Retro: Syracuse, NY, Friday, May 6, 1983

[south_ferretti]

from Syracuse Post-Herald
Listings begin at 6:30am

3 WSTM NBC Syracuse
6:30 Early Today
7:00 Today
9:00 Here's Lucy
9:30 Rhoda
10:00 Woman on the Go
10:30 Sale of the Century
11:00 Wheel of Fortune
11:30 Dream House
12:00 News
12:30 Search for Tomorrow
1:00 Days of Our Lives
2:00 Another World
3:00 Fantasy
4:00 STM Club with Scooby-Doo
5:00 WKRP in Cincinnati
5:30 Three's Company
6:00 News
6:30 NBC Nightly News
7:00 The Jeffersons
7:30 Family Feud
8:00 The Berenstain Bears' Littlest Leaguer
8:30 Mayday for Mother
9:00 Knight Rider
10:00 Doug Henning's Magic on Broadway
11:00 News
11:30 Tonight Show
12:30 SCTV Network
2:00 NBC News Overnight

5 WTVH CBS Syracuse
6:30 CBS Early Morning News
7:00 Today
9:00 Hour Magazine
10:00 New $25,000 Pyramid
10:30 Child's Play
11:00 Price is Right
12:00 News
12:30 Young and the Restless
1:30 As the World Turns
2:30 Capitol
3:00 Guiding Light
4:00 CHiPs Patrol
5:00 M*A*S*H
5:30 Soap
6:00 News
6:30 CBS Evening News
7:00 PM Magazine
7:30 Entertainment Tonight
8:00 The Dukes of Hazzard
9:00 Dallas
10:00 The Mississippi
11:00 News
11:30 Movie "Speed Trap"
2:00 Movie "Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice?"
3:50 Movie "Nightmare Hotel"

9 WIXT ABC Syracuse
6:30 ABC World News This Morning
7:00 Good Morning America
9:00 Donahue
10:00 Richard Simmons
10:30 Family Feud
11:00 The Love Boat
12:00 Lie Detector
12:30 Ryan's Hope
1:00 All My Children
2:00 One Life to Live
3:00 General Hospital
4:00 Little House on the Prairie
5:00 People's Court
5:30 News
6:30 ABC World News Tonight
7:00 People's Court
7:30 The Muppets
8:00 Movie "The Shining"
11:00 News
11:30 More Real People
12:00 ABC News Nightline
1:00 Rock 'n' Roll Tonite
followed by sign-off

24 WCNY PBS Syracuse
7:15 AM Weather
7:30 Sesame Street
8:30 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
9:00 Sesame Street
10:00 Educational programming
12:00 Hablamos Español
12:30 Instructional programming
3:00 The Twilight Zone
3:30 Over Easy
4:00 Sesame Street
5:00 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
5:30 The Electric Company
6:00 Studio See
6:30 Nightly Business Report
7:00 MacNeil/Lehrer Report
7:30 Doctor Who
8:00 Washington Week in Review
8:30 Wall Street Week
9:00 New York State Business Report
9:30 Computer Programme
10:00 Butterflies
10:30 The Good Neighbors
11:00 Dick Cavett
11:30 PBS Latenight
12:30 The Twilight Zone
1:00 sign-off

There wasn't an independent station in the market yet: WSYT (68) was launched in 1986.
The paper also included stations from neighboring markets (WCAX, WCFE, WEZF, WKTV, WNPE, WPTZ, WUTR, WWNY) and some Canadian stations too! (CBMT, CBOT, CFCF, CJOH, CKWS)

 

[umfan]

If not for the Canadian reception and the ability to receive near market stations, TV viewing at this time in Syracuse would've been really limited!

 

[ShawnHill1]

If not for the Canadian reception and the ability to receive near market stations, TV viewing at this time in Syracuse would've been really limited!

Looking at the other Upstate New York schedules recently posted, outside of Buffalo, most of the Upstate had pretty limited access to TV back then, and even going to the early 90s. A lot of these areas also had cable TV at this point, more than likely getting access to the New York City or Boston independents, as well as some Canadian channels (particularly in places like Rochester and Plattsburgh).

 

[fybush]

Looking at the other Upstate New York schedules recently posted, outside of Buffalo, most of the Upstate had pretty limited access to TV back then, and even going to the early 90s. A lot of these areas also had cable TV at this point, more than likely getting access to the New York City or Boston independents, as well as some Canadian channels (particularly in places like Rochester and Plattsburgh).

Buffalo had an independent (WUTV) as early as 1970, and a second (WNYB) by 1987. Rochester got WUHF in 1980. Watertown, Binghamton and Elmira never got indies in the pre-Fox era, and Utica barely did. WUTV never took advantage of the chance to become a regional superstation. We never got it in Rochester before WUHF started, and I don't think Elmira/Corning ever did, either.

Canadian carriage was always weird. Syracuse and the rest of central NY had CBC/CKWS early on, and Rome and Watertown still get it even now, I think. We never, ever had CBC in Rochester. The suburban Peoples Cable system had CBLFT in French as early as 1982, picked up over the air. We also had CTV/CJOH (received off-air from CJOH-6 Deseronto) for a few years in the mid-80s. The American Cable system in the city didn't even have those, and by the time the systems merged as Greater Rochester Cable in - was it 1985? - all of that was gone. So was our very brief carriage of WSBK and WNEW-TV. WPIX and WWOR lingered a little longer.

 

[ftballfan]

I find it interesting that the Syracuse paper included the Watertown, Kingston, Utica, and Burlington stations, but not much closer Rochester or Binghamton

 

[fybush]

I find it interesting that the Syracuse paper included the Watertown, Kingston, Utica, and Burlington stations, but not much closer Rochester or Binghamton

I think there were still multiple editions of the paper then on weekdays. I know there were multiple versions of the Sunday TV book. (The Sunday paper was then the "Herald-American," a Sunday edition of the afternoon Herald-Journal, which was co-owned with the Post-Standard but had a separate newsroom staff.)
There was a Cayuga County edition that did list the Rochester channels. There may also have been a Cortland County edition that might have listed Binghamton - but the Binghamton stations never had much carriage or viewership north of the Broome/Cortland line.

 

[CTListener]

I think there were still multiple editions of the paper then on weekdays. I know there were multiple versions of the Sunday TV book. (The Sunday paper was then the "Herald-American," a Sunday edition of the afternoon Herald-Journal, which was co-owned with the Post-Standard but had a separate newsroom staff.)
There was a Cayuga County edition that did list the Rochester channels. There may also have been a Cortland County edition that might have listed Binghamton - but the Binghamton stations never had much carriage or viewership north of the Broome/Cortland line.

I went to SU in the mid-'70s. From my 7th-floor dorm room, with rabbit ears, I could get all the Syracuse stations, Channels 2 and 20 (both snowy) from Utica, and Channel 11 (decent quality, not as snowy as Utica) from Kingston. Rochester? Nothing except a barely visible Channel 13 -- nothing from 8 or 10. Nothing from Binghamton either. So the listings in the paper(s) made sense to me.

 

[fybush]

I went to SU in the mid-'70s. From my 7th-floor dorm room, with rabbit ears, I could get all the Syracuse stations, Channels 2 and 20 (both snowy) from Utica, and Channel 11 (decent quality, not as snowy as Utica) from Kingston. Rochester? Nothing except a barely visible Channel 13 -- nothing from 8 or 10. Nothing from Binghamton either. So the listings in the paper(s) made sense to me.

Blame some long-ago bad decisions by Rochester TV owners. There was talk in the early 1960s about abandoning Pinnacle Hill and going out to Baker Hill on the Monroe/Ontario county line, above what's now Eastview Mall, where they would have built a thousand-foot community tower. The flight paths into Rochester airport, just a few miles to the west, limit the towers on Pinnacle to about 250 feet, which has severely limited coverage out to the east.

If they'd followed through on that plan at Baker Hill, the Rochester stations would have had much better Finger Lakes coverage (and would eventually have had Yates and maybe Seneca counties as part of the Rochester TV market instead of Syracuse).

You can hear the difference on FM now in Syracuse: the Pinnacle Hill FMs (91.5, 96.5, 97.9) aren't usable in town, even before the translators covered them up. But the FMs that later ended up on Baker Hill (class B 100.5 and 95.1, class A 99.7 and 90.5) are usually listenable, and would certainly have been usable in a 7th floor dorm room up on the hill at SU if they'd existed there in the 70s. And that's with a shorter tower than what the TV stations might have built up there.