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9pm News on Independent Channels in Central & Mountain Time Zones

G

Gregg

In the 70s, 10pm newscasts were beginning in NYC, LA and other East and West Coast cities on independent TV stations. The idea was that you could get the 11pm news an hour earlier if you either went to bed early or didn't like the major network's 10pm dramas.

But when did 9pm news start on independent TV stations in the Central and Mountain Time Zones? Did anyone think "9pm is too early for late news?" On the East and West Coasts, it was clear some people couldn't watch the 11pm news and still get enough sleep. But 9pm is still an early hour for late news.

Even in the Central and Mountain zones, isn't 9 o'clock psychologically prime time for TV? Maybe the independent stations should have copied the coasts and run their late local news at 11pm, after the network stations are into the Tonight Show or whatever ABC and CBS were doing at the time.


Gregg
[email protected]
 
There weren't a lot of indies in the Mountain Time Zone with news - KWGN is about the only one I can recall and they had 9 pm news at least as far back as the middle 1980s. The little indy in Salt Lake (ch 20) back then didn't even think of having news.

On the other hand, the great WGN has had news at 9 since 1980. They may have been the first Central Time Zone indy to have news at 9 pm. But, someone from St. Louis or Minneapolis may pop up and correct me on that one.
 
WDBB-17 Tuscaloosa/Birmingham tried doing a 9:00 p.m. newscast ca. 1986-87. The newscast did not do well in ratings for several reasons. The biggest problem was that the station had a poor OTA signal east of downtown Birmingham, and its full-power repeater WNAL-44 in Gadsden didn't cover the eastern side of the Birmingham area very well, either. While WDBB/WNAL was on most of the cable systems in the Birmingham area, cable penetration them wasn't what it is now.

In 1991, WDBB and WNAL became repeaters of WTTO-21.
 
Gregg said:
In the 70s, 10pm newscasts were beginning in NYC, LA and other East and West Coast cities on independent TV stations. The idea was that you could get the 11pm news an hour earlier if you either went to bed early or didn't like the major network's 10pm dramas.

But when did 9pm news start on independent TV stations in the Central and Mountain Time Zones? Did anyone think "9pm is too early for late news?" On the East and West Coasts, it was clear some people couldn't watch the 11pm news and still get enough sleep. But 9pm is still an early hour for late news.
Click to expand...

Not to be picky, but 10:00 PM newscasts didn't begin in the 70s in major west and east coast TV markets. In Los Angeles, KTLA had a major news department and had been running news at 10:00 since the 50s. Same with KTTV. George Putnam, reportedly the highest paid news anchor in America by the mid 60s - had been anchoring the 10:00 PM News since the mid 50s. He never worked at a network affiliate. In fact, his sign off slogan was "Back tomorrow at 5:00 and 10:00. See you then."

I'm sure this was also true in New York.

To me, it makes just as much sense to me for independent stations in the Central and Mountain time zones to counter-program the affiliates by running news an hour earlier. So I was surprised to see that Chicago's WGN didn't begin a 9:00 PM news program until 1980.

http://www.wgntv.com/about/station/stationhistory/
 
Lkeller said:
Gregg said:
In the 70s, 10pm newscasts were beginning in NYC, LA and other East and West Coast cities on independent TV stations. The idea was that you could get the 11pm news an hour earlier if you either went to bed early or didn't like the major network's 10pm dramas.

But when did 9pm news start on independent TV stations in the Central and Mountain Time Zones? Did anyone think "9pm is too early for late news?" On the East and West Coasts, it was clear some people couldn't watch the 11pm news and still get enough sleep. But 9pm is still an early hour for late news.
Click to expand...

Not to be picky, but 10:00 PM newscasts didn't begin in the 70s in major west and east coast TV markets. In Los Angeles, KTLA had a major news department and had been running news at 10:00 since the 50s. Same with KTTV. George Putnam, reportedly the highest paid news anchor in America by the mid 60s - had been anchoring the 10:00 PM News since the mid 50s. He never worked at a network affiliate. In fact, his sign off slogan was "Back tomorrow at 5:00 and 10:00. See you then."

I'm sure this was also true in New York.

To me, it makes just as much sense to me for independent stations in the Central and Mountain time zones to counter-program the affiliates by running news an hour earlier. So I was surprised to see that Chicago's WGN didn't begin a 9:00 PM news program until 1980.

http://www.wgntv.com/about/station/stationhistory/
Click to expand...

WGN-TV originally competed with WBBM-TV, WMAQ, & WLS-TV with the 10pm news. I don't completely remember their primetime schedule, other than that they aired movies during primetime. I believe they were more successful with their news when they moved it to 9pm. I even remembered when they repeated the evening news at 2:05am. I don't remember when they stopped doing that. I miss that and wished that WGN-TV would return to reairing what is now the 9pm news sometime in the overnight hours. Instead, they reair their news on CLTV & not everyone has cable. Satellite doesn't carry CLTV either. Anyway, the advantage that WGN has had at being able to have a newscast has to do with cross ownership with the Chicago Tribune. So if they weren't owned by a newspaper publisher, they most likely wouldn't have had news on their station at all. Now Chicago has 5 stations to get their news from when only comparing OTA broadcast.
 
KPHO in Phoenix had a 9:30 PM newscast from the 70s to just before picking up (again) CBS.
 
A bit off topic, but how about 7:00 news? I know CBS KIRO-TV in Seattle tried that for awhile in the 80's. Failed. And I remember a time in L.A. when the big 3 all ran the national news at 7pm. Wanna say late 70's, but could be off.
 
Charles1 said:
WDBB-17 Tuscaloosa/Birmingham tried doing a 9:00 p.m. newscast ca. 1986-87. The newscast did not do well in ratings for several reasons. The biggest problem was that the station had a poor OTA signal east of downtown Birmingham, and its full-power repeater WNAL-44 in Gadsden didn't cover the eastern side of the Birmingham area very well, either. While WDBB/WNAL was on most of the cable systems in the Birmingham area, cable penetration them wasn't what it is now.

In 1991, WDBB and WNAL became repeaters of WTTO-21.
Click to expand...

Yet WBRC/FOX6 draws shares in the high 50s for its 9 PM newscast.

Re New York's Channel 5: I remember an article in Variety from back in the '70s that mentioned that its nightly primetime lineup (at the time) beat the networks most nights; it consisted of "Dealer's Choice" (and later "Cross-Wits") at 8, Merv at 8:30, and news at 10. Even "Best Of Groucho" and then "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" often beat WCBS, WNBC, and WABC at 11.

I'm not looking for many more stations to move their network news to 7 PM; at the moment I count exactly nine: WSB Atlanta and WNCF Montgomery, AL (6 PM CT), both ABC; WRC Washington (NBC); KDKA Pittsburgh, WJZ Baltimore, WKMG Orlando, WRGB Albany, WCAX Burlington, VT, WCAV Charlottesville, VA (CBS). But I still don't understand why more Pacific stations don't do 7 PM local newscasts.
 
...from its New Years Eve 1980 sign-on, indie WLRE/26 Green Bay ran Independent Network News along with a ten-minute local insert about 25 minutes in; the local insert would usually be done early on by former WFRV-TV/5 Dialing for Dollars emcee Bill Cole. Then at 9:35 they'd go to an hour-long program of some sort (Angelo Poffo's International Championship Wrestling was the Monday night offering), after which they'd go to (IIRC) a tape-delayed CBS Late Movie circa 10:33-10:35...
 
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