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Any more CBS affiliates moving Guiding Light to the morning?

B

bpatrick

Last year, KDKA and WJZ surprised a lot of us
by moving Guiding Light to 10 AM, and CBS
also instituted a 9 AM feed, which is carried
in Boston, Orlando, Portland, ME, and (I believe)
South Bend, IN.

Does anyone know if any CBS affiliates plan
to move GL to the mornings this fall? Or for
that matter, with the show below a 2 rating,
is anybody dropping it?
 
bpatrick said:
Last year, KDKA and WJZ surprised a lot of us
by moving Guiding Light to 10 AM, and CBS
also instituted a 9 AM feed, which is carried
in Boston, Orlando, Portland, ME, and (I believe)
South Bend, IN.

Does anyone know if any CBS affiliates plan
to move GL to the mornings this fall? Or for
that matter, with the show below a 2 rating,
is anybody dropping it?
Click to expand...

All following from the success of the slot on WBZ, and don't forget that all 3 are CBS O & O's (and all three, KDKA, WJZ and WBZ are former Group W's). What one must ask is, will CBS make this the time slot for all of their O & O's? And if so, why? Define, describe, discuss.

Uh, make that a 3 Part essay, 500 words, 12 point font, double spaced... (50 point, total). Have this turned in by midnight Monday ;D
 
I can't see it happening. The only o&o outside
the Eastern time zone that carries GL in the
morning is WBBM Chicago (why, I don't know),
and as most of you know, most of the o&os that
air GL in the morning run Dr. Phil at 3. If GL airs at 3
(Eastern), remember that Dr. Phil cannot run against
Oprah at 4, where she usually airs in the East.
But in the earlier time zones, where GL is on at 2,
there are two hours between it and the 5 PM news,
so Dr. Phil can air at 3 and Oprah at 4 (or vice versa,
as in Los Angeles). With both GL and Dr. Phil available
in the afternoon, there's no reason for GL to be on in
the morning in the earlier time zones. (Exception:
KOVR Sacramento, which doesn't run GL at all.)
 
KCBS did at one time air Guiding Light a day-behind at 9AM, this would have been in the late 90s when other stations were starting to move it too. Eventually at some point they moved back and moved Young and the Restless ahead slightly to 11:30. I also heard KCNC in Denver aired the show a day behind in the mornings as well, but it didn't last very long. I can't really confirm that one as I had stopped working at the station the minute NBC sold it to CBS and left Denver.

WBBM interestingly swapped Guiding Light to 9AM at some point, then in 2002 swapped it back to 2PM, finally swapping it back to 9AM again in 2004.

I don't know of any other stations that have moved Guiding Light to the mornings then moved it back to the afternoons

These are the stations that air the show in at either 10AM or 9AM. Bold indicates an O&O:

WCBS-New York
WBBM-Chicago
KYW-Philadelphia
WBZ-Boston
WYOU-Scanton/Wilkes-Barre, PA
WWJ-Detroit
WFOR-Miami
WANE-Fort Wayne, IN
WKMG-Orlando
WJZ-Baltimore
KDKA-Pittsburgh
WRGB-Albany, NY
WGME-Portland, ME
WSBT-South Bend, IN

Don't forget about WNEM in Flint Michigan adding Guiding Light after a ten-year absence last year on it's My Network TV digital subchannel.
 
WBBM tends to have an East Coast mentality sometimes. They still run "The Young and the Restless" at 11:30 (12:30 ET) instead of 11:00 like most other stations in the Central Time Zone. It is a little odd that they've shifted "Guiding Light" a time or two between the morning and afternoon.

I haven't seen any ratings, but I think that maybe GL plays a little better in the Midwest than in the East. There doesn't seem to be too big of a rush among CBS affiliates in the Central Time Zone (or further west, for that matter) to shift the show to the morning. And like an earlier poster stated, running GL at 2:00 Central keeps the show out of the Dr. Phil/Oprah conflict.

I've often thought that CBS should have swapped the time slots of Y&R and GL years ago. Y&R has been one of the strongest soaps for years (so strong that a number of affiliates use it to take on Oprah in the afternoon), but it's never had too much network competition. In the East, Y&R gets a 30-minute jump on "All My Children" and "Days of Our Lives" in most markets. In the Midwest, Y&R has no network competition at all if it airs at 11:00 (assuming the local ABC affiliate doesn't run "All My Children" on a one-day delay at 11:00). Y&R probably could have given "General Hospital" a little better competition than GL, and GL may have fared a little better in the earlier slot held by Y&R. The only soap competition it would have gotten in recent years would have been from "Loving"/"The City" and "Port Charles," and those shows were widely pre-empted by ABC affiliates. On the other hand, a lot of CBS affiliates get a lot of ratings mileage out of having their noon news sandwiched between either "The Price Is Right" and Y&R, or Y&R and "The Bold and the Beautiful," depending on time zone.
 
Does GL do better in the mornings, or is it being moved just to get the obligation out of the way?

GL is being treated like SEARCH FOR TOMORROW and THE EDGE OF NIGHT were treated in their last days...
 
Well, at least GL gets cleared on 99 percent of the affiliates, albeit the timeslots aren't universal. "Search for Tomorrow" and "The Edge of Night" were just plain pre-empted.
 
Guiding Light was the big winner in the last Daytime Emmies for the soap catagories, so the likelihood of it getting bounced around too much is unlikely. In many markets outside of NYC in NY, its Dr Phil at 10AM, Price is Right @ 11AM and Guiding Light @ 3pm...
 
bostonmediaguy said:
Garrett said:
All following from the success of the slot on WBZ, ...
Click to expand...

Success?? Boston has some of the lowest ratings for Guiding Light in the country.
Click to expand...

WBZ, CBS and low ratings? Ah yes, I've been doing some research on this...
I think that Guiding Light's ratings troubles in Boston are just one of many CBS shows that is having trouble in Boston right now. It was predicted from the start that the affiliate swap between 4 and 7 would put 4 on the losing end, mostly because 7 was getting a Top rated network (at the time, NBC), which also has younger demos that advertisers like, while 4 was getting an older demographic network and one that was not atop the ratings. The networks have swapped ratings positions, but you also have to consider the whole mentality of WBZ 4. I remember how young, outgoing and fast paced their whole image was. Everything from Eyewitness News to their local programming was based on a young demographic. All those predicitons came true, and WBZ TV has never recovered. Changing the image to that of a CBS O & O, (making them CBS 4 just like CBS 2 in NY) didn't bring in a new audience, but got rid of whatever audience remained. Now, re-imaging back to WBZ is a noble effort but too little too late.

My grandmother always used to turn to 7 for Guiding Light, which came on in the afternoon, and that is pretty much where she left it, on 7 all day, morning to night (occasionally flipping to 5 for all in the family). I don't think long time viewrs of Guding light are going to switch to 4 at 11 in the morning to watch GL, and the younger crowd is probably watching 7.

The best that CBS can do (and I hate to say it) is sell WBZ to some other big company, or attempt an ownership swap with WHDH, and yeah, it will be a cold cold day in you know where when that happens.

Now, if NBC decides to buy WBZ TV... All bets are off! (Sorry for getting slightly off topic, but it is interesting, huh?).
 
Guiding Light still pulls decent ratings in the South
(last year, a rumor got started that WBTV Charlotte
was going to drop it, and that was squelched by a
CBS researcher who pointed out that GL's best
ratings are in North Carolina and Virginia). I'm
not looking for any Southern stations (other than
the two that already have it in the morning, and I
don't consider Orlando and Miami "southern" in any
sense but geography) to move the show.
 
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