Aircheck - WNWS 97.1 All News, 1976

[jeff560]

This is WNWS-97.1, NBC's News and Information Service, Aug. 9, 1976.

http://jeff560.tripod.com/sounds/wnws_aug_9_1976.mp3

 

[jmtillery]

Thank you for posting.

 

[spiritof67]

Thank you very much.

 

[Radio-X]

Always love hearing more NBC NIS airchecks (and any early all-news formats, for that matter)

I would be curious (being in NYC where broadcasting unions still had a very strong influence well into the 90's) if 97.1 was using a board op/engineer AND a local live announcer, a combination board op/engineer/announcer, or if it was 100% automated with taped announcers. Pretty sure NIS was designed to be 'plug-and-play' in regards to automation, which was part of its appeal at the time...less expenses needed on local folks!

Back in those days, most the big NYC jocks did not run their own boards or phones...leaving that to a board op/engineer. A format like NIS would have required a change in the rules, I'd imagine.

Radio-X

 

[K.M. Richards]

I don't think I heard "WNWS New York" anywhere around the top of the hour NBC main network newscast.

 

[Gregg.]

Interesting that the aircheck begins, not at the top of the hour, or at :06 past the hour, but later. We hear two features in a row, both several minutes long, one about tattoos, one about Williamsburg Virginia tourism. So I suppose this is at a point in the hour where local stations can opt-out, doing their local news or programming. It seems this aircheck was recorded overnight, so that's why there's only one anchor. Weekdays, NIS had dual anchors during most dayparts but overnights and weekends, one person would anchor solo.

K.M. sort of mentions that some NIS affiliates, especially if they were long-time NBC affiliates, continued to air NBC Network News on the hour, even though most stations used the first six minutes for local news. I live in the NYC market, so I heard 97.1 WNWS, the NYC flagship, and they'd do local news at :00-:06 and :30-:36. But when on vacation in New England, I'd also listen to 970 WCSH Portland. They had been an NBC affiliate since the 1920s, so they continued to air NBC News on the hour, and find other segments of the hour to do their local news and features.

WCSH was one of a few local stations that decided to keep going with local All-News when NIS was discontinued. WPOP Hartford also did it for a few years. And KQV continues to do All-News to this day after they were the Pittsburgh NIS affiliate. Give them credit for continuing the format in Market #26 while all the other All-News stations are in Markets 1-14.

I believe NIS was dark between :00 and :06 but supplied segments during the rest of the hour. So even a low-budget station could simply affiliate with some network, NBC or another, to give them news on the hour, and run NIS the rest of the hour. I only recently learned that NIS was dark on Sunday mornings, so NBC could send spots out on the network lines. I always wondered why WNWS and WCSH did public service or religious programming on Sunday mornings. Didn't they know All-News stations get some of their best ratings on weekend mornings when people were starting their day but the popular Mon.-Fri. morning shows were off for the weekend? The answer was they couldn't run NIS on Sunday mornings.

 

[deepstblu]

I would be curious (being in NYC where broadcasting unions still had a very strong influence well into the 90's) if 97.1 was using a board op/engineer AND a local live announcer, a combination board op/engineer/announcer, or if it was 100% automated with taped announcers.

Radio-X

I don't recall hearing a time check during the local cut-in, which would suggest something on tape.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I believe NIS was dark between :00 and :06 but supplied segments during the rest of the hour. So even a low-budget station could simply affiliate with some network, NBC or another, to give them news on the hour, and run NIS the rest of the hour. I only recently learned that NIS was dark on Sunday mornings, so NBC could send spots out on the network lines.

NIS was dark at the top and bottom of the hour because they shared the same network line with the main NBC service, and the news took the top six minutes, with the NBC features and spot feeds at :30.

There were NIS stations that were also ABC/I affiliates -- the one in my hometown market of Oxnard/Ventura CA was one, having had that affiliation since the four-way split of that network's services -- and a few were affiliated with Mutual, which gave them the option outside of drive-time to have network at both the top and bottom. The way MBS was structured then, they could have cleared the two spots per hour in the :30 cast and sold the :00 cast locally.

Also remember that only parts of the NIS hour were mandatory clears (those contained the network spot inventory) so there was the possibility of running both a network newscast and a short local segment before having to rejoin NIS.

Sunday morning was indeed pre-empted in certain hours, but not for spot feeds ... that was when NBC ran its network public affairs programs, such as "Meet The Press". I'm somewhat certain that the old affiliation agreement I have somewhere in my archives spelled out which hours those were, and I think they were staggered so affiliates could record an hour while also airing it live and then repeat that hour. The odds were pretty good against any breaking news happening during those periods.