Delaying "The Tonight Show" in the Early Days of TV

[Gregg]

Many NBC affiliates treated the Tonight Show badly in the early days of TV, before Johnny Carson became must-viewing. Originally Tonight started at 11:15, when most TV stations, even in big markets, couldn't fill more than 15 minutes with local news, weather and sports at 11pm. So originally Tonight started at 11:15 and ran till 1am.

Obviously the big stations owned by NBC tried to get Tonight on at 11:15 during the Steve Allen, Jack Paar and early Johnny Carson years. But as TV newsgathering advanced, they couldn't pass up the extra revenue that doing 30 minutes of news at 11pm provided. This got Carson very mad. Eventually only the smallest markets were carrying the show at 11:15pm. So Carson refused to go on and do his monologue before 11:30, forcing Announcer Ed McMahon and Bandleader Skitch Henderson to do the first 15 mintues on their own. I'd love to see what exactly McMahon and Henderson did to fill those first 15 minutes!

In some markets in the early days, stations joined Tonight whenever they wanted. If they could fill 20 min. at 11pm with news and commercials, they'd join Tonight at 11:20. Some stations figured out running an old sitcom 5 nights a week at 11:15, 11:20 or 11:30 filled with their own commercials would earn them more money so they'd join Tonight when the sitcom was over. A few NBC stations didn't want to stay on the air till 1am, so they didn't run Tonight or ended it before 1am.

Stations in the Central and Mountain Time Zone were especially notorious for not running Tonight, Nightline, Politically Incorrect or whatever CBS was offering at 10:30 Central/Mountain on time. They'd run their off-network sitcoms, Entertainment Tonight or other half hour shows after their 10pm news, delaying the network offerings till 11, 11:30 or even Midnight. I guess they figured if the East and West Coast didn't see Carson or whatever till 11:30, they could delay those shows in their time zone as well.


Gregg
[email protected]

 

[oldiesfan6479]

In the fall of 1960, KTAR-TV Mesa (now KPNX) in the Phoenix market aired NBC prime
all "live" 5:30-9 PM MT. A half-hour syndie ran at 9, followed by their late news at 9:30.
KTAR-TV then joined Tonight/Jack Paar in progress at 10 (to 11). By at least the mid-
1960s, KTAR was airing the entire show at 10:30 PM MT.

Down the road in Tucson, and on its own Telco line, KVOA-TV for most of the 1960s had
a fifteen minute 'cast at 10 PM MT, the JIPped Tonight from 10:15-11. They also
had the gall to run the show's actual open (with Ed) first at 10:15, then cut to the net
feed wherever it was in progress.

By the fall of 1968, I noticed KVOA-TV was now airing the complete feed of Carson, still
starting at 10:15 MT (to 11:45). I have a sneaking suspicion it was the previous night's
show, and where they arranged to have KTAR-TV send them its 90-minute backup tape
down on Greyhound the next morning. During the 1970s, KVOA had a microwave link
to KTAR installed and took KTAR's delays of NBC which by then were all in pattern.

 

[cd637299]

Like Gregg, I'd like to see the hemming & hawing (such a word?) of Skitch & Ed, trying to make sense of 15 minutes. Any of this on the Web?

cd

 

[Ultimajock]

...I doubt if any of the McMahon-Henderson segments have actually survived. As I now understand it, most of the Carson material from that stretch that survives comes from AFRTS' archives, and as I recall they only sent one-hour kinescopes to their stations around the globe (part of the reason why the DVD of the 6 March 1969 Bob Hope/Dean Martin/George Gobel broadcast released nine years ago runs only 35 minutes)...

