Woah I never thought Slovenia TV Network manage to let local LA Ads and KABC-TV promos slip through their network feed. I thought this only happens among Disney owned ABC affiliates like whenever KGO-TV San Francisco needs to get a news segment or breaking news feed from KABC-TV Los Angeles the KABC Reporter will keep the ABC 7 Eyewitness News name instead of ABC News itself and it goes through KGO-TV even though ABC7 San Francisco does not use the Eyewitness News Name itself for their own reports within the San Francisco area. KGO-TV refers to its local reports as ABC 7 News Bay Area.
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Worst TV stations ever
- Thread starter rwells2265
- Start date
It may have taken a while for the Slovenian network to catch on to what was the show itself, and what parts were commercials and promos. Evidently once they got the hang of it, and saw what was going on, they were able to intervene.
I really have to doubt that anyone in Slovenia would have cared, in fact, they might have been interested to see what a raw American TV feed looks like, if they'd never seen one before. And let's face it, if you were watching, for instance, an awards show from London, it'd be kind of cool to see the British commercials and promos for their TV shows.
My son's grandfather in Poland used to like to watch the NBA, and at the time, Polish TV ran the straight NBC feed, with the "Roundball Rock" theme and everything. I don't recall what they did about commercials.
There have been TV specials that showed commercials from other countries. They were great.
In some countries, they put the commercials in one big block between programs. Many times they try to make them something worth watching in and of itself, something that tells a story or provides entertainment. The Mentos "Freshmaker" commercials were an example of this.
Speaking of those, there were two English-language versions, one with an American voice-over, and another with an accent that is harder to place, but sounds vaguely Australian-ish. In Poland, they simply ran the American version, in English. Poles at the time were very pro-American, and English was often used in advertising to denote quality, and because English was considered "cool". I haven't been there in twenty years, so I don't know how much things have changed, but I'd venture to say it's still pretty much that way.
I'd go back prior to 1967 to find a bunch of ABC shows on WSOC. I have one in my hand from '62 and Channel 9 is showing The Rifleman, The Untouchables, Leave It to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, Bugs Bunny, Lawman, Cheyenne, Bronco, Surfside 6, Alcoa Premiere, Top Cat, Naked City, Donna Reed, The Real McCoys, My Three Sons, Margie, The Flintstones, 77 Sunset Strip, Target: The Corruptors. and the Pro Bowlers Tour.
On WBTV: Follow the Sun (ABC), Ben Casey (ABC), Beany and Cecil (ABC), and Wide World of Sports (ABC).
Later, you'd find Combat!, Bewitched, Peyton Place, and (I think) McHale's Navy on Channel 9; I know Get Smart was on Channel 3 for a couple of years, and I remember Trials of O'Brien and the Smothers Brothers (the sitcom) on Channel 36 (later 18). You might go through some Charlotte Observer listings pre-1967. Pick at random so you don't spend all your time doing so.
I'm not sure how you think I could do this, unless you know that these are on newspapers.com and that as a Wikipedia editor I have access.
The Charlotte Observer is indeed on newspapers.com for this time period. I am not a Wikipedia editor, but I keep a subscription to newspapers.com. I enjoy looking at old newspapers.
Newspapers.com is your best source. I found a listing yesterday that showed Run For Your Life on WBTV; that was an NBC show.
A random walk through The Charlotte News from 1966 shows that Charlotte TV was, indeed, a hodgepodge. (That Saturday "green section" was the greatest!)
Here's an ad from right before WCCB shifted from channel 36 to channel 18:
I did make one error. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was on Channel 9, meaning it was on its proper network.
I was just looking at the Charlotte listings for Friday, March 4, 1966. I found:
WSOC: The Flintstones (ABC)
Blue Light (ABC, delay from Wed 8:30)
The FBI (ABC, delay from Sun 8 PM)
Peyton Place (ABC)
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (NBC)
WSOC was a primary NBC affiliate.
WCCB: Camp Runamuck (NBC)
Hank (NBC)
The Sammy Davis Jr. Show (NBC)
The Smothers Brothers Show (where Tommy played an angel, CBS)
Trials of O'Brien (CBS)
WCCB was a primary ABC affiliate.
WBTV stayed with CBS until 9:30: Wild Wild West, Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle, but ran its own movie at 9:30.
I recall that WCCB switched to Channel 18 in November 1966; the present NBC affiliate, WCNC, is on analog 36.
I was just looking at the Charlotte listings for Friday, March 4, 1966. I found:
WSOC: The Flintstones (ABC)
Blue Light (ABC, delay from Wed 8:30)
The FBI (ABC, delay from Sun 8 PM)
Peyton Place (ABC)
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (NBC)
WSOC was a primary NBC affiliate.
WCCB: Camp Runamuck (NBC)
Hank (NBC)
The Sammy Davis Jr. Show (NBC)
The Smothers Brothers Show (where Tommy played an angel, CBS)
Trials of O'Brien (CBS)
WCCB was a primary ABC affiliate.
WBTV stayed with CBS until 9:30: Wild Wild West, Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle, but ran its own movie at 9:30.
I recall that WCCB switched to Channel 18 in November 1966; the present NBC affiliate, WCNC, is on analog 36.
And then there was the night, IIRC sometime in the 1970s, when the network feeds somehow got scrambled for a few moments, and you had, for instance, the CBS feed on an NBC station, ABC on CBS, and so on. This may have happened nationwide, I recall reading something about it, but I can't find the story online. Does anyone else recall this?
I remember the green section. Not sure what paper it was in. It might have been whatever my grandfather subscribed to. But I doubt The Charlotte News delivered that far away.
There might have been another paper that had a similar section. We usually traveled to Myrtle Beach the morning (Saturday) after my father got off work on Friday. We'd stop in either Salisbury or Albemarle and I'd get the News. I thought it was cool that a paper would have a separate section for TV and entertainment, and, of course, those listings! (And gotta love that green paper.)
The Sunday Columbus Dispatch had a similar section and I liked that one too. It was very thick. It was just on regular white newsprint. They carried listings in separate boxes for WSAZ and WHTN from Huntington, WTAP from Parkersburg, and I'm almost certain, WHIZ Zanesville.
I remember once in the early 1980s, the wrong audio was playing for each commercial. I seem to remember a commercial for 3M airing the audio for an Allstate insurance ad, or something like that. It seems like it was during a sporting event on one of the networks on a weekend or holiday afternoon.
Might have been a Greensboro paper.
A few years ago The Charlotte Observer printed parts of some pages in different colors. I had a hard time reading them, so it's not necessarily good. And there was the entirely pink paper for breast cancer awareness.
The only Saturday green section I remember was in the Atlanta Journal. The Charlotte Observer and the Greensboro News and Record had inserts called TV Week that ran on Sunday (Greensboro's eventually moved to Saturday). They were not any special color.
WTVT Tampa, when it was a CBS affiliate, used to identify itself, then run the commercials before going straight to the network. That means that many times they would punch up the network and WCBS's ID would come up seconds before the program started. That was not a one-time-only thing either.
And I have seen at least one occasion when a local station managed to get the ID of a neighboring station. One Sunday night, just before The FBI, then-ABC affiliate WBRC in Birmingham got the audio of Channel 11 Atlanta's ID (this is when 11 was also ABC). At school the next day those of us with ties to Atlanta couldn't resist talking about it.
My favorite story about ID snafus happened at the "little station that could," WYMT Hazard. KY. When it was an NBC affiliate the network would not run land lines into the underpopulated, mountainous terrain, and many times the outdated equipment would conk out, forcing the station to pick up by microwave either WCYB in Bristol, VA or WLEX Lexington. Whoever was in the control room was notorious for not cutting the out-of-town station's commercials or ID, so viewers in Hazard kept seeing ads for a particular auto dealer in Johnson City, TN. Within a short time the owner of the dealership began noticing cars coming in from Perry County, KY (where Hazard is) and he finally asked one driver how he knew about the place. We see your commercials all the time, the man said. I guess the car dealer wasn't too unhappy; he never took action against the station and he might have sold a few cars to boot.
No reason to take action against free advertising.
Was it microwave? I was thinking that they picked WCYB or WLEX OTA (they'd have needed a pretty good antenna, presumably up on the tower, to do the latter).
I looked it up on Wikipedia, and there was indeed a microwave link to both stations. I stand corrected.