Anybody remember the "Graveyard" slot on NBC daytime, 1968-75?

[Mike Stroud]

The recent passings of Bob Stewart and Dick Clark have got me all of a sudden nostalgic for the good ole days of daytime TV games again. One of the biggest curiosities in daytime history was the period between December 30, 1968 and April 21, 1975, when NBC had such a dismal time mounting competition against CBS' As The World Turns (then a 30-minute sudser) and ABC's Let's Make a Deal, at 1:30 p.m./12:30 Central. This became known to industry insiders as the "Graveyard" timeslot, the worst possible on daytime then.

For those of you who need a briefing, NBC had run LMAD successfully for five years, beginning in December 1963 (not the most opportune of times to start a light-hearted show such as this, coming off the heels of the JFK assassination, but that's another story). Monty Hall and Stefan Hatos ran a firm second place to ATWT, but the Nielsens were strong enough to encourage the Peacock nighttime brass to give it a fling on prime-time as a summer replacement on Sundays in 1967, against CBS' venerable Ed Sullivan and ABC's The FBI. Hatos and Hall hoped NBC would pick it up for the fall, but since Sullivan was still the variety king of that time, the Peacock passed up LMAD in favor of a nighttime Hollywood Squares, which unlike Deal, was already the number-one-rated game on daytime. As a rule, NBC did not run but a couple or so games on the evening schedule, ever since the scandals in the Fifties; in the main, games belonged in the daytime "ghetto" in the eyes of 30 Rock.

Not surprisingly, Hatos and Hall got profoundly ticked off and started looking for other possibilities. CBS had divested itself of its games within the past two years and would not re-enter the field until 1972. About all that ABC had in the way of games was the Chuck Barris shows, so Alphabet officials figured LMAD was a way to get some "respectability," and thus muscle its way into serious daytime contention. NBC probably thought Hatos and Hall would not dare to make good on their threats, and so the Peacock boys looked the other way. But the unthinkable happened, and in its wake, NBC slowly but steadily lost its prominence as a solid daytime performer, one that it would never get back (Days of Our Lives is the only thread left of that era). To add insult to injury, Deal moved to ABC on its fifth birthday, taking most if not all viewers with it to the new channel at the same timeslot.

NBC would spend the next six and a half years frantically trying to bring up the rear against the defected LMAD and the Nielsen-leading ATWT. The following is a list of shows that tried and failed:

Hidden Faces, soap opera, 12/30/68-6/27/69

You're Putting Me On, game show hosted by Bill Leyden and later Larry Blyden (Bob Stewart, packager), 6/30/69-12/26/69

Life with Linkletter, (revival of Art Linkletter's House Party, originally on CBS, with son Jack as co-host), 12/29/69-9/25/70

Words and Music, game show hosted by Wink Martindale, 9/28/70-2/12/71

Joe Garagiola's Memory Game, game show vehicle for the sports broadcaster packaged by Merv Griffin, 2/15/71-7/30/71

Three on a Match, game show hosted by Bill Cullen (Bob Stewart, packager), 8/2/71-6/28/74

Jeopardy!, original NBC version of legendary game show hosted by Art Fleming (last six months of show's run), 7/1/74-1/3/75

How to Survive a Marriage, feminist-themed soap opera packaged de facto by NBC daytime head Lin Bolen, 1/6/75-4/17/75

All of this may have no meaning whatsoever for some of you, since your NBC affiliate, particularly if you were in the Central Time Zone, quite possibly pre-empted the network at this time of day to run homemaker's shows, hour-long newscasts, or even sitcom reruns, due to the deep third place these programs here attained in the ratings elsewhere in the country. And AFAIK, the Pacific feed ran the afternoon shows in a different pattern, from skeds I have seen from LA and the Bay Area during this period, with the soap block running from 12:30 to 3, and the "Graveyard" shows running at the end, at 3.

What are your memories of these years, and did your station carry these programs at all?