 

[firepoint525]

Obviously the big stations owned by NBC tried to get Tonight on at 11:15 during the Steve Allen, Jack Paar and early Johnny Carson years. But as TV newsgathering advanced, they couldn't pass up the extra revenue that doing 30 minutes of news at 11pm provided. This got Carson very mad. Eventually only the smallest markets were carrying the show at 11:15pm. So Carson refused to go on and do his monologue before 11:30, forcing Announcer Ed McMahon and Bandleader Skitch Henderson to do the first 15 mintues on their own. I'd love to see what exactly McMahon and Henderson did to fill those first 15 minutes!

Don't know, as it was before my time, but my guess is that they did what the Tonight show still does during commercial breaks, is let the band or orchestra play.

Stations in the Central and Mountain Time Zone were especially notorious for not running Tonight, Nightline, Politically Incorrect or whatever CBS was offering at 10:30 Central/Mountain on time. They'd run their off-network sitcoms, Entertainment Tonight or other half hour shows after their 10pm news, delaying the network offerings till 11, 11:30 or even Midnight. I guess they figured if the East and West Coast didn't see Carson or whatever till 11:30, they could delay those shows in their time zone as well.

Channel 6 (WPSD) in Paducah used to delay Saturday Night Live by an hour for the first 20 or so years that it was on the air, but I don't recall them ever time-shifting the Tonight show. Interestingly, they would sign off right after Letterman, without carrying Bob Costas, which, combined with their insane one-hour delay of SNL, actually resulted in them being on the air for half an hour longer on Saturday night/Sunday morning than the rest of the week.

 

[anotherguyTN]

To my knowledge WMC in Memphis never delayed or pre-empted Carson, which was a surprise considering how notorious they were about pre-empting other shows. But over time WMC got worse and worse about delaying Letterman though, first by 30 minutes, then an hour. During the few months between his leaving NBC and starting at CBS when Late night was in classic repeats WMC dropped it completely. But when Conan O'Brien started WMC showed it at the right time. WMC's station manager at the time was known to have a bias against Letterman.

 

[bpatrick]

I think it was sometime in the '70s that NBC began prohibiting
pre-emptions or delays of Carson; the exceptions were KARE
Minneapolis/St. Paul and WVTM Birmingham. No such restriction,
to my knowledge, was ever placed on Letterman, nor on "Later
With Bob Costas" (which, as I noted on a recent Atlanta posting,
was at one time delayed a half-hour so that WXIA could carry
Rush Limbaugh). "SNL" didn't have the full network at first; I
remember it being pre-empted in Chattanooga and in Greenville, SC
in its first year (Chattanooga picked it up the second, but I don't
think Greenville began carrying it until 1978).

 

[firepoint525]

No such restriction,
to my knowledge, was ever placed on Letterman

Channel 5 here in Nashville briefly delayed Letterman for half an hour right after he first moved to CBS, but I believe that that was because they still had some contractual obligations to carry other programming. Once they had satisfied those, they were able to carry Letterman on time.

Wonder what Carson's opinion was of NBC delaying Tonight for Wimbledon updates and such? Since those were network delays, he was probably okay with that, or maybe he had to be! ;D

 

[azumanga]

"SNL" didn't have the full network at first; I
remember it being pre-empted in Chattanooga and in Greenville, SC
in its first year (Chattanooga picked it up the second, but I don't
think Greenville began carrying it until 1978).

I believe WNEM in Bay City, Michigan also did not pick up SNL until 1980, after the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" left the show. And in Detroit, the first two or three seasons was seen instead on WKBD, as WWJ / WDIV opted out in favor of movies (as was the case for WNEM).

 

[anotherguyTN]

WREG in Memphis delayed Letterman for 30 minutes for reruns of Cheers for the first few months, but eventually went to starting him on time.

 

[cd637299]

No such restriction,
to my knowledge, was ever placed on Letterman

Channel 5 here in Nashville briefly delayed Letterman for half an hour right after he first moved to CBS, but I believe that that was because they still had some contractual obligations to carry other programming. Once they had satisfied those, they were able to carry Letterman on time.

