Network affiliates that went against their time zone's "pattern"

[Stanislav]

We all know how affiliates have traditionally handled their network programs. That is: Eastern running the East Coast feed live, Central same feed live (one hour earlier clock time), Pacific getting their own separate feed, and the "stepchildren" of the Mountain zone let to fend for themselves.

Were there any affiliates back in the day that ever went "against the grain" (on a wholesale basis, not just isolated or individual programs) of the prevailing practice for their zone? A possible example might be a Central TZ station that delayed the East Coast feed one hour so as to be on the same clock time as the Eastern TZ. Or Mountain Time stations that didn't tape-delay anything, but simply ran the East Coast feed live (yielding a "prime-time" of 6-9 pm)? For that matter, were there MT stations that took the West Coast feed live, making prime-time a 9-12 pm block? I imagine the latter two examples may well have occurred in the 50's for those larger cities (Denver? Salt Lake?) that were already interconnected with the network, but had not yet installed VTRs for time-shifting.

(Here's a fanciful notion. Imagine a struggling MT station that has minimal local live facilities and little budget for syndicated programming, but had access to both network feeds. Theoretically, they could have filled up the hours by taking the East Coast feed live from 6-9 local time, then switching to the West Coast feed to run the same programs from 9-12. Instant "reruns!" They could even have used the concept promotionally: "Don't worry -- if you miss your favorite prime-time show, just tune in 3 hours later for the repeat!" Would the networks have even allowed such a thing?)

 

[jh]

The CBS affiliate in Rapid City SD (Mountain time) is a relay of the CBS affiliate in Sioux Falls SD (Central time), so prime time for CBS in Rapid City is 6-9 pm.

 

[cowboybud]

KPIX in San Francisco experimented with running CBS prime time an hour earlier, from 7-10pm, in the early 90s.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

For that matter, were there MT stations that took the West Coast feed live...?

See the KIVA-TV Yuma/September 11, 1967 thread. The feeds were (to oversimplify)
off-air pickups of the two El Lay stations of KIVA's primary and secondary networks.

In Mountain time Yuma in the winter (and during AZ's only DST in summer 1967),
prime time aired 8:30-12 midnight, while across the Colorado River in the sand dunes
and on over to El Centro in Pacific time Cali, it was 7:30-11 pm.

Don't know if there were any Nielsen families in the sand dunes or if there was a
Circle K anywhere along the plank road.

 

[LKellerIII]

KPIX in San Francisco experimented with running CBS prime time an hour earlier, from 7-10pm, in the early 90s.

Well..."early prime" (shifting network programming down one hour to start at 7:00 PM) is not quite the same thing....but come to think of it, maybe KPIX and KRON (then NBC, which also tried early prime in San Francisco) used a Central/Mountain feed.


The early prime experiment was done first by KOVR (CBS in Sacramento). Since KOVR was the only network affiliate in that market to do it, they benefited. But in San Francisco, KRON (then NBC) followed KPIX's lead, and it was a disaster. The only winner was the ABC O&O, KGO-TV, which ended up with the only network shows at 10:00 and the only news at 11:00. To top it off, KGO-TV was able to snatch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune away from KRON because King World demanded the 7:00 to 8:00 hour for their 2 hot game shows.

The San Francisco experiment only lasted a couple of years. At the time, KOVR, KPIX and KRON were all affiliates, not network O&O - or this never would have happened. KPIX is now owned by CBS, and KRON lost the NBC affiliation to a different channel, which is now an O&O station.

Interestingly, I believe CBS now owns KOVR Sacramento, but has kept early prime.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

"early prime"...maybe KPIX and KRON (then NBC, which also tried early prime in
San Francisco) used a Central/Mountain feed.

No Central zone feed per se, it is the same as the east coast feed ("8/7 Central").

NBC has a Mountain zone feed 7-10 MT, but that would be an hour too early for
left coast "early prime." CBS and ABC, AFAIK, have never had a Mountain feed.

To air prime 7-10 PT, the stations would have to delay it themselves off of the
east coast feed satellite ("in at 5, out at 7").

 

[classictvfan]

Stanislav, you come up with some pretty obscure topics

 

[Stanislav]

Stanislav, you come up with some pretty obscure topics

The curse of of combining esoteric interests with way too much time on my hands... ;D

Plus, on a board like this that has been in existence and very active for a long time (a rarity, as most similar forums tend to crap out pretty quickly), it gets harder and harder to find topics that haven't already been discussed to death. :

 

[Gregg]

I remember seeing a Montana TV Guide, which included listings for NBC 8 KUMV and CBS 11 KXMD, Williston, North Dakota. Williston is only 25 miles from the Montana border.

