I know some networks like CBS, ABC, and FOX I think are less toerant on network pre-emptions, NBC was less tolerant on pre-emptions then, but why they are more tolerant on it now?
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Question about network's tolerants of programmng pre-emptions
- Thread starter spencerkarter85
- Start date
spencerkarter85 said:
They seem to more tolerant about pre-emptions and delays on high performing stations. 1st place KMBC has delayed Nightline by at least an hour since the beginning. Some networks may have no other place to go in some markets, like ABC in St. Louis, I'm sure they'd love by off netlet-like KDNL but there's no where else for them there
In the 70's and 80's NBC was TOO tolerant of daytime pre-emptions.They let stations like WMC in Memphis get away with pre-empting a big part of the morning schedule. WMC started out slowly in the 70's and the more they saw that NBC wouldn't stop them the worse they got until in the 80's and early 90's they were pre-emptng all of NBC's game shows except for Wheel of Fortune and possibly one other show to fill out the hour.
NBC should have put pressure on stations to keep the daytime lineup and penalized them when they didn't. But because they caved in and let stations get away with it all they have now is Days of our Lives and an extended Today show.
NBC also was too tolerant of pre-emptions and delays in late night, especially with David Letterman. They didn't let very many stations get away with pre-empting or delaying Johnny Carson, and they shouldn't have allowed it with Letterman either.
NBC should have put pressure on stations to keep the daytime lineup and penalized them when they didn't. But because they caved in and let stations get away with it all they have now is Days of our Lives and an extended Today show.
NBC also was too tolerant of pre-emptions and delays in late night, especially with David Letterman. They didn't let very many stations get away with pre-empting or delaying Johnny Carson, and they shouldn't have allowed it with Letterman either.
anotherguy said:
They let the stations in Detroit and Houston get away with the treatment of Conan. Did they ever consider shopping Conan out to another station in those places
The networks seemed to be pretty tolerant of the station in Kansas City delaying and pre-empting primetime with country music and fishing shows in the late 60s.
http://www.wtv-zone.com/dpjohnson/kcit50/index.html
http://www.wtv-zone.com/dpjohnson/kcit50/index.html
M
Marckd
Guest
Actually there wasa law that affiliates can preempt any program they wanted to and the networks had no recourse except to put preempted shows on another station in the market or pull affiliation and go to another station altogether. Though Networks could atempt a contract not allowing preemptions this was illegal. The reason was that the local owner or company that owned the affiliate was to control the station and not the network. Until 1984 companies including networks could only own or control 7 TV stations. So a no preemption agreement would constitute control of many additional stations. After 1984 the amount of stations were upped to 12 with partial control allowed for 14 stations - still a one to a market rule. Then in 2000 companies could own 2 stations per market.
So yes an affiliate was allowed to preempt any show they wanted to. Networks cared more in some places than others. In Cincinnati for example if 12 WKRC TV preempted a show it was likely 7 WHIO Dayton which still had a grade A signal in Cincinnati would likely run it. But sometimes a show was preempted in 2 neighboring markets but that was likely a low rated offering. Most shows with even decent ratings would run in a neighboring market. Cable systems all carried duplicate network stations prior to the mid 80's and in some cases into the 90's and in some cases even today. So cable often corrected any preemption issues that mattered.
So no preeemption agreements were not considered legal because at issue would have been Who controled the station. If ABC for example had agreements with affiliations to never preempt programming that would have given ABC control over at least 120 stations which was not allowed.
So as a result if a show got high ratings, IT RAN, medium ratings it USUALLY ran, low ratings - MAYBE or MAYBE NOT. But affiliates needed networks as much as networks needed affiliates. Affiliates could only produce so much viable local programming and buy only so many shows in syndication to occupy the day. They needed fresh programming so the networks served them well in that area. The independents relied haevily on older shows and old movies while affiliates really wanted to stay away from that stuff except in small markets maybe.
So yes an affiliate was allowed to preempt any show they wanted to. Networks cared more in some places than others. In Cincinnati for example if 12 WKRC TV preempted a show it was likely 7 WHIO Dayton which still had a grade A signal in Cincinnati would likely run it. But sometimes a show was preempted in 2 neighboring markets but that was likely a low rated offering. Most shows with even decent ratings would run in a neighboring market. Cable systems all carried duplicate network stations prior to the mid 80's and in some cases into the 90's and in some cases even today. So cable often corrected any preemption issues that mattered.
So no preeemption agreements were not considered legal because at issue would have been Who controled the station. If ABC for example had agreements with affiliations to never preempt programming that would have given ABC control over at least 120 stations which was not allowed.
So as a result if a show got high ratings, IT RAN, medium ratings it USUALLY ran, low ratings - MAYBE or MAYBE NOT. But affiliates needed networks as much as networks needed affiliates. Affiliates could only produce so much viable local programming and buy only so many shows in syndication to occupy the day. They needed fresh programming so the networks served them well in that area. The independents relied haevily on older shows and old movies while affiliates really wanted to stay away from that stuff except in small markets maybe.
I don't know if the laws Marckd mentioned are still in effect, but there is one area that I believe the networks should have zero tolerance of now, and that is stations pre-empting prime time programming for infomercials. I actually believe there should be FCC rules in place that won't allow infomercials in network prime time, but that's been discussed in other threads.
anotherguy said:
Last year, a station in St. Louis pre-empted Network primetime with a cooking/entertaining show sponsored by a local grocery chain
Marckd said:
Since you mentioned Cincinnati NBC doesn't seem to have been too intolerant of WLWT's pre-empting network shows in favor of Paul Dixon and Bob Braun. Quite a few NBC daytime shows seem to have ended up on either WKRC or WXIX, and at one point WKRC was carrying NBC's Wednesday Mystery Movie late Saturday nights because WLWT carried its own block of movies on Wednesday.