Wonder what Carson's opinion was of NBC delaying Tonight for Wimbledon updates and such? Since those were network delays, he was probably okay with that, or maybe he had to be! ;D

Carson, IIRC, *went* to Wimbledon practically every year to watch!

cd

 

[firepoint525]

Stations in the Central and Mountain Time Zone were especially notorious for not running Tonight, Nightline, Politically Incorrect or whatever CBS was offering at 10:30 Central/Mountain on time. They'd run their off-network sitcoms, Entertainment Tonight or other half hour shows after their 10pm news, delaying the network offerings till 11, 11:30 or even Midnight. I guess they figured if the East and West Coast didn't see Carson or whatever till 11:30, they could delay those shows in their time zone as well.

Comparisons of NBC to the other networks, at least in the early days, is not exactly apples to apples. ABC really didn't have anything on in late night until Nightline in 1980 or so, which grew out of the Iranian hostage crisis back when I was in high school. And CBS didn't have any specific late night programming (other than Sajak, briefly) until Letterman joined them in 1993. I remember Letterman, when he was on NBC, joking about CBS counterprogramming him with CBS "movies," which were usually nothing more than late-night reruns of CBS dramas, and were thus only an hour long, not really long enough to be classified as a "movie," and that was what Letterman joked about. Long story short, ABC and CBS really did not have "appointment" television to compete with Tonight until they acquired Nightline and Letterman, respectively.

 

[MCarney]

WBZ in Boston didn't delay Tonight, they preempted it for years. Since they were a Group W station they ran Group W syndicated programming (Steve Allen or Merv Griffin). It was picked up by WHDH channel 5 but they joined at 11:30 after their 30 minute news.

 

[Ultimajock]

I think it was sometime in the '70s that NBC began prohibiting
pre-emptions or delays of Carson; the exceptions were KARE
Minneapolis/St. Paul and WVTM Birmingham. No such restriction,
to my knowledge, was ever placed on Letterman, nor on "Later
With Bob Costas" (which, as I noted on a recent Atlanta posting,
was at one time delayed a half-hour so that WXIA could carry
Rush Limbaugh).

...I think I've mentioned that two or three weeks into Limbaugh's first year, after he referred to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on-the-air as the "Milwaukee Urinal," Journal-owned WTMJ-TV/4 immediately shifted Limbaugh's show from (I think) between Leno and Letterman to after NBC's late-night product...

 

[Ultimajock]

ABC really didn't have anything on in late night until Nightline in 1980 or so, which grew out of the Iranian hostage crisis back when I was in high school. And CBS didn't have any specific late night programming (other than Sajak, briefly) until Letterman joined them in 1993.

...then what the hell were Les Crane, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett doing all those years ABC and CBS slotted them against Carson???...

 

[bpatrick]

None of them made much of a dent in Carson's ratings,
although Cavett's would invariably go up in the summer,
when high-school and college kids were on vacation.
You may recall that, starting in 1973, ABC tried the
"Wide World Of Entertainment" format: Cavett one week
a month, Jack Paar one week, and specials, made-for-TV
movies, and "In Concert" the other two. The concept
chewed up ideas at an alarming rate (imagine coming up
with four specials and booking a rock-concert show every
two weeks). Eventually, ABC, too, would go the route of
reruns of hour-long primetime shows ("Mannix" and "Longstreet"
were the first, in 1975).

But when the Iranian hostage crisis broke, an awful lot of
viewers tuned to ABC to get the latest on the situation,
and there were a number of markets where Ted Koppel was
beating Carson, enough for ABC to turn "America Held Hostage"
into "Nightline" in the spring of 1980. (BTW, CBS had a prototype
of this in the 1950s called "Chronoscope," but I don't think it
lasted more than a couple of years.)

And Letterman has been at CBS for 18 years, far longer than
anything the network programmed post-11 PM on weeknights
before.