 

[bpatrick]

I thought 12 N (PT) was the "graveyard" slot in the Pacific time zone,
that NBC didn't give its affiliates there the half-hour following "Who, What
Or Where," but went straight into the next show and gave back 3 PM to the
affiliates; in other words, a typical schedule from, say, 1972, would look like
this:

12 N Three On A Match
12:30 Days Of Our Lives
1 PM The Doctors
1:30 Another World
2 PM Return To Peyton Place
2:30 Somerset

As for being able to get these shows, I lived in Greenville, SC, Birmingham,
and Tampa, and started to college at the University of Georgia during those
years. WFBC (now WYFF) Greenville and WFLA Tampa carried most of these
shows, although I seem to recall "Allen Ludden's Gallery" on WFLA from 1:30-
2:30 in 1969 (I don't recall any pre-emptions in Greenville). In Birmingham,
where WAPI (WVTM) and WBMG (WIAT) divided CBS and NBC until May 1970,
WAPI carried "As The World Turns" and WBMG whatever NBC was running, but
even after WAPI became exclusively NBC it carried all of the network's shows
at that time, starting with "Life With Linkletter."

In Athens, we had WSB, which was notorious for pre-empting everything from
NBC between noon and 2 PM. I'm thinking Ch. 17 might have carried "Hidden
Faces" and Ch. 36, "You're Putting Me On" and possibly "Life With Linkletter."
I know that the most successful of these shows, "Three On A Match," was never
carried in Atlanta. (I've often wondered how WXIA would have handled the 12 N-
2 PM situation if it had been the NBC affiliate then.)

A couple of others I can think of: WSM (now WSMV) Nashville had its "Noon Show"
with Teddy Bart from 12-1 (CT), and WAVE Louisville was pre-empting 1:30 even
when "LMAD" was on NBC; it carried Mike Douglas from 1-2 for most of this time frame.

 

[Mike Stroud]

bp has the South nailed down pretty well. Elsewhere, some other markets where the "Graveyard" shows either didn't air or aired on a non-NBC station include:

KSTP (now ABC affil), Minneapolis/St. Paul, talk show from 12:15 to 1 p.m., following a 15-minute newscast at Noon. No clearance in market.

KSD (now KSDK), St. Louis, hour-long newscast from Noon (maybe 11:55, in place of NBC's five-minute update) to 1. Shows (at least 3OAM) carried on KDNL, then indie, now ABC affil, instead.

WBAL, Baltimore, I Love Lucy (or other sitcom) reruns. Unknown if shown on another station.

WBZ, Boston, and KYW, Philadelphia, Mike Douglas Show (Group W) from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Unknown if shown on other stations.

WIS, Columbia, South Carolina, long running children's show Mr. Knozit from 1:30 to 2. No clearance in market.

KPRC, Houston, either Mike Douglas or Merv Griffin. Shows (at least 3OAM) carried on KVRL (now KRIV), then indie, now FOX affil, instead.

WPSD, Paducah, Kentucky, Romper Room from 12:30 to 1. Shows (at least 3OAM and Jeopardy!) carried on WDXR, then indie, now defunct, instead.

In a Louisiana edition of TV Guide I have from 1974, of five NBC affils (Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, New Orleans), only two cleared NBC at 12:30, Lafayette and New Orleans. The Lafayette station, coincidentally, would go out of business in 1976.

 

[cd637299]

I have been looking at the old listings online for Miami.

WCKT 7, now WSVN, is the target again, as was another thread from 2 days ago.....

LMAD was carried early on in its run on WCKT because it was on at 2 pm (NBC yielded 1-2pm for a while to the affiliates---I was in kindergarten then & I was oblivious to this fact). "Girl Talk" w/ Virginia Graham was entrenched at 1:30 on WCKT, even when the giant LMAD was running; the only time WCKT had it later on, was during the nighttime run. Only when LMAD moved to ABC did it get the proper treatment here.

After Girl Talk's cancellation in 1970, WCKT ran NBC again, and that included Life w/ Linkletter, Memory Game (which I would love to see again, despite Merv Griffin's disassociation with it, per the Hyatt book on daytime TV) & Three on a Match.

And the 12:30 slot on WCKT 1968-75? I say pretty much, forget any NBC there! I loved Eye Guess & Who/What/Where.....WPTV to the rescue except when WCIX (indie) grabbed the 3 W's & its follow-ups then.

cd

 

[Ultimajock]

...in Wisconsin, four of the five NBC affiliates -- WTMJ-TV/4 Milwaukee, WFRV/5 Green Bay, WAEO-TV/12 Rhinelander and WEAU-TV/13 Eau Claire -- aired the 12:30 Central offerings, while WMTV/15 Madison apparently aired Timmy & Lassie for much of that period, eventually picking up Three on a Match towards the middle of that show's run...

 

[azumanga]

In a Louisiana edition of TV Guide I have from 1974, of five NBC affils (Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, New Orleans), only two cleared NBC at 12:30, Lafayette and New Orleans. The Lafayette station, coincidentally, would go out of business in 1976.

What was this NBC affiliate? Even today, the market still has no NBC affiliate of its own.

 

[NHRadio]

I remember watching "Three on a match" on WBZ Boston during school vacations.

 

[hipman2]

Yes, the Western NBC affiliates ran the 1:30-4:30ET shows 1 1/2 hours (instead of 2 hours) after it aired on the Eastern/Central zones. The noon slot had the "Graveyard" slot, and that slot in San Diego was pre-empted in favor of the noon news on channel 10 (now ABC since 1977) and I watched some of the NBC noon shows on NBC 4 via cable TV. I'm not sure why the NBC network's western feed didn't have an open 30-minute slot at noon, but I guess the affiliates wanted the 3pm-5pm slot to run 2-hour afternoon movies, so it was either pre-empting the 1:30pm ET show when it ran at noon, or the 4pm ET show if NBC ran it in the CT pattern at 3pm, which most of the local stations in San Diego did anyway for the longest time.

 

[RyanHoward]

In a Louisiana edition of TV Guide I have from 1974, of five NBC affils (Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, New Orleans), only two cleared NBC at 12:30, Lafayette and New Orleans. The Lafayette station, coincidentally, would go out of business in 1976.

What was this NBC affiliate? Even today, the market still has no NBC affiliate of its own.

Since KLNI died in 1976, KPLC from Lake Charles has served as the NBC affil for Lafayette.

 

[azumanga]

In a Louisiana edition of TV Guide I have from 1974, of five NBC affils (Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, New Orleans), only two cleared NBC at 12:30, Lafayette and New Orleans. The Lafayette station, coincidentally, would go out of business in 1976.

What was this NBC affiliate? Even today, the market still has no NBC affiliate of its own.

Since KLNI died in 1976, KPLC from Lake Charles has served as the NBC affil for Lafayette.

Depending on where you are, viewers also got KALB Alexandria and/or WVLA Baton Rouge for their NBC. DirecTV subscribers in the market get NBC from WLBT in Jackson.

 

[Mike Stroud]

I remember watching "Three on a match" on WBZ Boston during school vacations.

Come to think of it, you're probably right. Sometime in the mid-70s, WBZ and maybe another Group W station moved Mike Douglas to the afternoon fringe, out of the midday period. That station, of course, would have eventually had to do so to accommodate the expanded Days of Our Lives. Not sure how that affected the Douglas show on the originating station, KYW; probably the same thing, since it had not aired live since 1965 in the wake of the "SOB" profanity fallout from Zsa Zsa Gabor. Whatever happened, all the Group W stations took the full 90-minute version and weren't about to chop off the last half hour in Spring '75 just in order to accommodate Days.

However, there's little doubt that Mike Douglas was about the only fighting hope WBZ and KYW would have had against As the World Turns and Let's Make A Deal; I would guess Douglas came in a close second to ATWT and easily beat Deal. I think the motive for WBZ bumping Douglas was to run a local women's talk show, if I'm not mistaken about listings I have seen. That may have been a move in response to WCVB's ultra-aggressive emphasis upon local productions in that day. Boston was then a Top 10 market, and the stations had a lot of money to stage extensive non-news local programming, something smaller markets had to pick and choose carefully.

 

[Mike Stroud]

In a Louisiana edition of TV Guide I have from 1974, of five NBC affils (Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, New Orleans), only two cleared NBC at 12:30, Lafayette and New Orleans. The Lafayette station, coincidentally, would go out of business in 1976.

What was this NBC affiliate? Even today, the market still has no NBC affiliate of its own.

Since KLNI died in 1976, KPLC from Lake Charles has served as the NBC affil for Lafayette.

Depending on where you are, viewers also got KALB Alexandria and/or WVLA Baton Rouge for their NBC. DirecTV subscribers in the market get NBC from WLBT in Jackson.

Unfortunately, you have a mistake there about Baton Rouge. Back in the period I'm describing, WBRZ, channel 2 analog, was the NBC outlet there, while the present WVLA, channel 33 analog, was known as WRBT and was with ABC (that station, incidentally, was relatively new at the time). It was not until 1977 that they flipped networks, in the Alphabet push to get on as many top-rated Vs as possible. WBRZ was the closest of KLNI's three NBC competitors and certainly put out the strongest signal, so it can be blamed more than any other factor for the failure of the original channel 15 in Lafayette.

It would seem that either UHF or VHF signals would have transmitted very well in Louisiana's nearly sea-level elevation. But there may have been other factors that inhibited a large reach from a U. Humidity and the frequently turbulent coastal atmosphere probably wrecked havoc back in the day.

 

[bpatrick]

Do you suppose that's the same reason WSB carried Merv Griffin
instead of "Three On A Match"? "ATWT" was on WAGA at 1:30;
"Let's Make A Deal" was on WXIA. Knowing Atlanta, Merv should
have beaten "LMAD" easily and either beaten "ATWT" or run a close
second. Merv was on Channel 2 from 12:30-2 PM, but when NBC
expanded "Days" to an hour, Metromedia wanted a station in Atlanta
that would carry him for the full 90 minutes; WXIA was the only one
willing to do so and in one of the great mistakes the station was noted
for at the time, moved the local news to 5:30, ABC News to 6, and put
Merv at 6:30. Within a year, "11 Alive Newsroom" was on at 6, ABC News
was back at 6:30, and "Concentration" and "To Tell The Truth" were back
in the 7-8 PM slot.

A word about the reception in South Louisiana: my parents lived in Tampa
for three years; that, too, is sea-level or close to it, and when I'd go home
I'd try picking up Orlando (with two analog channels, 2 and 6, which should
have been fairly easy to get). No such luck; neither did I ever get Ch. 11
from Fort Myers. In Dallas, OTOH, which is also rather flat, I could get KXII/12
Ada-Ardmore, OK, and KSWO/7 Wichita Falls, TX/Lawton, OK.

I've always had the best results in hilly terrain in an upstairs bedroom; in Birmingham,
I could pick up Atlanta wrestling on Ch. 11 just about every Saturday night; in Greenville, SC,
in the mornings I could get WGTV/8 (PBS Athens/Atlanta), WSOC/9 (ABC Charlotte), WIS/10
(NBC Columbia), WXIA/11 (NBC Atlanta), and WRDW/12 (CBS Augusta, GA).

 

[NHRadio]

That fits. I remember the Douglas show after school but before dinner. Not sure of the exact time but 4ish sounds right.

Sometime in the mid-70s, WBZ and maybe another Group W station moved Mike Douglas to the afternoon fringe, out of the midday period.

 

[Mike Stroud]

Do you suppose that's the same reason WSB carried Merv Griffin
instead of "Three On A Match"? "ATWT" was on WAGA at 1:30;
"Let's Make A Deal" was on WXIA. Knowing Atlanta, Merv should
have beaten "LMAD" easily and either beaten "ATWT" or run a close
second.

Indeed, bp. WSB, as you know, was king of the hill, much like today (with infinitely more competition than then, it must be noted), and I'm sure Cox wasn't about to let channel 2 come in third place in any daypart, if it could be helped. If I'm correct, WSB never cleared NBC from 1:30 to 2 p.m. until the Days expansion; I've seen skeds from the Sixties where a 105-minute movie was shown from 12:15 to 2 each day. I don't know if you remember that or not, but I'm sure ATWT and Search for Tomorrow (on CBS affil WAGA) were the reasons for that. The WSB program director probably viewed Deal in the mid-60s as a light-weight fad, not something worth clearing and giving up local ad time for (and, besides, Atlanta housewives were more "sophisticated" than their counterparts elsewhere in the South, supposedly). And the station sure didn't have any use for the "graveyard" shows that succeeded Deal; even Bill Cullen wasn't enough to get 3OAM above third place in any market.

