• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Family Partial To A Network

B

briancraig

Back in the glory days of the 3 networks (60s/70s), did any of you come from a family that was partial to one of the 3 networks?

Growing up my family was very partial to NBC. My parents always watched their newscasts and if a major event like the moon landing or Watergate was getting wall to wall coverage then that was always the network we watched.

My mom always watched the NBC daytime lineup.

We would watch the other two for some prime time shows, but generally from the Today show to the Tonight show, our tv was tuned to NBC.

Just wondering if anyone else grew up in a household that generally watched one network even though you received all 3 equally.
 
I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I guess I grew up in a CBS house in the 60s. Prime wasn't always CBS - my father couldn't stand the CBS sitcoms - especially the "rural" comedies, but it was always Cronkite for news, and CBS all Sunday night. My mother was seriously into CBS radio, too (KNX in LA) starting with Bob Crane in the morning, then the various network radio shows.
 
I don't know if I was necessarily loyal to one network. Here in greater Hartford, it was almost always CBS in terms of local news (WFSB) and network programming. However, when I lived in southern Maine, I sided more with NBC both locally (WCSH) and nationally.
 
We didn't have NBC, only CBS and ABC. We watched them both about the same. Evening
news was mostly ABC. I guess the local news just naturally led into them (Howard K. Smith
and Harry Reasoner).

To this day I can still recall the SOLID Friday nights shows on ABC about 1970-1972
Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, That Girl, Odd Couple, Love American Style

And the SOLID Saturday nights on CBS about 1973
All In The Family, M.A.S.H., Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett
 
Mom was a CBS soap person. We watched Cronkite in the evening, and our local CBS affiliate news, but at 11 it was the NBC affiliate local news before Carson. For primetime, it was a mix of the 3 networks.
 
Some are still loyal to whatever they watched for news for all those years. Thank God for C-Span for detox effect.
 
briancraig said:
Back in the glory days of the 3 networks (60s/70s), did any of you come from a family that was partial to one of the 3 networks?

Growing up my family was very partial to NBC. My parents always watched their newscasts and if a major event like the moon landing or Watergate was getting wall to wall coverage then that was always the network we watched.

My mom always watched the NBC daytime lineup.

We would watch the other two for some prime time shows, but generally from the Today show to the Tonight show, our tv was tuned to NBC.

Just wondering if anyone else grew up in a household that generally watched one network even though you received all 3 equally.
Click to expand...

CBS for my family
 
Overall, probably CBS. I was partial to ABC but my
parents had nothing but contempt for their shows,
especially the sitcoms; in the '70s they liked the CBS
sitcoms and my mom liked "The Waltons" (although she
also liked "Little House On The Prairie" on NBC).

My mom was a fan of the NBC soap block of "Days Of
Our Lives," "The Doctors," and "Another World," as well
as "Hollywood Squares" and "Jeopardy!" (Art Fleming version).
My dad preferred NBC News; he liked John Chancellor. But
they always watched the CBS affiliate for their local news
except in Greenville, SC, because the NBC affiliate is in Greenville
(where we lived) and the CBS one in Spartanburg.

My grandparents (on my mom's side, anyway) were definitely
partial to CBS. My grandfather never felt he'd seen the news unless
he watched WFMY's local news, followed by Cronkite.
 
In the 1960's, it was mostly CBS and NBC ,we did not see ABC much until we got cable in 1967 when WZZM-TV Grand Rapids went on before Battle Creek's WUHQ-TV (now WOTV) signed on as an ABC station.

When I was in school, on vacations or sick days or when school was closed due to heavy snow, it was for me a mix of NBC and CBS game shows with some ABC ones like the original Let's Make a Deal thrown in. And I always looked forward to Match Game on CBS after school. I do remember the original NBC version.