It's my unprovable contention that the low ratings of Steve Allen's
successor, "Tonight: America After Dark" in 1957 (the show was a
sort of late-night version of the "Today" show), scared off a number
of affiliates, leaving Jack Paar to another network's affiliate (as in
Atlanta). I also recently posted a Georgia retro from 1968, in which
the then-new NBC affiliate in Macon signed off at 11 PM, leaving
Joey Bishop (picked up by CBS/ABC affiliate WMAZ) as the only talk
show in the market (unless WSB was coming in on cable). By the '70s
such a move would have been unthinkable.

 

[firepoint525]

ABC really didn't have anything on in late night until Nightline in 1980 or so, which grew out of the Iranian hostage crisis back when I was in high school. And CBS didn't have any specific late night programming (other than Sajak, briefly) until Letterman joined them in 1993.

...then what the hell were Les Crane, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett doing all those years ABC and CBS slotted them against Carson???...

Well in Memphis, where I lived at the time, Cavett (for example) was on late at night, like 11:30 or midnight. At any rate (again), it wasn't until Nightline and Letterman that ABC and CBS could really compete with Tonight. I never said that they didn't at least try before that!

 

[TexasTom]

In the seventies and eighties, ABC and CBS really couldn't compete with the Tonight Show -- but, in some cases, their affiliates were able to complete quite successfully by delaying (or preempting) the ABC or CBS programming in favor of syndicated comedy reruns.

Those reruns not only held their own against Carson, but actually managed to beat him in some markets. The one that sticks in my mind was 10:30 PM "MASH" reruns on Denver's ABC affiliate circa 1983. "MASH" got something like a 45 or 50 share of the audience, with Carson a very distant second. While that particular show on that particular station was a standout in terms of the magnitude of it's ratings victory, it wasn't uncommon to see syndicated reruns beat out the Tonight Show, primarily in central/mountain time zone markets.

 

[anotherguyTN]

Didn't Arsenio Hall's syndicated talk show in the early 90's start to put some dents in Carson's ratings, especially among younger viewers?

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

WBZ in Boston didn't delay Tonight, they preempted it for years. Since they were a Group W station they ran Group W syndicated programming (Steve Allen or Merv Griffin). It was picked up by WHDH channel 5 but they joined at 11:30 after their 30 minute news.

And so did WTMJ-4 in Milwaukee (with Johnny, Ed, Doc and the gang relegated to indy WVTV-18 IIRC) during the '80s.

In addition, the forementioned KARE in the Twin Cities delayed Carson until 11PM (and IIRC I may have heard the station still delays Leno unless the practice has been abandoned) in favor of Cheers reruns at 10:30 in the early '90s.

Also, for Letterman, it was common for some CBS affiliates to delay Dave a half-hour early in his run. In central Illinois, that almost happened in the Peoria/Bloomington market until WMBD-31 was able to amend their contractual agreement with "A Current Affair" which had ran at the 10:35 slot prior to Dave (and the CBS Late Night "Crime Time in Primetime" went unseen in Peoria--but aired in the nearby Quad Cities market on WHBF-4--before Dave came to CBS). In the Champaign/Decatur/Springfield market, WCIA-3's tradition of MASH reruns continued for another season IIRC, with Dave relegated to a half-hour delay. That may have changed by fall 1994, however, but I'm not sure (I wasn't in Springfield at that time).

And don't forget that in Sioux City, IA, Letterman went unseen for its first year on CBS as affiliate KMEG-14 opted to continue airing "Cheers" and "Star Trek" reruns (which they claimed had been beating Leno on KTIV-4 in the ratings during the '92-93 season). Hence why Sioux City was Dave's first CBS "home office" for the Top Ten list. But KMEG picked up Dave for his second CBS season--and the home office moved to Grand Rapids, MI.

Dave was also bumped by the CBS affiliate in Fargo, ND (KXJB-4), but there the first season of the Late Show was picked up by Fargo Fox affiliate KVRR (presumably after the short-lived Chevy Chase Show early in Dave's first CBS season).