And if you're number one in your market, you can get away with it; the three most pre-emption happy stations I ever saw were WSB Atlanta, WBRC Birmingham, and WTVT Tampa-St. Petersburg, and all three were number one when I lived in those markets (although I think NBC had tired of WSB's pre-emptions, 450 hours' worth in the four years prior to the switch to ABC).
The only thing your affiliation gives you is right of first refusal. I remember the CBS traffic wire that the Program Director got...a signature was required for each and every program. The only recourse for the network would be to switch affiliate stations. When I worked at WLFI in Lafayette, IN, a couple of evenings a week could see prime time pre-empted by Purdue basketball. We got permission to carry the Chicago Bears rather than the "Southwest Network" that Indianapolis carried.
There were even a couple of Friday nights during an election year where we pre-empted CBS prime time for a locally run movie. The sole reason: To catch up on local spot inventory.
There were even a couple of Friday nights during an election year where we pre-empted CBS prime time for a locally run movie. The sole reason: To catch up on local spot inventory.
azumanga said:
This common right before or after sweeps periods. No one notices since they usually schedule them during reruns
If you lived in northwest Tennessee back in the day, you would have (apparently) needed both channel 5 in Memphis and channel 6 in Paducah on your cable system to compensate for all the pre-empts on both stations! Or two sets of "rabbit ears" (one pointed each way) if you did not have cable at the time. Channel 6 was especially bad about pre-empting for UK basketball (even bumping Cosby at least once!), and they delayed Saturday Night Live by an hour (when they actually carried it!) for the better part of 20 years! If you didn't have cable, you would probably have had to live in the Obion River bottoms to see both stations! That would be about the ONLY advantage that I could see for living in the Obion River bottoms! ;Danotherguy said:
I lived South of Dyersburg and had an antenna with a rotor to get WPSD, KFVS in Cape Girardeau, MO, and KAIT in Jonesboro, AR, along with the usual Memphis and Jackson, TN stations, so I got most shows I wanted to see from somewhere. I could also get all of them except KAIT on Cable One in Dyersburg at either my grandmother's or brother's house.
WPSD seemed to be worse about pre-emptions and delays in prime time and with SNL while WMC was worse in the daytime, Letterman, and Saturday sports.
WPSD seemed to be worse about pre-emptions and delays in prime time and with SNL while WMC was worse in the daytime, Letterman, and Saturday sports.
For some inexplicable reason, channel 6 used to sign off right after Letterman, rather than stay on for the extra half-hour for Later with Bob Costas. This, along with their SNL delays, actually had them staying on the air longer on Saturday nights than the rest of the week!
firepoint525 said:
What did they run instead of SNL?
This is an interesting thread, although there is one thing that stands out in my mind.
I can understand networks wanting stations carrying their primetime shows during the actual TV season(I.E. September-May or June), but I would imagine most stations wouldn't mind a lot of pre-emptions during primetime during the TV "Off-Season" so to speak(the summer months, June, July, August and the first few weeks of September).
During the summer months most people are on vacation or at concerts or whatever, so I guess pre-emptions would be tolerated more then, as opposed to the other 8 or 9 months of the year.
As for pre-emptions during the daytime, there is something interesting that stands out in my mind about game shows of the past, and soaps and other old school daytime programming.
I wonder if had the technology for digital subchannels(MeTV, Antenna TV, etc.) existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s(or something similar to digital subchannels) that's where most of the daytime shows stations pre-empted would have ended up.
Take my area for example(Seattle): KIRO 7 currently has an RTV subchannel, KING 5 has one I believe, and KOMO 4 has a ThisTV subchannel. If something along the lines of the digital subchannel technology had existed at that time, I could see KING and KIRO's subchannels airing a ton of NBC and CBS game shows, and whatever other daytime programs the stations would have pre-empted.
I apologize by the way in advance if i've brought this idea up before, but I just think it's something interesting to think about.
I can understand networks wanting stations carrying their primetime shows during the actual TV season(I.E. September-May or June), but I would imagine most stations wouldn't mind a lot of pre-emptions during primetime during the TV "Off-Season" so to speak(the summer months, June, July, August and the first few weeks of September).
During the summer months most people are on vacation or at concerts or whatever, so I guess pre-emptions would be tolerated more then, as opposed to the other 8 or 9 months of the year.
As for pre-emptions during the daytime, there is something interesting that stands out in my mind about game shows of the past, and soaps and other old school daytime programming.
I wonder if had the technology for digital subchannels(MeTV, Antenna TV, etc.) existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s(or something similar to digital subchannels) that's where most of the daytime shows stations pre-empted would have ended up.
Take my area for example(Seattle): KIRO 7 currently has an RTV subchannel, KING 5 has one I believe, and KOMO 4 has a ThisTV subchannel. If something along the lines of the digital subchannel technology had existed at that time, I could see KING and KIRO's subchannels airing a ton of NBC and CBS game shows, and whatever other daytime programs the stations would have pre-empted.
I apologize by the way in advance if i've brought this idea up before, but I just think it's something interesting to think about.
They ran it; they just delayed it by an hour for the better part of 20 years, usually running This Week in Country Music (the Crook and Chase show) and some sitcom rerun during the hour delay.nomadcowatbk said:
What about Mormon-owned KSL-TV turned down SNL (ended up on KUCW) in Utah? Before they added Today Show's 4th Hour repeat at 2:05am/1:05am Central/Mountain last Fall, what about Hearst stations (KCRA, KSBW, WBAL, and WYFF) let them get away for not airing KLG and Hoda?
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