Montana is on Mountain Time but Williston is on Central Time. So if you watched either station in Montana, you'd see prime time programming from 6pm to 9pm. And you'd get Johnny Carson at 9:30pm.

I also think it's odd that some network daytime line-ups change depending on the time zone. For instance, Price Is Right airs at 10am, West Coast. The Young and The Restless airs at 11am. Then CBS gives affiliates a blank half hour at noon for local news. Yet on the East Coast, Price is at 11am, Y&R at 12:30pm, with a blank half-hour between the two shows.

When Bob Barker used to host Price and a contestant was taking too much time, he'd say the Young & Restless cast are going to be mad if Price Is Right runs into their time slot. But that joke didn't work in the ET and CT zones.

And most of us know that Central Time programming is virtually the same as East Coast but an hour earlier. Yet ABC, CBS and NBC air their morning news shows at 7am, CT. So I suppose they delay Today, GMA, etc. for an hour? All three shows put their harder news in the first hour, lighter features in the second hour.

But I think at one time the second hour of Today ran live in the CT zone and the first hour was tape-delayed for the CT zone's second hour. I remember hosts of Today would give time checks never refering to what hour it was... just saying "It's 15 past the hour."

Of course, these days most stations have a clock and temperature reading on the bottom of the screen in the morning, so spoken time checks are not necessary.

One other note... On the East and West Coasts, most stations that carry Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune air them at 7pm and 7:30 (although some put Jeopardy first, some Wheel first). But in the CT and MT zones, the local evening news usually airs from 6 to 6:30, leaving only a half hour for syndicated programming before network prime time begins. So that means in those time zones, Jeopardy is forced into afternoon airing... or moved to an independant or lesser network station, since Wheel is considered the stronger of the two shows.

And the network evening news also is forced to air early, usually at 5:30. But in the MT zone, it sometimes airs earlier, before most folks are home from work.



Gregg
[email protected]

 

[oldiesfan6479]

I also think it's odd that some network daytime line-ups change depending on the time zone. For instance, Price Is Right airs at 10am, West Coast. The Young and The Restless airs at 11am. Then CBS gives affiliates a blank half hour at noon for local news. Yet on the East Coast, Price is at 11am, Y&R at 12:30pm, with a blank half-hour between the two shows.

This is to give ET, CT and PT affils the "hole" at 12 pm for local news. MT too, if the station delays daytime one hour ("in pattern")--or the MT station can take daytime live from the "alternate" CT feed (for Y&R), with the hole at 11 am. If you zap2it the various MT markets, you'll see a whole bunch of different schedules, as they're on their own.

For a long time, there was only one CBS daytime schedule hole, from 1-1:30 ET, which was 12-12:30 CT/PT. (MT then, as now, depended on how a given station did live vs. delay.) It came to be that way, I believe, due to many midwestern stations wanting the noon slot for their hog prices...well OK, farm report, along with the news. ;D Eventually, many ET stations must have complained about 1 pm being too late for midday news, and got their local hole changed to noon too.

When Bob Barker used to host Price and a contestant was taking too much time, he'd say the Young & Restless cast are going to be mad if Price Is Right runs into their time slot. But that joke didn't work in the ET and CT zones.

Just in ET. Normally Y&R follows Price in CT and PT. However...(there's always a however)...there are a few CT and PT affils that go local at 11 and air Y&R at 11:30.

And something stuck in the vault tells me there may have been an interim period where CBS moved the hole to 12 pm ET, but had not yet begun the split feed of Y&R. bpatrick may have copious notes on all the time slot moves from the late '70s on.

And most of us know that Central Time programming is virtually the same as East Coast but an hour earlier. Yet ABC, CBS and NBC air their morning news shows at 7am, CT. So I suppose they delay Today, GMA, etc. for an hour?

This may be the one example where the networks do the zone-appropriate delays, even for MT stations. I'm pretty sure at least NBC does four feeds starting at 7 am local time.

But I think at one time the second hour of Today ran live in the CT zone and the first hour was tape-delayed for the CT zone's second hour. I remember hosts of Today would give time checks never refering to what hour it was... just saying "It's 15 past the hour."

This was true in the '60s and for some time into the '70s. I can't remember if the change occurred in the late '70s or in the early '80s when programming started coming off the bird.

But in the CT and MT zones...(snip)...the network evening news also is forced to air early, usually at 5:30. But in the MT zone, it sometimes airs earlier, before most folks are home from work.