And Jeopardy! was one of them. The Art Fleming original sure had a strange career in Atlanta, pre-empted for a good bit of its run. Except for the first 18 months in 1964-65 when it aired at 11:30 a.m. and the six-month run at 10:30 a.m. in early '74, the only time it was carried at Noon was from about '69 to maybe '72 on WTCG (and possibly WJRJ before then). I always thought Atlanta was probably the best market in the South for a show like that, given the highly-educated population and large supply of college students; WSB should have considered tape-delaying it until maybe 5:30 p.m. or so, as a lead-in to local news to get the men coming home from work. But when a station was on top by a large margin back then, it could pretty much ignore national trends and do what it wanted. Boy, that sure isn't the case now, with everybody fighting for the last viewer.

 

[bpatrick]

Indeed, except for the "Days" expansion, I don't remember
WSB programming anything from NBC from 12:30-2 from about
1960 until the switch to ABC in 1980; it did carry "Ryan's Hope"
(and, later, "Loving") at 12:30 and "All My Children" at 1.

WAVE Louisville tended to carry NBC's 12-1 programming ("Jeopardy!"
aired at 12 as long as NBC had it there, and I know Ch. 3 carried "Eye
Guess" and "Who, What Or Where"). But it, too, pre-empted "Let's Make
A Deal" (WLKY picked it up when it went to ABC) and didn't carry NBC's
1:30 programs until the "Days" expansion. In Louisville, the station most
likely to pre-empt 12:30 was WHAS (then-CBS); it was a lucky thing if
the station decided to carry "Search For Tomorrow" at that time. Some
of the shows that aired at 12:30 in "SFT"'s place were the local "Omelet,"
Bob Braun, and "Hour Magazine." Even today, now-CBS affiliate WLKY runs
an hour of news from 12-1 and delays "Young And The Restless" to 4.

In North Carolina the only station that didn't carry NBC at 1:30 was WECT
Wilmington; in those days it had a dual affiliation with CBS and carried "As
The World Turns," which it had done almost since that soap's debut. When
"Days" went to an hour, WECT went with it, while ABC affiliate WWAY picked
up "ATWT" (at least until "All My Children" went to an hour in 1977). (I remember
in the '60s WECT pre-empted "You Don't Say!" and "Match Game" in favor of
"Edge Of Night" and "Secret Storm.").

 

[OldNumber7]

Growing up in Rochester, NY, I recall that the NBC affiliate (which was then WROC-8) pre-empted the network at 1 pm in the late 60s and early 70s with "Dialing for Dollars." I believe it was on for an hour -- though it could have been longer. Usually, the local dialing breaks were wrapped around travelogues (maybe they ran feature films, too?). Anyway the host was Ann Keefe, who was a familiar face on Rochester TV before leaving for her distinguished career at KMOX. The was a black hole in the Rochester market for NBC in the early afternoon. Did NBC stations in other markets play "Dialing for Dollars" shows in this window?

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Growing up in Rochester, NY, I recall that the NBC affiliate (which was then WROC-8) pre-empted the network
at 1 pm in the late 60s and early 70s with "Dialing for Dollars."

But wasn't 1-1:30 PM ET then (and in earlier years, 1-2 ET) when NBC was dark?

 

[azumanga]

...wasn't 1-1:30 PM ET then (and in earlier years, 1-2 ET) when NBC was dark?

Not sure about specifics, but at least when "Somerset" was part of the schedule, NBC gave affiliates an option to either show it at 1PM or at 4PM.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

...wasn't 1-1:30 PM ET then (and in earlier years, 1-2 ET) when NBC was dark?

Not sure about specifics, but at least when "Somerset" was part of the schedule, NBC gave affiliates an option to either show it at 1PM or at 4PM.

Maybe I'm thinking of the mid- and late '60s, when NBC ran You Don't Say at 3:30 ET and
(the original, from NYC) Match Game at 4. I'm pretty sure 1-1:30 ET was local.

In the early '60s, I believe NBC was down from 1-2 ET. CBS was then the only net with
a show at 1:30 (ATWT). I'll stop there since this would eventually lead into another
discussion about 11/22/63.