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Indies picking up network shows

In Milwaukee, WXIX/WUHF/WVTV had a history of carrying shows that WTMJ, WITI, and WISN did not clear from 1961 to 1988. Likewise with WCGV from 1981 to 1994 when WTMJ and WITI passed on NBC and CBS shows.
Here are a couple of promos from when WCGV was carrying the Late Show with David Letterman between 1993 to 1994.
 
In Milwaukee, WXIX/WUHF/WVTV had a history of carrying shows that WTMJ, WITI, and WISN did not clear from 1961 to 1988. Likewise with WCGV from 1981 to 1994 when WTMJ and WITI passed on NBC and CBS shows.
WXIX is Cincinnati and WUHF is Rochester, NY, not Milwaukee
 
Here is a history of UHF in Milwaukee: History of UHF Television

Channel 19 (later 18) went through WOKY-TV (1953), WXIX (1955, owned by CBS and moved to 18 in 1958), WUHF (1963), and finally the current WVTV in 1966.
 
Did network O&O station ever preempt network programing? I grew up in Chicago which is all network O&O and don't recall any indie ever running a network show.
Yes but it was for breaking news reasons or they have to continue network sports coverage like 49ers and Giants in places like San Francisco.

Interestingly KNTV NBC Bay Area a Network O&O would sometimes preempt NBC Prime time for San Francisco Giants games produced by NBC Sports Bay Area team. Today the pre-empted shows that didn't air on KNTV goes to Peacock TV App.

KTVU San Francisco a current Fox O&O do the same thing whenever Fox Sports airs 49ers games or San Francisco Giants games on KTVU the pre empted Fox shows goes to KICU aka KTVU Plus.
 
Over the years independent stations picked up certain network shows when the actual network station didn't pick it up. Facebook group with reprints of TV
Guide listings showed a Sat night in Feb of 1972. Boston indie Ch 38 picked up CBS News when CBS ch 5 had something else on.
Later, CBS All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore were not carried by 5, but no
indie picked them up. Ch 5 was running a movie.

More recently CBS has been on ch 4 with myTV/indie 38 as sister station. 4 might
pre empt The Price is Right during breaking news coverage but 38 runs it.

I recalled Welcome Back Kotter didn't air at first on ABC ch 5, but an indie picked it up. I said it was Ch 38; a friend thought it was 56.Boston dealing with forced busing and a sitcom about a city high school was too
controversial?
The orig Gong Show might not have been carried by NBC Ch 4 so I think ch 38 ran it.

(Would have given call letters but wanted to keep it to channel numbers).
At one point 2 NBC shows were declined by Ch 4: David Letterman and SCTV. They ran Hawaii Five O reruns instead. No indie ran it. SCTV's Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis appeared as SCTV's Bob and Doug Mackenzie on WBCN radio. Yes you could see show on Prov Ch 10, but someone called it to say the local Boston station wouldn't run them.Asked to define
"hoser" or "hosehead", the guys said, "that guy in Boston that won't run us is a hoser!"
What is the Facebook group that features old TV Guide reprints? I'd like to take a look at it.

If there isn't a TV Guide archive page, showing local editions in their entirety, there needs to be. TVG was printed on newsprint, and old editions, if you can find them, are frequently yellowed and "fragrant" to the point of being virtually unreadable. Digitizing them would provide a way to preserve them indefinitely.

I once had a massive collection of vintage TVGs, but the vast majority of them got ruined by being stored in a moist garage for a couple of years, got all moldy, and I had to dispose of them. That was a painful day. I did retain the "channels listed" pages of most of them, and scanned them into PDF format.
 
WWJ 4 (WDIV) in Detroit didn't carry Saturday Night Live during the show's early years, and it aired on indie WKBD 50 instead. I guess the Detroit News didn't want anything to do with Lily Tomlin and a Muppet discussing sex toys.
Later. in the early '90s. WADL 38 and WGPR 62 cleared some CBS programs that WJBK 2 wouldn't run. At one point, CBS This Morning was seen on WGPR as channel 2 aired its own local "Eyewitness Morning" show.

In Toledo in the late '60s, WTOL 11 (primary CBS) and WSPD (WTVG) 13 (primary ABC) carried secondary NBC affiliations, with indie/Overmyer WDHO 24 picking up network shows not cleared by the other two. A look at the Friday night TV schedule in the summer of 1966 shows WDHO clearing the CBS network news (WTOL aired NBC's evening newscast) followed by NBC's Camp Runamuck, Hank, Sing Along with Mitch and Mr. Roberts and then CBS' rebroadcast of CBC's Wayne & Shuster. (WTOL had Wild, Wild West, Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle and the Smothers Brothers from CBS and Man from U.N.C.L.E. from NBC; WSPD had exclusive ownership of ABC programs.)
As an aside, WJBK 2 didn't clear the Smothers Brothers (airing a movie in its place), and since no Detroit station picked it up, Detroit viewers would have had to try to pull in WTOL or Lansing's WJIM 6 to see it. Frankly, I'm surprised WJIM cleared it at all given its ultra-conservative ownership at that time.
 
WWJ 4 (WDIV) in Detroit didn't carry Saturday Night Live during the show's early years, and it aired on indie WKBD 50 instead. I guess the Detroit News didn't want anything to do with Lily Tomlin and a Muppet discussing sex toys.
Later. in the early '90s. WADL 38 and WGPR 62 cleared some CBS programs that WJBK 2 wouldn't run. At one point, CBS This Morning was seen on WGPR as channel 2 aired its own local "Eyewitness Morning" show.
Wow WGPR-TV airing some of the pre-empted CBS shows in Detroit before CBS itself took over that station and rename it WWJ-TV and currently CBS Detroit as of 2024. How long was this before WJBK's then owner New World signed an affiliation deal with Fox related to the NFL deal and converted WJBK into a Fox Owned Station.
 
WWJ 4 (WDIV) in Detroit didn't carry Saturday Night Live during the show's early years, and it aired on indie WKBD 50 instead. I guess the Detroit News didn't want anything to do with Lily Tomlin and a Muppet discussing sex toys.
Later. in the early '90s. WADL 38 and WGPR 62 cleared some CBS programs that WJBK 2 wouldn't run. At one point, CBS This Morning was seen on WGPR as channel 2 aired its own local "Eyewitness Morning" show.

In Toledo in the late '60s, WTOL 11 (primary CBS) and WSPD (WTVG) 13 (primary ABC) carried secondary NBC affiliations, with indie/Overmyer WDHO 24 picking up network shows not cleared by the other two. A look at the Friday night TV schedule in the summer of 1966 shows WDHO clearing the CBS network news (WTOL aired NBC's evening newscast) followed by NBC's Camp Runamuck, Hank, Sing Along with Mitch and Mr. Roberts and then CBS' rebroadcast of CBC's Wayne & Shuster. (WTOL had Wild, Wild West, Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle and the Smothers Brothers from CBS and Man from U.N.C.L.E. from NBC; WSPD had exclusive ownership of ABC programs.)
As an aside, WJBK 2 didn't clear the Smothers Brothers (airing a movie in its place), and since no Detroit station picked it up, Detroit viewers would have had to try to pull in WTOL or Lansing's WJIM 6 to see it. Frankly, I'm surprised WJIM cleared it at all given its ultra-conservative ownership at that time.

That sounds like the situation in Dayton back in the day, when all three stations (WLWD, WHIO, and WKEF) carried a hodgepodge of programs from each network. I've always thought that this was to differentiate themselves from the Cincinnati (and possibly Columbus) stations, as it would only be in the small-population counties north of Dayton where viewers would get Dayton and only Dayton. Cincinnati stations were easily received in Dayton proper, and Columbus stations could be received in the area east of Dayton.
 
That sounds like the situation in Dayton back in the day, when all three stations (WLWD, WHIO, and WKEF) carried a hodgepodge of programs from each network. I've always thought that this was to differentiate themselves from the Cincinnati (and possibly Columbus) stations, as it would only be in the small-population counties north of Dayton where viewers would get Dayton and only Dayton. Cincinnati stations were easily received in Dayton proper, and Columbus stations could be received in the area east of Dayton.
No, it wasn't to differentiate from Cincinnati or Columbus.

It happened because all three networks preferred to place their programming on one of the two VHF stations in Dayton, so WLWD and WHIO got to cherry pick from all three networks, and WKEF got whatever those two stations didn't want. That changed when the FCC altered its rules to help UHF stations by prohibiting that sort of cherry picking if there was an unaffiliated station in a market.
 
No, it wasn't to differentiate from Cincinnati or Columbus.

It happened because all three networks preferred to place their programming on one of the two VHF stations in Dayton, so WLWD and WHIO got to cherry pick from all three networks, and WKEF got whatever those two stations didn't want. That changed when the FCC altered its rules to help UHF stations by prohibiting that sort of cherry picking if there was an unaffiliated station in a market.
Okay, that makes sense. I've just seen very old Southern Ohio TV Guides and couldn't figure out why it showed all three stations affiliated with all three networks. I just know it's difficult for a smaller market to establish itself (or at least it was until DMAs became so cut-and-dried WRT cable and satellite carriage) in the shadow of a much larger market (Cincinnati) whose stations can easily be received in the core city of the smaller market. Toledo is another market that comes immediately to mind, with Detroit stations easily available OTA. Washington and Baltimore, OTOH, while very close together, more or less split at a line equidistant between them, as they are both relatively large cities with viewership that is fiercely loyal to that city and couldn't care less what happens in the other one. I lived in the DC area for almost a decade, and while I could get Baltimore stations, I seldom watched them (though Marty Bass on WJZ was a piece of work, worth watching for the entertainment value alone, Baltimore to the bone).
 
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