co-Chairs Deborah Parenti and Dave “Chachi” Denes. Now in its fifth year, the Insight Award recognizes individuals whose work advances public understanding of media’s role and evolution.
In his remarks, Rocca credited nearly two decades at CBS Sunday Morning with giving him the range to pursue stories the rest of the press cycle ignores. “Working at the show is like going back to college and taking only electives,” he said, adding that each story begins with a single question: “How can we surprise you?”
Rocca traced his preoccupation with overlooked history to his upbringing outside Washington, DC, where his father read obituaries for the drama in them. That instinct produced Mobituaries, his podcast and New York Times bestselling book dedicated to forgotten figures. He closed with the epitaph he hopes to earn: “Mo Rocca, who made people interested in things they didn’t expect to be interested in, died today. He was 135.”
Bargatze, currently the number one-grossing comedian in the world and star and creator of ABC’s The Greatest Average American, used his conversation with Carty-Sipp to make an extended case for broadcast as a creative discipline. He argued that pushing young comedians straight to streaming or social media breeds shock value over craft, pointing to the enduring dominance of Friends on Netflix as evidence that broadcast-originated content holds up. “I don’t think that’s coincidence,” he said.
Bargatze credited his Saturday Night Live appearances with reinforcing that philosophy. He told the writers’ room he would not be doing political, sexual, or profanity-driven material; constraints that produced the now-viral George Washington sketch.
On radio specifically, Bargatze said listening to Bob & Tom was a memorable part of his life as he was coming up through the comedy business, and how AM/FM was foundational to how comedians built touring audiences before streaming reshaped the business. He closed by saying his next focus is on developing younger entertainers through traditional channels rather than social media. “I think everything will come back to exactly the way it kind of was,” he said.
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