The 5,000th episode of “Music & the Spoken Word” with The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square aired Sunday, July 13, 2025 — celebrating it as the world’s longest continuous network broadcast. More than 11,500 people gathered in the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City for the preshow, broadcast and encore presentations.
The first “Music & the Spoken Word” episode was recorded on Monday, July 15, 1929, in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
“How does a program endure for 5,000 episodes? It’s very clear to me that it is the feelings that it evokes in people,” said Tabernacle Choir President Michael O. Leavitt in the Church News video “Beacon of Light.”
The video also includes present and past “Music & the Spoken Word” presenters Derrick Porter, Lloyd D. Newell and J. Spencer Kinard, along with Mack Wilberg, the choir’s music director, on the longevity of “Music & the Spoken Word.”
Porter, executive producer, principal writer and presenter of “Music & the Spoken Word,” said: “There’s an element of music, there’s an element of the spoken word, but there is a great element of the Spirit that comes together and allows for those two things to combine to deliver feelings of hope and peace and joy to all who listen.”
