Retro: Eastern Virginia Saturday, March 20, 1971

[bpatrick]

From TV Guide, Eastern Virginia Edition. NOTE: PBS affiliates
WHRO/15 Norfolk, WCVE/23 Richmond, and WVPT/51 Harrisonburg
are off air on Saturdays.

WTAR (WTKR) Ch. 3 Norfolk (CBS)

6:30 Sunrise Semester: "Modern Linguistics"
7 AM Flibbertigibbet
8 AM Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour
9 AM Sabrina And The Groovie Goolies
10 AM Josie And The Pussycats
10:30 Harlem Globetrotters (animated)
11 AM Archie Comedy Hour
12 N Scooby Doo
12:30 Monkees
1 PM Dastardly And Muttley In Their
Flying Machines
1:30 Jetsons
2 PM 4-H Science Club
2:30 Film
3 PM Project 1040 (live call-ins for income-tax
advice)
4 PM CBS Golf Classic: Quarterfinal match: Frank
Beard and Larry Hinson vs. R.H. Sikes and
Homero Blancas
5 PM Man To Man: Jackie Cooper, Dan Gurney, and
Doug Sanders join Roman Gabriel and Merlin Olsen
5:30 Call Of The West (selected "Death Valley Days" reruns)
6 PM News, Weather, Sports
6:30 CBS News (Roger Mudd)
7 PM Dick Van Dyke
7:30 Mission: Impossible
8:30 My Three Sons (pilot for a spin-off that never got
on the air: Robbie, Katie, and the triplets move to
San Francisco)
9 PM Arnie
9:30 Mary Tyler Moore (Valerie Harper's then-husband Richard
Schaal is a guest)
10 PM Mannix
11 PM News, Weather, Sports
11:30 Tackle Box
11:40 Movie: "Act One"

WSVA (WHSV) Ch. 3 Harrisonburg (NBC/ABC)

7:30 4-H Science Club
8 AM Tomfoolery
8:30 Heckle And Jeckle
9 AM Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp
10 AM Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?
10:30 Here Come The Doubledeckers
11 AM Hot Wheels
11:30 Sky Hawks
12 N Motor Mouse
12:30 Hardy Boys (animated)
1 PM American Bandstand
2 PM NCAA Basketball Tournament: East Regional
final, followed by either the Mideast or Midwest
Regional final
6 PM Hazel (time approximate)
6:30 Dan August (delay from Thu 9:30)
7:30 Lawrence Welk
8:30 NBC Movie: "The Misfits"
11 PM Movie: "Green Fire"

WTVR Ch. 6 Richmond (CBS)

6:30 Bachelor Father (2 episodes)
7:30 Cartoons
8 AM Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour
9 AM Sabrina And The Groovie Goolies
10 AM Josie And The Pussycats
10:30 Harlem Globetrotters
11 AM Archie Comedy Hour
12 N Scooby Doo
12:30 Monkees
1 PM Dastardly And Muttley In Their
Flying Machines
1:30 Jetsons
2 PM Jim Thomas Outdoors
2:30 Films
3 PM Like Young
4 PM CBS Golf Classic
5 PM Wrestling (from Raleigh)
6 PM Death Valley Days
6:30 CBS News
7 PM News, Weather, Sports
7:30 Mission: Impossible
8:30 My Three Sons
9 PM Arnie
9:30 Mary Tyler Moore
10 PM Mannix
11 PM News, Weather, Sports
11:30 Movie: "Attack And Retreat"

WXEX (WRIC) Ch. 8 Petersburg-Richmond (ABC)

7:30 Town And Country
8 AM Fort Lee Highlights
8:30 Big Picture
9 AM Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp
10 AM Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?
10:30 Here Come The Doubledeckers
11 AM Hot Wheels
11:30 Sky Hawks
12 N Motor Mouse
12:30 Hardy Boys
1 PM American Bandstand
2 PM Bronco
3 PM Outdoors With Gadabout Gaddis
3:30 Pro Bowlers Tour: Fair Lanes Open, from
Washington, DC
5 PM Wide World Of Sports: Tournament of Thrills
Auto Daredevil Championships, International
Professional Skiing Championships, World Four-
Man Bobsled Championship
6:30 That Good Ole Nashville Music
7 PM Wilburn Brothers
7:30 Lawrence Welk
8:30 Pearl Bailey (guests Perle Mesta, "the hostess
with the mostest"; Debbie Reynolds, Sarah Vaughan,
Erroll Garner)
9:30 Johnny Cash (guests Randy and Gary Scruggs, Chris
Gantry, Mickey Newbury, Sammi Smith, Marcy Dean,
the Dillards, and Area Code 615--the Dillards are best
known as the Darling boys on "The Andy Griffith Show"--
delay from Wed 9 PM)
10:30 Country Carnival
11 PM Dark Shadows (Ch. 8 tape-delayed all five episodes each
week and played them in a late-Saturday block)
1:30 ABC News (Bill Beutel)

WAVY Ch. 10 Norfolk (NBC)

6:30 Farm Show
7 AM World Tomorrow (Garner Ted Armstrong)
7:30 Saturday Party
8 AM Tomfoolery
8:30 Heckle And Jeckle
9 AM Woody Woodpecker
9:30 Bugaloos
10 AM Dr. Dolittle
10:30 Pink Panther
11 AM H.R. Pufnstuf
11:30 Here Comes The Grump
12 N Hot Dog
12:30 Jambo
1 PM Wild Kingdom (delay from Sun 7 PM)
1:30 That Good Ole Nashville Music
2 PM NCAA Basketball Tournament (see Ch. 3
Harrisonburg for details)
6 PM News, Weather, Sports (time approximate)
6:30 Wrestling (from Raleigh)
7:30 Andy Williams (guests: Judy Carne, Jonathan
Winters, the Lennon Sisters, and Richie Havens)
8:30 NBC Movie: "The Misfits"
11 PM News, Weather, Sports
11:30 Greatest Fights
11:45 Hugh Hefner (Playboy After Dark, and I'll refrain
from making any more comments about this show)
1:15 News, Weather, Sports

WWBT Ch. 12 Richmond (NBC)

7 AM Cartoon Carnival
8 AM Tomfoolery
8:30 Heckle And Jeckle
9 AM Woody Woodpecker
9:30 Kelly Dragon (local kids' show)
10 AM Dr. Dolittle
10:30 Pink Panther
11 AM H.R. Pufnstuf
11:30 Here Comes The Grump
12 N Hot Dog
12:30 Roller Derby
1:30 Sports Challenge (boxing greats Joe Louis,
Archie Moore, and Sugar Ray Robinson take
on last week's winners)
2 PM NCAA Basketball Tournament (see Ch. 3
Harrisonburg for details)
6 PM Hazel (time approximate)
6:30 NBC News
7 PM This Is Your Life
7:30 Andy Williams
8:30 NBC Movie: "The Misfits"
11 PM Movie: "Nightmare"

WVEC Ch. 13 Norfolk (ABC)

7 AM Comedy Time
8 AM Animal Fair (a longtime Hampton Roads
tradition, first on Ch. 3, then on Ch. 13)
8:30 Laurel And Hardy
9 AM Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp
10 AM Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?
10:30 Here Come The Doubledeckers
11 AM Hot Wheels
11:30 Sky Hawks
12 N Motor Mouse
12:30 Hardy Boys
1 PM American Bandstand
2 PM Movie: "Medusa Against The Son Of Hercules"
3:30 Pro Bowlers Tour
5 PM Wide World Of Sports
6:30 Hawaiian Eye
7:30 Lawrence Welk
8:30 Pearl Bailey
9:30 Movie: "The President's Lady" (watch for Dr. Alex--
Carl Betz--and Jock Ewing--Jim Davis)
11:30 ABC News
11:45 News, Weather, Sports
11:50 Movie: "The Pride And The Passion"
2:20 Christophers

WYAH (WGNT) Ch. 27 Portsmouth (Ind.)

5 PM Treehouse Club
5:30 Jim And Tammy
6:30 Jubilee
7 PM Stories Of Success
7:30 The Story
8 PM The Deaf Hear
8:30 The Ministers
9 PM Call To Obedience
9:30 Tomorrow's Lesson
10 PM Film
11 PM

 

[mleach]

WXEX (WRIC) Ch. 8 Petersburg-Richmond (ABC)

7:30 Town And Country
8 AM Fort Lee Highlights
8:30 Big Picture
9 AM Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp
10 AM Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?
10:30 Here Come The Doubledeckers
11 AM Hot Wheels
11:30 Sky Hawks
12 N Motor Mouse
12:30 Hardy Boys
1 PM American Bandstand
2 PM Bronco
3 PM Outdoors With Gadabout Gaddis
3:30 Pro Bowlers Tour: Fair Lanes Open, from
Washington, DC
5 PM Wide World Of Sports: Tournament of Thrills
Auto Daredevil Championships, International
Professional Skiing Championships, World Four-
Man Bobsled Championship
6:30 That Good Ole Nashville Music
7 PM Wilburn Brothers
7:30 Lawrence Welk
8:30 Pearl Bailey (guests Perle Mesta, "the hostess
with the mostest"; Debbie Reynolds, Sarah Vaughan,
Erroll Garner)
9:30 Johnny Cash (guests Randy and Gary Scruggs, Chris
Gantry, Mickey Newbury, Sammi Smith, Marcy Dean,
the Dillards, and Area Code 615--the Dillards are best
known as the Darling boys on "The Andy Griffith Show"--
delay from Wed 9 PM)
10:30 Country Carnival
11 PM Dark Shadows (Ch. 8 tape-delayed all five episodes each
week and played them in a late-Saturday block)
1:30 ABC News (Bill Beutel)

I am pretty sure that by the time of these listings and perhaps until around 1977, WXEX was the largest station in the US at least among network affiliates that didn't offer any local news on weekends. Around the same time WXEX had became WRIC in the early 90's I seem to recall reading Richmond Time-Dispatch TV columnist Doug Durden ( a woman NOT a man ) making a mention of this.

Considering that WXEX in the early-mid 70's spent quite a bit of money launching "TV8 Eyewitness News" plus by the mid 70's WXEX even had their own news chopper, even though WXEX wasn't able to do live reports from that thing. On top of that WXEX was at the time owned by Nationwide Insurance ( talk about having money ) and WXEX's sister station was WLEE-AM, Richmond's big AM top 40 ( and number 1 ) station at the time...and WLEE offered news on the weekends. Despite all of those advantages, WXEX still didn't do news on weekends until at least 1976.

Looking back at these listings WWBT, I see they didn't do news on Saturdays either but didnt WWBT do news on Sundays back in the early-mid 70's?

 

[azumanga]

WVEC Ch. 13 Norfolk (ABC)
2 PM Movie: "Medusa Against The Son Of Hercules"

This was the television title for an Italian sword and sandal film "Perseus The Invincible", starring Richard Harrison as Perseus. The film was part of "The Sons of Hercules" package, which featured many Italian peplum films, retitled to create an illusion that the heroes were the titular "Sons of Hercules", even though they actually weren't (and two of the films featured Hercules himself as headliner, more or less making him his own son).

More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sons_of_Hercules

 

[Charles1]

WXEX (WRIC) Ch. 8 Petersburg-Richmond (ABC)

7:30 Town And Country
8 AM Fort Lee Highlights
8:30 Big Picture
9 AM Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp
10 AM Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?
10:30 Here Come The Doubledeckers
11 AM Hot Wheels
11:30 Sky Hawks
12 N Motor Mouse
12:30 Hardy Boys
1 PM American Bandstand
2 PM Bronco
3 PM Outdoors With Gadabout Gaddis
3:30 Pro Bowlers Tour: Fair Lanes Open, from
Washington, DC
5 PM Wide World Of Sports: Tournament of Thrills
Auto Daredevil Championships, International
Professional Skiing Championships, World Four-
Man Bobsled Championship
6:30 That Good Ole Nashville Music
7 PM Wilburn Brothers
7:30 Lawrence Welk
8:30 Pearl Bailey (guests Perle Mesta, "the hostess
with the mostest"; Debbie Reynolds, Sarah Vaughan,
Erroll Garner)
9:30 Johnny Cash (guests Randy and Gary Scruggs, Chris
Gantry, Mickey Newbury, Sammi Smith, Marcy Dean,
the Dillards, and Area Code 615--the Dillards are best
known as the Darling boys on "The Andy Griffith Show"--
delay from Wed 9 PM)
10:30 Country Carnival
11 PM Dark Shadows (Ch. 8 tape-delayed all five episodes each
week and played them in a late-Saturday block)
1:30 ABC News (Bill Beutel)

I am pretty sure that by the time of these listings and perhaps until around 1977, WXEX was the largest station in the US at least among network affiliates that didn't offer any local news on weekends. Around the same time WXEX had became WRIC in the early 90's I seem to recall reading Richmond Time-Dispatch TV columnist Doug Durden ( a woman NOT a man ) making a mention of this.

Considering that WXEX in the early-mid 70's spent quite a bit of money launching "TV8 Eyewitness News" plus by the mid 70's WXEX even had their own news chopper, even though WXEX wasn't able to do live reports from that thing. On top of that WXEX was at the time owned by Nationwide Insurance ( talk about having money ) and WXEX's sister station was WLEE-AM, Richmond's big AM top 40 ( and number 1 ) station at the time...and WLEE offered news on the weekends. Despite all of those advantages, WXEX still didn't do news on weekends until at least 1976.

Looking back at these listings WWBT, I see they didn't do news on Saturdays either but didnt WWBT do news on Sundays back in the early-mid 70's?

I can't remember when WBRC or WAPI in Birmingham added weekend news, but it was well after 1971. And hasn't Birmingham always been a bigger market than Richmond?

 

[bk77]

WXEX (WRIC) Ch. 8 Petersburg-Richmond (ABC)

7:30 Town And Country
8 AM Fort Lee Highlights
8:30 Big Picture
9 AM Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp
10 AM Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?
10:30 Here Come The Doubledeckers
11 AM Hot Wheels
11:30 Sky Hawks
12 N Motor Mouse
12:30 Hardy Boys
1 PM American Bandstand
2 PM Bronco
3 PM Outdoors With Gadabout Gaddis
3:30 Pro Bowlers Tour: Fair Lanes Open, from
Washington, DC
5 PM Wide World Of Sports: Tournament of Thrills
Auto Daredevil Championships, International
Professional Skiing Championships, World Four-
Man Bobsled Championship
6:30 That Good Ole Nashville Music
7 PM Wilburn Brothers
7:30 Lawrence Welk
8:30 Pearl Bailey (guests Perle Mesta, "the hostess
with the mostest"; Debbie Reynolds, Sarah Vaughan,
Erroll Garner)
9:30 Johnny Cash (guests Randy and Gary Scruggs, Chris
Gantry, Mickey Newbury, Sammi Smith, Marcy Dean,
the Dillards, and Area Code 615--the Dillards are best
known as the Darling boys on "The Andy Griffith Show"--
delay from Wed 9 PM)
10:30 Country Carnival
11 PM Dark Shadows (Ch. 8 tape-delayed all five episodes each
week and played them in a late-Saturday block)
1:30 ABC News (Bill Beutel)

I am pretty sure that by the time of these listings and perhaps until around 1977, WXEX was the largest station in the US at least among network affiliates that didn't offer any local news on weekends. Around the same time WXEX had became WRIC in the early 90's I seem to recall reading Richmond Time-Dispatch TV columnist Doug Durden ( a woman NOT a man ) making a mention of this.

Considering that WXEX in the early-mid 70's spent quite a bit of money launching "TV8 Eyewitness News" plus by the mid 70's WXEX even had their own news chopper, even though WXEX wasn't able to do live reports from that thing. On top of that WXEX was at the time owned by Nationwide Insurance ( talk about having money ) and WXEX's sister station was WLEE-AM, Richmond's big AM top 40 ( and number 1 ) station at the time...and WLEE offered news on the weekends. Despite all of those advantages, WXEX still didn't do news on weekends until at least 1976.

Looking back at these listings WWBT, I see they didn't do news on Saturdays either but didnt WWBT do news on Sundays back in the early-mid 70's?

I can't remember when WBRC or WAPI in Birmingham added weekend news, but it was well after 1971. And hasn't Birmingham always been a bigger market than Richmond?

Birmingham has always been a bigger market than Richmond. But then again those local TV newspaper critics, chances are they usually know very little of TV outside of the markets they write about. It sure was the case with Tom Shales and The Washington Post. I can still remember the time he had done a story about some Buffalo newscaster who had landed a job in Washington. According to Shales in his column the call letters of the Buffalo TV stations were WZGR, WIVE, WKWV and WUTV. Well at least he got one out of four right.

 

[bpatrick]

In March 1971 WTVR and WWBT had late newscasts on Sundays;
WWBT's aired at 11 PM; WTVR's at 11:15, following the CBS late-
Sunday newscast. Neither had an early newscast on Sunday; while
both aired their early-evening network news (WTVR at 6, WWBT at
6:30), John Hartford's "Something Else" followed CBS News in Richmond,
while Betty White's "The Pet Set" preceded NBC News. And even at
that, WTVR's 11:15 PM newscast was only 15 minutes; Merv Griffin
(delayed from Friday night) aired at 11:30.

I lived in Birmingham from 1969 to 1973 and never remember a local
weekend newscast on any of the affiliates. Not many ABC affiliates,
at least in the South, did local news on weekends, anyway; I remember
when Atlanta's Ch. 11 started newscasts at noon, 6:30, and 11 on
Saturday and Sunday in the fall of '72; prior to that the ABC affiliates
in Orlando and Tampa had 6:30 newscasts on Saturday, but Tampa dropped
theirs in favor of "The Reasoner Report" in the spring of '73. But that was
about it until the late '70s.

As for the other networks, most CBS and NBC affiliates had local weekend
newscasts in the late '60s; I know that was true in Atlanta and Tampa, and
I remember Saturday local newscasts on WFMY (CBS) and WSJS (now WXII, NBC)
in Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point, and on WBTV Charlotte.