By Fall 1980, CBS and ABC had one game show each, The Price Is Right and Family Feud, respectively, and NBC after Letterman's ill-fated daytime show went bye-bye,NBC had 5 with LAs Vegas Gambit, Blockbusters, Wheel, Password Plus and Card Sharks. At that time, I had a Motorola B&W TV and I had to watch WNDU-TV south Bend for CS at noon as WOOD-TV Grand Rapids and WILX-TV Lansing had news at noon, so for game shows I mostly watched NBC, but by April 1982 Wheel was the only game on NBC until January 1983,when NBC started back up with various games in the 80's and 90's like $ale of The Century, Scrabble, Super Password and Classic Concentration and April 1982, was when I changed my primary game show viewing to CBS on off school days with TPIR and a new Tattletales which aired at the same time as the original 1974-78 version did for most of the original's run. But I would mix it up on the CBS and NBC games later and whatever ABC would have thrown in,mostly flops after Dawson Family Feud left. I do wish NBC would shrink Today to two hours so the Peacock could air new game shows like a revival of Concentration and some others. CBS is keeping the dyatime game show flame alive by airing LMAD with Wayne Brady and TPIR.

For evening news I watched CBS and Cronkite,but when Uncle Walter retired, I switched to NBC, then with John Chancellor and chief Washington correspondent Roger Mudd, and NBC had also gotten most of CBS' news people like Mudd, Marvin Kalb (he's often on Fox News these days doing commentary on the Egypt situation) and his brother Bernard, Betsy Aaron who did 30 Minutes the kids/teen version of 60 Minutes with Christopher Glen,and who at NBC did NBC Magazine with David Brinkley . Nowadays, it's Fox News for me.
 
My family was an ABC family.

If there was a three-network event like a debate, Dad would automatically flip to the ABC station.

Also Mom and Dad preferred the ABC station's local personalities.
 
Same here, MHB - my folks were partial to ABC, with NBC as a second favorite.

Evening news: ABC. My mother's soaps: generally ABC; Space launches: ABC (for which I will always be thankful as I was able to see the work of their late, great, science reporter Jules Bergmann).
 
It wasn't so much a network for me, but I remember when each TV station had it's own personality. I remember when I was young I would say: "I think I'll like channel 4", and then I would say: "I think I'll go back to liking channel 2.
 
In Dallas we used to have some pitched battles over local
news; I liked WFAA (ABC) with what I still consider the greatest
front four in the history of local news: Tracy Rowlett, Iola Johnson,
Troy Dungan, and Verne Lundquist; my parents preferred KDFW (CBS
at the time), mostly due to meteorologist Warren Culbertson. Fortunately,
with two TVs they could watch Channel 4 and I could watch Channel 8,
but I never could convince them to give WFAA a try--even after the
Columbia Journalism Review ranked it and WCCO as the two best local
news operations in the country. (Also, my dad said he couldn't stomach
Troy Dungan because he didn't like anybody who wore bow ties.)

As I said I was partial to ABC, both for news (especially in the Smith/
Reasoner era and in the early years of "World News Tonight" when Frank
Reynolds was still with us) and for primetime; my two favorite ABC stations
(this could make a new thread in itself) were WFAA and WXIA before it went
to NBC. I had one favorite CBS station: KENS San Antonio (I liked weatherguy
Maclovio Perez), but I don't know if I ever had a favorite NBC station pre-WXIA,
and definitely no favorite Fox station.

And I was also partial to ABC's space coverage simply because of Jules Bergman.
 
One guy was talking about watching TV when not at school. After we finally got all 3 networks
you could almost watch sitcoms and game shows all day long by switching from one channel
to the other. Often you had two or three shows to pick from. What 12-year-old wants to watch
soap operas anyway?

After school all the kids would rush home to watch Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows. My mom
who watched many soap operas all day long would even watch that with me.

I would stick my fangs out and chase the girls at school before it started. They would run and
scream..................but they really enjoyed it. ;D
 
This varied in each household in my family. In my own household, the network preference depended on the night. I used to remember ABC being the choice for Thursday & Friday night primetime. Thursday for NBC. I believe CBS for Monday & Wednesday. Sundays varied. I don't remember about Monday & Tuesday. For local news, we used to always watch the news on NBC or CBS. Sometimes, we watched the 9pm news on then independent WGN-TV. For daytime, my mom wouldwatch her soap operas on NBC & ABC (she always hated CBS soap operas), & game shows mainly on NBC & CBS (sometimes ABC).

