Tonight's gonna be a good night! 

TODAY was honored with the prestigious 2011 Edward R. Murrow award for Best Use of Video for recreating the viral lip-dub sensation, "I Gotta Feeling."  

The clip aired as part of a TODAY Goes Viral, a special series where America's favorite morning show celebrated America's favorite online videos. It was produced by the esteemed Jennifer Long and featured the entire TODAY staff lip-synching to the Black Eyed Peas song in one continuous camera take. 

But words can't describe how much fun we had making it. Relive the video below:

We had a blast and had to do it again.  We honored Meredith Vieira by sending her off in a similar way with one final "Journey" around the plaza.

Watch it here:

Check out more videos in our TODAY Goes Viral series, including a behind-the-scenes clip about what it took to perform the "I've Gotta Feeling" stunt and a profile of John Maltabo, the extraordinary cameraman who pulled it off.

The Edward R. Murrow awards honor excellence in electronic journalism. They were announced today by the Radio Television Digital News Association. 

NBC News was also awarded with an Overall Excellence award. It’s  the third year in a row we took home this huge honor. 

"NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" was honored for Best Newscast and "Dateline" won for the documentary, "A Father's Mission." Here's a complete list of the winners. 

Update, 2/3/12 at 10:45 a.m. ET

Due to restrictions, we had to remove the video of TODAY's musical tribute to Meredith. Although the footage of our plaza celebration is no longer online, you can still relive the fun of that June morning below.

Original post

The whole TODAY team got together to send off Meredith in true TODAY style – with a big song and dance!

The crew, producers, correspondents, TODAY.com team – along with special guests Abe Vigoda and Jimmy Fallon – performed a number to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" live on the plaza, wearing color-coded T-shirts that showed the whole world just how much we heart Meredith. 

It all began with Meredith and Matt at the piano as the classic Journey song started to play...

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That's senior producer Dee Dee Thomas, set writer Jared Carullo and executive producer Jim Bell leading a cheering section in the control room...

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Next, Kathie Lee and Hoda grabbed Meredith and ran her out onto the plaza...

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Where Al grabbed her, and joined the entire TODAY team...

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Who screamed and cheered as they met up with Jimmy Fallon, who rocked out on the guitar and brought her across the street!

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When she got back to the plaza, the whole team was performing the choreographed dance they've been perfecting for days.

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Even Abe Vigoda was there! Which is why he's been trending on Twitter. (Remember this hilarious moment?)

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By the end, Meredith was in tears as Al, Matt, Ann and Natalie presented her with a special keepsake – a picture of the whole gang at the re-opening of the Statue of Liberty.

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More from Meredith's goodbye:
Carole King sings for Meredith
TODAY's emotional farewell

Inspired by Mike Tompkins' a capella version of Taio Cruz's song "Dynamite" -- and just in time for Hanukkah -- Yeshiva University's Maccabeats released an amazing video called "Candlelight." And it's going viral!

Who can resist lyrics like this? "I flip my latkes in the air sometimes, sayin, ''Ayy, ohh. Spin the dreidel!'"

Great minds think alike -- Matt, Meredith, Al and Ann performed their own version of "Dynamite" during our Viral Video week, with Tompkin's expert help.

Which one do you think is better?  Watch all three below and vote in the comments!

And click here to watch all of the videos in TODAY's Viral Video series.

By Robin Sindler, TODAY producer

For our series TODAY Goes Viral, we thought we'd join forces with the viral video kings -- the band, OK Go. They're the ones behind that treadmill dance, a YouTube sensation that helped make OK Go the most downloaded band of all time. 

And lest you think the band is a one-hit viral wonder, think again. They have turned nearly a dozen videos into online sensations, attracting millions of viewers eager to share a few moments in their mad, mad world.

I'm not saying TODAY has never achieved viral status, but our YouTube hits are mostly born out of the unpredictability of live TV. You may remember one infamous clip of rowdy Ewoks assaulting Al Roker's leg. Yes -- that clip went viral. But it's not the same thing as creating something you hope will catch on.

So for this segment the idea was to shoot a brand new OK Go video starring our hosts and see if it would take off. 

During breakfast and a brainstorming session, the band's frontman, Damian Kulash, told us the rule behind their videos: "It has to be a really good and simple idea." They often pull off an entire video in one shot, requiring meticulous planning, a tireless crew and countless takes. One of their recent shoots, which featured choreographed dogs, took 128 takes. Their Rube Goldberg video took 86. Another stop-motion project was done in only two takes -- but each shoot lasted 21 hours, which meant choreographing their sleep!

OK Go's approach posed a particular challenge for TODAY as the one thing our hosts don't have is spare time. We told the band we'd be willing to play along, but they'd have to shoot the entire video in three hours. In the realm of marathon OK Go video shoots, it's nothing. But that's an eternity in TODAY time.

we bounced around a few ideas and then Kulash had a flash. "Let's put the hosts in four Plexiglas cubes and fill the cubes with colored pingpong balls. We'll shoot it stop motion with a still camera so that the colors will magically appear and disappear, creating different patterns."

Though Meredith was worried about suffocation and other deadly consequences, she and our other intrepid hosts bought in after watching a few OK Go videos.

We had an idea and willing victims -- but how would we pull this off?

Enter James Kateridge, aka Jimmy the Carpenter. He's the MacGyver of NBC. You need a bookcase with a trap door, revolving windows and six cameras hidden inside? He's your man. He'll create it with nothing but Q-tips and a wad of old gum. Jimmy worked around the clock to build the cubes. We thank him.

We then calculated  THAT  it would take 20,000 pingpong balls to fill one cube. Since we wanted to fill each cube with several different colors of balls -- our final tally reached 250,000 pingpong balls!

Where do you find that many balls?  One company, pingpongballs.net agreed to rent us the balls -- though it was the biggest order they ever had. They warned TODAY would put them out of business if anything happened to the stock of balls. Add that tot the list of things that'll keep a producer up all night!

The shoot was difficult and we got behind. The goal was to shoot 600 pictures in three hours. We'd edit that to about a minute-long video. We got through 200.

But such is the reality of television. If you don't get what you think you need, you make it work anyway. As they say in the business, "fix it in post."

How'd we do? Judge for yourself.