Noticed tonight the local CBS station for my market is airing paid programming at the 8pm hour when "A Gifted Man" is surpose to be on. The 9pm and 10pm hour isn't touched. Surprised to see this, isn't a show I watch but I could see this happen with a NBC affilate not a CBS affilate.
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Local CBS Stations Airing Paid Programming Instead Of CBS Primetime
- Thread starter radiolives
- Start date
KPHO-TV Phoenix has done this also--recently pre-empted a Big Bang rerun
on a Saturday with infomercial crap.
on a Saturday with infomercial crap.
WCSC 5 in Charleston, a heritage station, is preempting a new 48 Hours tomorrow night to air two infomercials for the Southeastern Spine Institute. You know people are losing money when a new show like that is preempted.
A lot of network affiliates do this. Its more common than you think. Toward the end of a fiscal cycle, they'll throw in some prime time infomercials to get closer to their financial goals. Nothing new.
mescutia said:
Myrtle Beach, SC WBTW News 13
I've said before that the networks and the FCC need to put a stop to stations pre-empting prime time shows for infomercials and start penalizing stations that do it. Pre-emptions for news bulletins and possibly charity specials are one thing. But infomercials shouldn't be tolerated, no matter how bad the ratings are for the shows they replace.
I believe that the FCC should set rules that infomercials can only be set ar regularly scheduled times for nothing but infomercials, and that they can't pre-empt network programming, at least during prime time.
I believe that the FCC should set rules that infomercials can only be set ar regularly scheduled times for nothing but infomercials, and that they can't pre-empt network programming, at least during prime time.
L
Laurence Glavin
Guest
I wonder how the FCCwould DEFINE "infomercial"? And if they did, wouldn't some of the offerings on PBS stations during beg-a-thons qualify? I think there's a place on the FCC website that says it NEVER interferes with programming. This is often used as an escape clause when a classical station for example changes format.
I
imhomerjay
Guest
anotherguy said:
How about not. The last thing we need is more government nonsense--if anything, the FCC should be less involved in our lives, not meddling in the free market.
anotherguy said:
That's between the network and the station, and it's been going on as long as there have been networks - TV or radio. The FCC has nothing to say about it.
This is as it should be. If anyone is to penalize an affiliate for not running its programming, it's CBS. If an affiliate doesn't want to run a network show, doesn't the network have the right to offer it to another station in the market?
OK perhaps the FCC should stay out of it. But I do still think the networks should penalize stations for pre-empting prime time shows for infomercials. Occasional local specials might be OK. But infomercials shouldn't be tolerated. And I agree that a lot of what goes on with PBS begathons qualifies as infomercials as well.
R
Radio-X
Guest
anotherguy said:
They do...
Several stations (I can think of WSVN/Miami as NBC as a prime example 25 years ago and IIRC, WJXT/Jacksonville as CBS more recently) have lost their affiliation because they didn't clear enough network programming...replacing it mostly with local news or infomercials. Mind you, both of these stations do very, very, very well even though they are no longer part of the "Big Three".
Other stations in smaller markets, like WTOC-TV/Savannah simply dominate the local ratings so much (and has for over 30 years) CBS tolerates them playing loose with the schedule...
Radio-X
radiodxrichmond said:
Kinda like the days when companies like Group W and Scripps preempted network programming on their stations. They owned some very strong network affiliates.
anotherguy said:
They can't really do that, because it would involve the FCC in the details of station programming -- something that would surely violate the First Amendment.
What the FCC could do (and once did do) is to completely prohibit infomercials on broadcast stations by putting in place a maximum limit for the amount of advertising that can run in an hour. Such rules were more or less in place until the early eighties, which is why infomercials typically didn't show up on broadcast stations until the eighties. As I recall, the rule wasn't an absolute limit but was instead a requirement that stations airing more than 18 minutes/hour of advertising had to justify the high advertising load in their renewal application at the FCC. Stations didn't generally want that sort of visibility at the FCC and generally stayed under the 18 minute limit.
For childrens’ shows, the limits were (and still are) even stricter, which is why we don't see infomercials aimed at kids.
Now, there’s two questions here: the first is what the FCC can do, and the second is what they should do. Unlike some folks here, I’m not adverse to government intervention if it will advance some sort of broader public interest. And part of me would indeed like to see the FCC reimpose advertising limits and effectively ban infomercials. The problem with this is that it’s the weaker stations that would get hurt – the CBS affiliate that runs an occasional infomercial in prime time to meet quarterly revenue goals is probably not going to go dark in the absence of that revenue, but a small independent station might.
What I would like to see if for the government to grant a limited antitrust exemption to allow cable and broadcast TV groups to get together and develop standards regarding advertising limits, non-program material, and infomercials. This would be similar to the old NAB code that set advertising limits that generally did serve as guidelines and restrain commercial clutter in a way that was beneficial to viewers, stations, and advertisers. But I’m not holding my breath for this to happen, either.
TexasTom said:
And for that reason, this is why the networks got out of Saturday morning, leaving programming of E/I friendly shows to third parties or, in Fox's case, sell its time to an infomercial broker and give up entirely. And even for the E/I blocks, at least one, Litton Media for its "Weekend Adventure" on ABC, refuse to sell traditional commercial time at all, opting to show only PI and pharmaceutical ads instead, none slanted towards kids and, in some cases, not necessarily to parents.
KeithE4 said:
I would think CBS would have an issue as the network spots wouldn't run in one of their markets.
Years ago I worked in a radio station that ran a satellite format. We also ran an hour of local programming. During the hour we, obviously, didn't run network spots. The network (Westwood One I believe) sent us tapes and made us make up the spots not run during that hour. As the On-Air Operations Manager (yea, toot toot) I scheduled the make-up commercials and the network (WW1 IIRC) was happy.
I'd think CBS would try the same thing.
C
cd637299
Guest
radiodxrichmond said:
As to WSVN (a.k.a. WCKT prior to being WSVN), I've been posting here before how they were pre-empt-happy as I was growing up---however.....
Wasn't WSVN's loss-of-NBC due strictly to WTVJ being purchased by NBC (prompting CBS to look for a station to buy, and purchasing WCIX 6), and no more than that? I do recall late 1988 WTVJ, still running CBS, but just being purchased by NBC, running NBC's "Santa Barbara" while yet running CBS shows (until the contract ran out Dec 31, 1988).
After all, NBC was quite aware of WCKT/WSVN's hijinks for many years....apparently they decided to put up with it until what we called the "Big Switch" on 1/1/89. WCKT/WSVN was pulling that stuff since the 60s, maybe earlier....
I know that NBC was ready to yank co-owned WHDH Boston due to the Jay-Leno-at-10 deal.....
cd
Scripps stations were mentioned earlier. WMC in Memphis when it was owned by Scripps was notorious for pre-emptions all day long, but especially in the daytime from the 70's to the early 90's. I had always thought that NBC should have pulled their affiliation at that time. Their pre-emption antics ended in the 90's when the station changed owners and the station manager who had been bad about pre-emptions left.
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