I have seen 5 pm airtimes in a few MT markets. Do not recall any 4:30 airings in recent years (not counting MT stations that are satellites of CT stations, i.e., Rapid City).

Otherwise, you sit at home for the 5:30 MT playback and whine to the TV set "aw geez, is this an hour old?"

A bonus in AZ during DST is that you can take the 5:30 (or 6:00) net news off of a left coast feed, where there are updates when needed. I've seen this regularly at 5:30 on KPNX Mesa with NBC Nightly.

 

[gr8oldies]

I thought about posting this in the "things you remember" thread..but, impossible as I know this is, as a youngin' it appeared that WNDU-TV 16, the NBC affiliate in South Bend, managed to run NBC an hour before the rest of NBC. We could see both South Bend and a (snowy) Ft. Wayne where I lived until I was 10, and I clearly remember 16 running an hour ahead of 33. No, not clock time, but tuning in 16 and seeing the same prime time or daytime show an hour later on 33..including a Miss America pageant. It could be 33 was delaying everything by an hour, but it seems that 16 had 10pm news, etc. Any logical explanation whatsoever?

 

[bpatrick]

I don't know why you think I have all the
info on changes since the late '70s, but I
do know this much: When "Y&R" went to
an hour in February 1980 CBS moved it to
1 PM (ET) and gave noon back to the affiliates.
However, as I understand it, it continued to air
at 11 AM (CT) and on a one-day delay. In the
summer of 1981 "Y&R" moved to 12:30 (ET) to
get a half-hour jump on "All My Children" and
"Days Of Our Lives." It may have been at that
point that CBS began the split feed of "Y&R" to
keep everyone on the same day, much as it does
with "Guiding Light" today.

During that period in 1980-81, "Search For Tomorrow"
was on a clock time schedule at 12:30 in all time zones.
The CBS soap block looked like this:

Eastern Time: 12:30 Search For Tomorrow
1 PM Young And The Restless
2 PM As The World Turns
3 PM Guiding Light

Central/Pacific: 11 AM Young And The Restless
12 N (Local)
12:30 Search For Tomorrow
1 PM As The World Turns
2 PM Guiding Light

After the change in '81, it looked like this:

Eastern Time: 12:30 Young And The Restless
1:30 As The World Turns
2:30 Search For Tomorrow (until March '82,
when it moved to NBC and "Capitol"
took over the slot)
3 PM Guiding Light

Central/Pacific: 11 AM Young And The Restless
12 N (Local)
12:30 As The World Turns
1:30 Search For Tomorrow
2 PM Guiding Light

"Bold And The Beautiful" was supposed to get the 2:30 slot when
"Capitol" was canceled, but someone at CBS decided that "Y&R"
and "B&B" were similar and ought to run back-to-back, while "ATWT"
and "GL" were also similar and ought to run back-to-back. "B&B"
ended up at 1:30 (ET), followed by "ATWT" at 2, in March 1987,
and that has continued ever since.

Most of us in the Eastern time zone see the CBS soaps in this pattern:

12:30 Young And The Restless
1:30 Bold And The Beautiful
2 PM As The World Turns
3 PM Guiding Light

However, "Y&R" is on at 4 in Raleigh and Louisville, and at 9 AM
in Lexington, KY (one-day delay there). "GL" is on at 9 or 10 AM
in a number of larger markets.

In the Central and Pacific time zones, "Y&R" may air at 11 AM
(before the noon news), at 11:30, or at 4 (in St. Louis and Baton
Rouge). "GL" airs at 9 AM in Chicago and not at all in Sacramento;
the rest have kept it at 2.

One other note: when "The Price Is Right" moved to 11 AM in
1979, "Love Of Life" was evicted from its 11:30 slot and played
out its last months at 4 (ET). I recall a few stations continuing
to show it in the middle of the day; WFMY, for example, put it
at noon and moved "Y&R" to 1 even before CBS moved "Y&R."
WSPA Spartanburg, SC, kept "Y&R" at noon but ran "Love Of Life"
at 1.

And that's probably more than you ever wanted to know (or cared)
about CBS's soap changes.

Nowadays, in the earlier time zones, "Y&R" airs at 11:30
on KCBS Los Angeles, WBBM Chicago, KTVT Dallas/Ft. Worth,
WTVF Nashville, WHBF Quad Cities, and KOLR Springfield, MO.

On a couple of other notes:

When most of Indiana stayed on Eastern Standard Time in
the summer, didn't the Indianapolis affiliates eventually go
to an 8-11 prime time instead of 7-10, putting them one hour
behind Terre Haute?

Also, WNBE (WCTI) New Bern, NC, went on a Central time
schedule in the summers of 1965 and 1966. At that point
North Carolina stayed on Eastern Standard Time (it didn't
go to EDT until the summer of '67), and ABC programming
aired an hour earlier on Ch. 12 than on the other ABC stations
in the Tar Heel State (only sports events aired at the same time
on all stations). We tried one time to figure out how Ch. 12
managed to pull this off and never did come to a conclusion.

 

[azumanga]

It could be 33 was delaying everything by an hour, but it seems that 16 had 10pm news, etc. Any logical explanation whatsoever?

I think WNDU was carrying the Eastern feed live, when South Bend (and much of Indiana) was still on year-round Eastern Standard Time, during periods when Daylight Savings Time was in effect elsewhere.

 

[KeithE4]

It could be 33 was delaying everything by an hour, but it seems that 16 had 10pm news, etc. Any logical explanation whatsoever?

I think WNDU was carrying the Eastern feed live, when South Bend (and much of Indiana) was still on year-round Eastern Standard Time, during periods when Daylight Savings Time was in effect elsewhere.

South Bend is on the Michigan border. Michigan goes on DST, while most of Indiana, up until recently, did not. The South Bend-Elkhart stations probably have almost as many viewers in Michigan as in Indiana.

We were lucky in Bloomington in that the Terre Haute stations (just CBS and NBC then, with ABC split between them but rarely live) carried network shows live, while the Indy stations delayed them an hour to keep Prime Time at 8-11 PM in the summer.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

bpatrick: you had all the info and then some!

I figured you could solve the early 1980s scenario about
Y&R and the "noon hole."

As for the New Bern mystery, we need a WNBE-TV version of
Yuma's JayElDee to step forward with all the Telco line and/or
microwave link details, or an old AT&T testboard guy.

 

[compubit]

Can't forget KXGN in Glendive, MT - they air CBS from 6pm - 9pm local (taking the main CBS feed), followed by "The Best of NBC" from 9-10pm (sometimes the 9pm program which airs at the "Correct" time MT, other times it's something from earlier that night, other times it's programming from a different day...). At 10pm, they go to KTVQ/2/Billings for news - so if you watch the station, you get to see the CBS credit's from the last prime time show of the evening twice...

Jim

 

[easttxtv]

I don't know why you think I have all the
info on changes since the late '70s,

Probably because you have helpful, knowledgeable (and sometimes lengthy, in a good way) posts 8) 8)

Nowadays, in the earlier time zones, "Y&R" airs at 11:30
on ... KTVT Dallas/Ft. Worth, ....

KTVT/11 started out it's CBS affiliation with Y&R at 11a, and the 'hole' (used for noon news) at 12p between Y&R and B&B, which was the same way as with the previous CBS station (KDFW/4). The change in recent years to having KTVT's 'hole' at 11a instead of noon led to Ch. 11 no longer having noon news; now they air Jeopardy (and, originally, the last syndie Hollywood Squares before KTVT got the rights to Jeopardy) there instead.

 

[gr8oldies]

WTHR was the first Indy station to have an 8-11pm primetime in the summer, starting
in the summer of either 86 or 87 once they could access the NBC MDT feed. The other Indy stations, as well as Lafayette, followed suit, first with prime time then having the same schedule (clock time) all year. Eventually Terre Haute started delaying, and even Ft. Wayne, which gave their Ohio viewers a 9 to midnight prime time.

Someone told me that King World's one-two Wheel/Jeopardy combo from 7 to 8 was
so powerful that eventually prime time would be 8 to 11 in all time zones. Kinda wonder why that has never happened, the technology certainly is there.

 

[AndTheLambGoesBAA]

It could be 33 was delaying everything by an hour, but it seems that 16 had 10pm news, etc. Any logical explanation whatsoever?

I think WNDU was carrying the Eastern feed live, when South Bend (and much of Indiana) was still on year-round Eastern Standard Time, during periods when Daylight Savings Time was in effect elsewhere.

Don't know gr8oldies' age, but SB was in the central time zone until late 1967. FtW moved to eastern in 1961.

 

[AndTheLambGoesBAA]

We were lucky in Bloomington in that the Terre Haute stations (just CBS and NBC then, with ABC split between them but rarely live) carried network shows live, while the Indy stations delayed them an hour to keep Prime Time at 8-11 PM in the summer.

Like SB, Btown and TH were also in the central zone until 1967. Indpls was moved to eastern in 1961.