1950s Prime Time Pattern in Mountain Time Zone

[joebtsflk1]

Being a midwesterner, I didn't realize Mountain time zone stations followed the Central time zone pattern for prime time, 7 - 10 pm but each
individual station in the MT zone had to tape the Eastern/Central feed for playback. Then one evening skipland was active and I couldn't figure out why there was a distant station that was a minute behind our local affiliate.

Today with digital storage 1 hour delayed playback isn't a big deal. But how was MT prime time shows delivered in the 50s into the early 60s?
Did the networks run a west feed where Mountain was 8 - 11 pm (or back then 7:30 - 11 pm) and Pacific was 6:30 - 10 pm?

 

[bpatrick]

Pacific time in the '50s was a real hodgepode even after the
coaxial cable linked the two coasts; for example, KPIX San
Francisco would show "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" live
from New York on Mondays at 5:30 (PT), while KNXT (KCBS)
Los Angeles would delay it three hours to 8:30. AFAIK, the
networks eventually put the West Coast on the same primetime
as the East, although ABC would do some crazy things on Saturday
nights in the early '60s in order to accommodate "The Fight Of The
Week" and "Make That Spare," which, by necessity, aired live. A
typical 1961 Saturday-night schedule would look like this:

6 PM Lawrence Welk (live, 9 PM ET)
7 PM Fight Of The Week (live, 10 PM ET)
7:45 Make That Spare (live, 10:45 ET)
8 PM Matty's Funday Funnies (7 PM ET)
8:30 Leave It To Beaver (8:30 ET)
9 PM The Roaring 20's (7:30 ET)
the affiliates then getting 10-11, the equivalent of 6:30-7:30 in the East.

As for the Mountain time zone, the farthest back I've looked is Denver in 1967.
ABC affiliate KBTV (now KUSA) stayed with the Central time zone Monday-Friday,
but on weekends would take the live feeds from the East:

Saturday: 5:30 Dating Game (7:30 ET)
6 PM Newlywed Game (8 ET)
6:30 Lawrence Welk (8:30 ET)
7:30 Hollywood Palace (9:30 ET)
then pre-empt "ABC Scope" at 8:30 MT/10:30 ET)

Sunday: 5 PM Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (7 ET)
6 PM The FBI (8 ET)
7 PM ABC Sunday Night Movie (9 ET)
then get affiliate time 9-11 MT, the equivalent of 5-7 ET

CBS and NBC in Denver played a little more fast and loose with their networks;
a number of shows which aired early in the East might air later in the Mountain
time zone; I seem to recall "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." as a show which aired at
8 (ET) but not until 9 (MT). Like ABC, the other affiliates carried their networks
from 5 or 5:30 to 9 PM on weekends; I recall only "It's About Time" (CBS, Sunday 7:30 ET/
5:30 MT) airing out of pattern in Denver.

I think somewhere I posted either a Mountain or Pacific (or both) schedule for November
22, 1963, what had been scheduled before the events in Dallas. And I'm quite sure that
ABC followed a 6:30-10 primetime, although "The Fight Of The Week" and "Make That Spare"
might have aired in the 8-9 slot.

Now as to whether these shows were fed from New York, or possibly Chicago, and tape-
delayed I can't answer. I can only say that Denver's Ch. 9 was more orderly than Chs. 4
and 7 in its scheduling (same in daytime, which started with "Dateline: Hollywood" at 8:30
MT/10:30 ET and continued through "The Dating Game" at 2 PM MT/4 PM ET).

 

[oldiesfan6479]

bpatrick--I'd be curious to know how KBTV Denver ran the weeknight shows
that aired "in pattern" 6:30-10 MT...a one-hour tape delay, or on 16mm film?

Through much of the 1960s, KTVK Phoenix ran ABC "in pattern" Sunday-Friday,
but via 16mm film prints. Saturday night was live network starting at 5:30.
KTVK also fed the films/net feed to KGUN-TV Tucson.

During the same years, KOOL-TV CBS Phoenix (which also fed KOLD-TV Tucson)
typically tape-delayed the 7:30 ET hour to 9:00 MT, with the rest of the prime
time schedule live 6:30-9. There were exceptions to this.

And while I don't know too much about KTAR-TV NBC Mesa (Phoenix market), KVOA-TV
NBC Tucson (via its own Telco line) had a whole mis-mosh of stuff--some live net, some
tape delay (usually a week), and some 16mm film prints (typically two weeks after).
Some shows aired on a different night, and they at times aired a local movie 8-10 Mondays.

The network feeds all came out of New York.

 

[joebtsflk1]

Sounds like pattern ran all over the map in the Mountain time zone back in the day, which explains why 50s network promo slides never indicated times, just the day. And, also the disclaimer "over most of these (fill in the network) stations" since it wasn't just that not all stations cleared a program but also that some stations ran the kine of the promo-ed episode a week or two later.

I thought that it would have easier to have the west feed in the 50s mimic the east: mountain prime time 7:30 - 11 pm, pacific 6:30 -10pm, but particularly in the 50s the mountain time zone didn't have enough population to really worry about.

 

[bpatrick]

bpatrick--I'd be curious to know how KBTV Denver ran the weeknight shows
that aired "in pattern" 6:30-10 MT...a one-hour tape delay, or on 16mm film?

Through much of the 1960s, KTVK Phoenix ran ABC "in pattern" Sunday-Friday,
but via 16mm film prints. Saturday night was live network starting at 5:30.
KTVK also fed the films/net feed to KGUN-TV Tucson.

During the same years, KOOL-TV CBS Phoenix (which also fed KOLD-TV Tucson)
typically tape-delayed the 7:30 ET hour to 9:00 MT, with the rest of the prime
time schedule live 6:30-9. There were exceptions to this.

And while I don't know too much about KTAR-TV NBC Mesa (Phoenix market), KVOA-TV
NBC Tucson (via its own Telco line) had a whole mis-mosh of stuff--some live net, some
tape delay (usually a week), and some 16mm film prints (typically two weeks after).
Some shows aired on a different night, and they at times aired a local movie 8-10 Mondays.

The network feeds all came out of New York.

Sorry, I can't tell you how Ch. 9 did it; I've only been in Denver once and that
was five years ago, after KMGH/7 had become the ABC affiliate and now-KUSA/9
had moved to NBC. IIRC, if I go by the Denver Post's listings, Ch. 9 may have
been on a one-hour delay; daytime and weekends were live feeds from New York,
because everything aired two hours behind Eastern time. (In fact, I do recall when
Ch. 9 ran ABC's newscast at 4:30 MT, which is 6:30 ET.) Nevertheless, there was
none of the airing of early-evening programs later in the evening or on another night,
as Ch. 7 was prone to do.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

I can add one more item about KTAR-TV 12 Mesa (now KPNX)...

From newspaper TV listings around 1960, KTAR-TV aired the NBC
schedule "live" each night 5:30-9 PM MT (7:30-11 ET). At 9:00 it
was syndication, followed by their late news at 9:30. Then it was a
JIP of Tonight from 10-11 (which started at 9:15 MT).

Through much of the 1960s, KVOA-TV 4 Tucson ran a 15-min. late
'cast at 10, then JIPped Tonight 10:15-11.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Once the coaxial cable was opened up to the West in 1951, the order in which shows on NBC's Friday night lineup were broadcast in the Mountain and Pacific time zones (through 1960) undoubtedly was different than in the Eastern and Central time zones since NBC had the "Friday Night Fights" from 10 to 11 P.M. ET since the boxing matches were no doubt live in all time zones (10 ET, 9 CT, 8 MT, 7 PT).

Once tape came in, could the Denver stations had been used as taping/refeed points (meaning they would tape the East Coast feeds of shows and then feed them out an hour or two later to other Mountain Time Zone cities)?? This would prevent local stations from having to do all that taping and rebroadcasting.

For daytime, the situation probably got even dicier.

In it's early days, NBC's "Today" would be done for three hours, from 7 to 10 A.M. Eastern time, with the 9-10 P.M. hour being a live re-creation of the 7-8 ET hour.

I would think that in each time zone, "Today" prior to the late 1950's went something like this:

Eastern time zone: 7-9 A.M. local

Central time zone: 7-9 A.M. local (the 8-9 A.M. CT hour being the re-created first hour)

Mountain time zone: 6-8 A.M. local (again, the 7-8 MT hour being the live re-created first hour)

Pacific time zone: 6-8 A.M. local (the 6-8 PT hour being the live re-created first-hour, and the 7-8 hour being a kinescope of the 8-9 A.M. ET hour).

Once tape came in, "Today" only did two hours, with the 7-8 A.M. ET hour being broadcast at 8 A.M. CT, 7 A.M MT and 7 A.M. PT.

On the West Coast, the second hour aired on tape between 8 and 9 A.M. PT; I suspect Mountain time zone stations may have aired the second hour live from 6 to 7 MT and showing the first hour on tape from 7 to 8 A.M. MT, while other Mountain time zone stations may have shown the second hour on tape between 8 and 9 A.M. local.

Beyond this, some afternoon shows (Eastern time) on the networks may have been shown live or at the same hour they were shown on the East Coast (example: Some Mountain time zone CBS stations may have broadcast "As The World Turns" live at 11:30 A.M. MST/MDT).

And then again, there's the case of Arizona, a state that for years did not go on Daylight Time (do they still stay on Standard time in the Summer?). This posed lots of scheduling problems for network affiliated TV stations in the Grand Canyon State.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Beyond this, some afternoon shows (Eastern time) on the networks may have been shown live or at the same hour they were shown on the East Coast
(example: Some Mountain time zone CBS stations may have broadcast "As The World Turns" live at 11:30 A.M. MST/MDT).

For many years, in the early- and mid-'60s, ATWT did air live at 11:30 AM MT in
Phoenix and Tucson.

And then again, there's the case of Arizona, a state that for years did not go on Daylight Time (do they still stay on Standard time in the Summer?).
This posed lots of scheduling problems for network affiliated TV stations in the Grand Canyon State.

Yes, AZ is still on MST year-round. But there weren't scheduling issues due to lack of DST
until 1968. AZ was on DST in '67, and from approx. '58 to '66, the networks had a one-hour
delayed feed in the summer for EST/CST stations, which was fed to AZ, meaning programming
came in at the same time year-round.