At my maternal grandmothers house, primetime was mostly CBS & NBC (she was never really into ABC primetime). For daytime, that also was mostly CBS & NBC gameshows, but not soap operas (she always hated soap operas). So when soap operas were on during the daytime, she refused to watch network TV & turn on independent WGN-TV, WFLD 32, WPWR-TV 60 (before they switched to 50 in 1987), or WGBO 66. I wanna say for Wednesday nights, she usually watched WTTW 11 for PBS programming.

For my Paternal Grandmother's house, she mainly watched ABC & NBC for primetime & ABC for the local news. During the daytime, she almost never watched soap operas, & would watch one of the independents on the UHF.

My Aunt Dawn used to watch NBC for soap operas & for game shows, all 3 networks. For primetime, it depended on what she liked & had no preference on ABC, CBS, or NBC. For local news, I believe it was always ABC for local news.
 
For my family, it was CBS... WMT-TV 2 in Cedar Rapids, IA. My parents had both grown up listening to WMT-AM, to them there was no other radio station, so that loyalty also applied to WMT's TV station. They didn't watch the evening network news and rarely the 6pm local news but at 10pm there was no other station but WMT for news.

Back in the 60s I preferred KCRG-AM for radio, and also KCRG-TV 9 (ABC). We didn't watch a whole lot of NBC in the 60s. KWWL 7 came in a little snowy from Waterloo on our rabbit ears antenna. There were only a handful of NBC shows we watched, CBS was the default for prime time, with ABC a distant second.

20+ years ago, WMT-TV became KGAN, the quality declined, and my parents are now devoted KCRG local news viewers. They still listen to WMT-AM.
 
My family watched CBS News, local news on Ch. 6 (except my dad, he reads only the newspaper for local news), and primetime mixed from all four networks, no daytime in my family (for me it was WKCF or WOFL mostly during the day when I was out of school).

My maternal grandparents watched NBC News, local news on Ch. 2, and primetime from NBC and CBS (no comedy programs though from the 70's onwards), and Price is Right (when Barker was hosting it)

The only thing I ever remember my maternal grandmother explictly watching was the ABC daytime soaps (except for All My Children) and possibly ABC News.
 
In my family's (more specifically, my grandmother), it was more or less a hodgepodge. In the mornings, it was ABC for news (local, World News This Morning, Good Morning America), CBS middays (Pyramid, TPIR, Young and the Restless), the ABC soaps in the afternoon (although she would sometimes watch As The World Turns on CBS), late afternoons would be a mixture of talk shows, games, or court shows (the original People's Court, Divorce Court and The Judge), then the evening news (the CBS affiliate and Dan Rather). Primetime was never a preference to a specific network, although if I would put a percentage on it, I think that at least 40% of her primetime viewing gravitated toward CBS. She would watch the Thursday NBC sitcoms (Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court) and some ABC shows (Fall Guy, Dynasty, Webster, Mr. Belvedere), but everything on TV, else unless a baseball game was on, she watched the Eye.

She lived in a four-station market at the time (this time period, if you haven't caught on, was early-to-mid 80s), but she picked up a couple of extra stations from out-of-town (WISC [CBS] from Madison and WGN Chicago--the local one). Nonetheless, the TV options were limited as she didn't subscribe to cable, and the building she lived in at the time didn't allow cable until years later (the residents initially voted down having cable).
 
How about in areas where a station had one network was primary and the other secondary. A good example was WTOL-TV CBS 11 Toledo. In Fall 1966 ,they had Lucy, Andy Griffith, Gilligan's Island ,Beverly Hillbillies and Captain Kangaroo among others from CBS, and also I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart ,The Monkees, Huntley-Brinkley and Johnny Carson from NBC. In 1969, just before the Apollo 11 space flight, this mess between 11,13 24 was resolved with The Big Eye going to WTOL-TV, The Peacock going to WSPD-TV (which became WTVG in 1978 and is now and ABC station) and ABC going to WDHO-TV (now WNWO-TV and now an NBC station).
 
The market I live in is currently a 15 station market (was 10 in th late 70's when I was young, then 14 by th late 80's, with 62 being the last station to sign on for the first time in 1991). My sister currently lives in a 1 TV station market (Lafayette Indiana), & must rely on cable for Indianapolis stations, plus WTTW (including WTTW subchannel WTTW Prime) from Chicago. Now I did not include low power stations in that count, which would otherwise make that count over 20 stations.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom