Retro: Memphis July 21, 1965

[briancraig]

From TV Guide:

WREC 3 (CBS)

6:15--Summer Semester
6:45--Above The Clouds (local religion)
7--Good Morning From Memphis
8--Captain Kangaroo
9--CBS News-Charles Kuralt
9:30--I Love Lucy
10--Andy Griffith
10:30--McCoys
11--Love Of Life
11:25--News
11:30--Search For Tomorrow
11:45--Guiding Light
Noon--December Bride
12:30--As The World Turns
1--Password
1:30--House Party
2--To Tell The Truth
2:25--CBS News-Douglas Edwards
2:30--Edge Of Night
3--Secret Storm
3:30--Early Movie-"The Thing Called Love" (1941)
5:15--News, Weather
5:30--CBS News-Harry Reasoner (I guess they knew Cronkite would be on vacation)
6--Amos 'N' Andy
6:30--Mister Ed
7--My Living Doll
7:30--Beverly Hillbillies
8--Dick Van Dyke
8:30--Our Private World
9--Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour
10--Local News
10:10--Weather
10:15--Late Movie "Red Skies Of Montanna" (1952)

WMCT 5 (NBC)

6:40--TV Chapel
6:45--Gospel Singers
7--Today In The Mid-South
7:30--Today
9--Truth Or Consequences
9:30--What's This Song
9:55--NBC News-Edwin Newman
10--Concentration
10:30--Jeopardy
11--Call My Bluff
11:30--I'll Bet
11:55--Midday Report
Noon--Mike Douglas
1:30--Doctors
2--Another World
2:30--You Don't Say
3--Match Game
3:25--Local News
3:30--Loony Zoo with Trent Wood (local kids)
4--Leave It To Beaver
4:30--77 Sunset Strip
5:30--NBC News-Huntley, Brinkley
6--Local News
6:15--Weather and Sports
6:25--Camera 5 Report
6:30--Virginian
8:00--NBC Wednesday Night At The Movies "Fancy Pants" (1950)
10--Local News
10:15--News Commentary
10:20--Sports and Weather
10:30--Tonight (Joey Bishop, scheduled guest host)
Midnight--My Little Margie
12:30--News, TV Chapel

WHBQ 13 (ABC)

6:25--Daily Word-religion
6:30--Profile Of Space
7--Cartoons
8:30--Jack La Lanne
9--Town and Country (local music)
9:30--Movie "Genius At Work" (1946)
10:30--Price Is Right
11--Donna Reed
11:30--TV Bingo
Noon--Rebus
12:30--Father Knows Best
1--Where The Action Is
1:30--A Time For Us
1:55--News-Marlene Sanders
2--General Hospital
2:30--Young Marrieds
3--Trailmaster
4--Fun House (local kids)
5--Adventure Time
5:30--Rifleman
6--Rebel
6:30--Ozzie & Harriet
7--Patty Duke
7:30--Shindig
8:30--Burke's Law
9:30--Valentine's Day
10--News and Weather
10:20--Movie "Cat People" (1942)

WKNO 10 (EDUC.)

12:15--Classroom
2:15--Film Feature
2:30--Five College Presidents
3:30--Heredity-science
4--What's New-children
4:30--Business System
5--Jerome Hines-interview
5:30--Serenade-music
6:30--Channel Ten Travels
7--Crossroads Of The World
7:30--What's New-children
8--TV Journal-science
8:30--Intertel-documentary
9:30--Creative Person

 

[only1moore]

Interesting lineup. BTW where are the other stations in the Memphis Edition and can you post what the Memphis/Mid-South stations were airing on the weekends at the time of this printing? Thanks.

 

[bpatrick]

A question, then a tidbit:

1. What did Ch. 13 run in place of
"Valentine's Day" on Fridays? If
it was like Atlanta's Ch. 11, which
delayed it until Saturday at 10:30,
I'm betting it was a movie.

2. "Our Private World" was CBS's attempt
to mount a prime-time soap a la ABC's
hit "Peyton Place." It reached over to
its then-most-popular daytime soap, "As
The World Turns," and spun off the character
of Lisa (Eileen Fulton). Whether because the
show debuted in the summer or the erratic
scheduling (9:30 ET on Wednesday, 9 PM ET
on Friday), the show never caught on, and Lisa's
been back on "ATWT" ever since, but since she's
now well into her 70s they're not giving her a great
deal to do.

 

[Mike Stroud]

Boy, would you look at WMCT's sked. First off, the station pre-empts the first half hour of "Today" for its own local show, one that apparently didn't make the end of the decade, since it would not be until 1980 or so before the station tried again with "Wake-Up Call."

I thought Central Time Zone affils invariably put news on at Noon sharp back in those days, but I have been proved wrong. The 90-minute syndie Mike Douglas until 1:30? I would have to guess that "Let's Make a Deal" (12:30 on NBC in those days) was a flop in the Mid-South when it premiered right after Christmas '63, and WMCT, unlike other NBC affils such as WSB in Atlanta and WHO in Des Moines, didn't think movies would fit there. So, it probably tried the Douglas show as an experiment; I surely can't see that having lasted more than a year or so, as NBC would have surely gotten on the station's case for not clearing "Days of Our Lives," when that show debuted later in that year.

And the mother of all kiddie show titles at 3:30, "Loony Zoo with Trent Wood." Speaking of mothers, I wonder what some of them thought about their "young uns" watching such a show. Of course, what means one thing to children means another thing to adults with an ironic imagination (read: insane asylum), so perhaps nobody fussed about it.

Now I can see the roots of WMCT/WMC's disloyalty to NBC, but one thing has to be kept in mind. The station was likely at the time the market's top-rated in most if not all dayparts, and it therefore had considerable leverage to do what it wanted. By the 1970s, ABC affil WHBQ had probably taken over the top spot (albeit barely) and, like WMCT, flexed its muscles by vetoing shows it thought weren't doing well nationally or were offensive to local mores.

If a network got upset in those days about a station's preemption practices, what could it do other than try to get a rival in that same town to break its contract with another network? It wasn't an easy thing to do with only three commercial channels (sometimes not even that, in smaller areas) on the dial. So the networks had to put up with it except in egregious cases (such as Spokane, Wash.'s KXLY in the mid-1970s, when CBS pulled the plug) where contract terms were being explictly violated. It boggles the mind, but many ABC affils did not clear the network's evening news until well into the early 1970s, and one would think carriage of evening news would be mandatory in a standard affiliation contract. There are plenty of examples too numerous to mention here.

Anybody else have any thoughts about WMCT's ways?

 

[bpatrick]

When "Let's Make A Deal" debuted, it was
on against "Password" at 1 PM (CT), then was
moved to 12:30 against "As The World Turns."
The two CBS shows were, IIRC, recording shares
in the 50s, so even though "Deal" cut into the
audiences for both, "ATWT" may have been so
popular in Memphis that WMC didn't dare run a
network show against it, just as WSB would not
air network programs between noon and 2 until
"Days Of Our Lives" went to an hour and moved
to 1:30; WAGA, with such classics as "Love Of
Life," "Search For Tomorrow," "Guiding Light,"
"As The World Turns," and (starting in '76) "The
Young And The Restless," had to have been too
strong at midday. Also, before the WSB/WXIA
switch, "Ryan's Hope" and "All My Children" were
the only ABC soaps WXIA hung onto until the
bitter end, so they had to have been performing
well also.

Re ABC affiliates not carrying the network news,
there were those (like WXIA) that dropped the
newscast when Frank Reynolds took over in 1968
and began doing commentaries that some owners
felt were too liberal. But ABC got a ratings boost
when it teamed Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner
in December 1970, and at the '71 ABC affiliates' meeting,
Reasoner chewed out those stations that were still
holding out. Ironically, one of the last two stations to
pick up Smith and Reasoner (in August '72) was WBRC
Birmingham, the same station that had dropped CBS in
1961 in part over Smith's critical report on the racial
tension there.

Back to WMC, I keep thinking there were whole blocks
of NBC morning programming they pre-empted in the '80s.

 

[mleach]

On another thread it was mention how Howard Hughes would call up Las Vegas' KLAS-TV and more/less played "program director" by forcing KLAS to air what HE wanted to see. of course Hughes had actually owned KLAS at the time.

Even though he didn't own any of the Memphis stations, for some reason I seem to recall reading in a few of those Elvis Presely books in the past that made a claim that Elvis, a guy who slept during the day but stayed up all night, sometimes he was known to call up one of the Memphis TV stations ( I believe it was WHBQ ) and have them air shows in the middle of the night after they "sign-off"...just for Elvis.

Wonder what shows Elvis had requested to see IF this is even true? Somehow I have my doubts since Elvis Presley was one of the first celebrities to have owned a his very own video tape recorder ( mid 60s ), why would he even bother calling up a TV station and have them to air special programming..just for him.

 

[Mike Stroud]

On another thread it was mention how Howard Hughes would call up Las Vegas' KLAS-TV and more/less played "program director" by forcing KLAS to air what HE wanted to see. of course Hughes had actually owned KLAS at the time.

Even though he didn't own any of the Memphis stations, for some reason I seem to recall reading in a few of those Elvis Presely books in the past that made a claim that Elvis, a guy who slept during the day but stayed up all night, sometimes he was known to call up one of the Memphis TV stations ( I believe it was WHBQ ) and have them air shows in the middle of the night after they "sign-off"...just for Elvis.

Wonder what shows Elvis had requested to see IF this is even true? Somehow I have my doubts since Elvis Presley was one of the first celebrities to have owned a his very own video tape recorder ( mid 60s ), why would he even bother calling up a TV station and have them to air special programming..just for him.

Your examples of Howard Hughes and Elvis are a little beside my point. What I was referring to was preempting network feeds to a station. Hughes' demands and the alleged whims of Elvis took place overnight, after network programming had stopped for the day. Neither CBS' relationship with KLAS nor ABC's with WHBQ would have been at stake, as neither station would have denied its respective network access to its airwaves.

Put simply, stations in those days apparently had leeway to produce or buy their own programming to substitute for the network's offering at a given time slot, if the station figured, by a reasonable calculation, that it could make more money selling local spot advertising than carrying a low-rated show that brought in a smaller fee from the network. This made sense back in older times when stations had little competition, and thus feared little about viewer disaffection. Today, with people having hundreds upon hundreds of options on cable/satellite, both stations and networks are scared stiff, eliminating much if not all of their old antagonisms. This is the main reason you see very few preemptions of the network feed today from an affiliate. The only times a station will stop network programming is for news and severe weather bulletins, something networks have always allowed their stations to do (per FCC mandates for a licensee to serve its community).

That ought to clear the air a bit ...

 

[mleach]

Your examples of Howard Hughes and Elvis are a little beside my point. What I was referring to was preempting network feeds to a station. Hughes' demands and the alleged whims of Elvis took place overnight, after network programming had stopped for the day. Neither CBS' relationship with KLAS nor ABC's with WHBQ would have been at stake, as neither station would have denied its respective network access to its airwaves.

Put simply, stations in those days apparently had leeway to produce or buy their own programming to substitute for the network's offering at a given time slot, if the station figured, by a reasonable calculation, that it could make more money selling local spot advertising than carrying a low-rated show that brought in a smaller fee from the network. This made sense back in older times when stations had little competition, and thus feared little about viewer disaffection. Today, with people having hundreds upon hundreds of options on cable/satellite, both stations and networks are scared stiff, eliminating much if not all of their old antagonisms. This is the main reason you see very few preemptions of the network feed today from an affiliate. The only times a station will stop network programming is for news and severe weather bulletins, something networks have always allowed their stations to do (per FCC mandates for a licensee to serve its community).

That ought to clear the air a bit ...

I understand exactly what you are saying. Just wondering at the time of these listings if Elvis Presley really had the power to get WHBQ to air say "TV Bingo" or even "Shindig" at 3am just so Elvis could watch it?

 

[briancraig]

When I get a little more time, I'll post the weekend schedule from this TV Guide and the other two stations listed in this edition which were WDXI 7 in Jackson which was primary CBS in those years and WTWV 9 in Tupelo. KAIT in Jonesboro was on the air but wasn't listed in 1965.

My next Memphis TV Guide is from January 1966 and WMCT is by then showing all 2 hours of the Today Show. In January 1966, they are also clearing Let's Make A Deal and Days Of Our Lives, but by September of 1966 they are showing Merv Griffin from Noon to 1:30 pm.
In September of 1967, they start clearing Days Of Our Lives again permanently.

On Friday night, channel 13 showed an hour Son Of Hercules movie instead of Valentine's Day and F.D.R.

My guess is that Elvis getting any Memphis tv station to sign on in the middle of the night is strictly urban legend. I've never heard from a reliable source that this ever happened. Elvis did get local movie theaters to open up and show him movies in the middle of the night and often got the amusement park at the Fairgrounds to stay open over night just for him and his entourage.

 

[bk77]

My guess is that Elvis getting any Memphis tv station to sign on in the middle of the night is strictly urban legend. I've never heard from a reliable source that this ever happened. Elvis did get local movie theaters to open up and show him movies in the middle of the night and often got the amusement park at the Fairgrounds to stay open over night just for him and his entourage.

There has been a lot of so-called urban legends over the years in regards to Elvis such as the one about Elvis making late night flights to Colorado from Memphis just to eat peanut butter sandwiches. True or not..depends. Lisa Marie Presley several years ago had said that story was pure BS while others swear to it. Of course it doesn't help having the thousands of Elvis related books that had been published over the years since one has to top the other otherwise how could you sell a book? Also there is the factor of the manymembers within the Presley circle flip flopping over the years about what Elvis Presley the man was really like.

 

[only1moore]

When I get a little more time, I'll post the weekend schedule from this TV Guide and the other two stations listed in this edition which were WDXI 7 in Jackson which was primary CBS in those years and WTWV 9 in Tupelo. KAIT in Jonesboro was on the air but wasn't listed in 1965.

My next Memphis TV Guide is from January 1966 and WMCT is by then showing all 2 hours of the Today Show. In January 1966, they are also clearing Let's Make A Deal and Days Of Our Lives, but by September of 1966 they are showing Merv Griffin from Noon to 1:30 pm.
In September of 1967, they start clearing Days Of Our Lives again permanently.

On Friday night, channel 13 showed an hour Son Of Hercules movie instead of Valentine's Day and F.D.R.

Thanks Brian. BTW I noticed WHBQ not airing ABC News or a 5 or 6 PM newscast. Plus when WMCT (Later WMC-TV) start going to a 5 to 6 PM newscast and when WREC (WREG) went to a 6 PM newscast? Just curious.

 

[bpatrick]

Likewise, thanks for the info on Ch. 13's Friday-night
schedule. "FDR" was either pre-empted or aired on
Sunday afternoons on a number of stations (including
mine: WRAL and WGHP, both of which ran it on Sundays).
Apparently, some affiliate managers felt that a historical
documentary in primetime would be "boring," even though
ABC had had success a few years earlier with "Winston
Churchill: The Valiant Years" (produced by the same team
that produced "FDR"). CBS had the same problem with
"World War I," moving it in midseason from Tuesdays at 8
to Sundays at 6:30.

 

[firepoint525]

My guess is that Elvis getting any Memphis tv station to sign on in the middle of the night is strictly urban legend. I've never heard from a reliable source that this ever happened. Elvis did get local movie theaters to open up and show him movies in the middle of the night and often got the amusement park at the Fairgrounds to stay open over night just for him and his entourage.

There has been a lot of so-called urban legends over the years in regards to Elvis such as the one about Elvis making late night flights to Colorado from Memphis just to eat peanut butter sandwiches. True or not..depends. Lisa Marie Presley several years ago had said that story was pure BS while others swear to it. Of course it doesn't help having the thousands of Elvis related books that had been published over the years since one has to top the other otherwise how could you sell a book? Also there is the factor of the many members within the Presley circle flip flopping over the years about what Elvis Presley the man was really like.

a.k.a. the "Memphis Mafia"! ;D

 

[firepoint525]

When I get a little more time, I'll post the weekend schedule from this TV Guide and the other two stations listed in this edition which were WDXI 7 in Jackson which was primary CBS in those years and WTWV 9 in Tupelo. KAIT in Jonesboro was on the air but wasn't listed in 1965.
My next Memphis TV Guide is from January 1966 and WMCT is by then showing all 2 hours of the Today Show. In January 1966, they are also clearing Let's Make A Deal and Days Of Our Lives, but by September of 1966 they are showing Merv Griffin from Noon to 1:30 pm.
In September of 1967, they start clearing Days Of Our Lives again permanently.
On Friday night, channel 13 showed an hour Son Of Hercules movie instead of Valentine's Day and F.D.R.

Thanks Brian. BTW I noticed WHBQ not airing ABC News or a 5 or 6 PM newscast. Plus when WMCT (Later WMC-TV) start going to a 5 to 6 PM newscast and when WREC (WREG) went to a 6 PM newscast? Just curious.

When did channel 5 drop the "T" and become just WMC-TV? "WMC" is the only call letters by which I have ever known them, and I lived in Memphis in the late '60s/early '70s. Although I was aware that WMC-FM (a.k.a. "FM-100") was at one time known as "WMCF" when they first came on the air in 1947.

 

[Mike Stroud]

When I get a little more time, I'll post the weekend schedule from this TV Guide and the other two stations listed in this edition which were WDXI 7 in Jackson which was primary CBS in those years and WTWV 9 in Tupelo. KAIT in Jonesboro was on the air but wasn't listed in 1965.
My next Memphis TV Guide is from January 1966 and WMCT is by then showing all 2 hours of the Today Show. In January 1966, they are also clearing Let's Make A Deal and Days Of Our Lives, but by September of 1966 they are showing Merv Griffin from Noon to 1:30 pm.
In September of 1967, they start clearing Days Of Our Lives again permanently.
On Friday night, channel 13 showed an hour Son Of Hercules movie instead of Valentine's Day and F.D.R.

Thanks Brian. BTW I noticed WHBQ not airing ABC News or a 5 or 6 PM newscast. Plus when WMCT (Later WMC-TV) start going to a 5 to 6 PM newscast and when WREC (WREG) went to a 6 PM newscast? Just curious.

When did channel 5 drop the "T" and become just WMC-TV? "WMC" is the only call letters by which I have ever known them, and I lived in Memphis in the late '60s/early '70s. Although I was aware that WMC-FM (a.k.a. "FM-100") was at one time known as "WMCF" when they first came on the air in 1947.

fp525, I think Wikipedia has our answer on its WMC-TV entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMC-TV. Of course, we know that is not infallible by any means, but I suspect the entry has seen countless editing and corrections on this point, so I would take it as a working fact. You apparently just missed the WMCT era by a few months or so.

It is noteworthy that in this case, while the trend over time was for stations with three call letters to expand to four (usually by adding a letter to the historic calls, as in Nashville's WSM(V) or New York's W(W)OR), we have, not only the TV but also the FM parts of a triopoly, conforming to the AM outlet's name. It is possible that Scripps-Howard put in a special request to the FCC, which generally did not issue three-letter calls any longer by this time. Of course, the FCC would later exempt the WMC stations from rules against cross-ownership with a market's newspaper (Scripps owned, and still does, the Commercial Appeal, and owned its afternoon "competitor" the Press-Scimitar until 1983), in the 1970s, so S-H obviously had a lot of clout in Washington then. I seriously doubt a mom-and-pop small-market UHF outlet could have gotten any calls it wanted, either due to high fees or lack of influence by a congressman or senator.

Three-letter calls ... now that's a good subject for a thread all its own.

 

[bpatrick]

Stations like WSMV went to four-letter calls because
of the crossownership rule. National Life and Accident Insurance
Company's ownership of the WSM radio/TV combo was not grandfathered
in, apparently, and they kept the WSM call letters for radio.

A couple other examples that come to mind are WGRZ (originally WGR)
Buffalo, and KIDK (originally KID) Idaho Falls. Some three-letter calls
that were changed to four letters having no relation to the original
would include KHJ (KCAL) Los Angeles, and KOA (KCNC) and KLZ (KMGH)
Denver. Yet the radio stations hold onto the three-letter calls.

Yet there has been some movement back the other way; WJW/8 Cleveland
was WJKW for a time but is back to its original call letters; WWJ was Channel
4 in Detroit before Post-Newsweek bought it and changed the call letters to
WDIV. But WWJ is now the CBS o&o on Channel 62.

WBTV Charlotte might have been WBT-TV, but during the licensing process
in the late '40s someone decided that WBTV came off the tongue better, and
so it became...and still is.

 

[firepoint525]

Interesting stuff! It was my understanding that WMC was named for the Memphis Commercial, a newspaper that merged with the Daily Appeal to become the Commercial Appeal. I just assumed that the extra "T" was for "television" and the "F" was for "FM." (It is interesting to note that there was (and I believe still is) a radio station bearing the call letters WMPS, for Memphis Press Scimitar.)

Meanwhile, WMCT is now the call letters of a radio station in Mountain City, Tennessee, at the opposite end of the state from Memphis!

 

[firepoint525]

Stations like WSMV went to four-letter calls because
of the crossownership rule. National Life and Accident Insurance
Company's ownership of the WSM radio/TV combo was not grandfathered
in, apparently, and they kept the WSM call letters for radio.

And there are those, including folks here in Nashville (!), who think WSM and WSMV are still jointly owned! : Several years ago, when WSM flirted with the idea of dropping its country format, WSMV's message board was crammed with messages complaining about it! And when WSM recently dismissed Keith Bilbrey, someone posted a comment under the WSMV story about it that they would no longer watch channel 4 because of it! :

I posted a message thread here, maybe a year or so ago, about three-letter call-letter combos. I think it was on the "business of radio" board here. If any of you can still find it, you are welcome to bring it back.

 

[firepoint525]

My guess is that Elvis getting any Memphis tv station to sign on in the middle of the night is strictly urban legend. I've never heard from a reliable source that this ever happened. Elvis did get local movie theaters to open up and show him movies in the middle of the night and often got the amusement park at the Fairgrounds to stay open over night just for him and his entourage.

Well, that's one thing Elvis and I have in common! We both rode that roller coaster! ;D Later known as the Zippin Pippin at Libertyland. Only difference is, they didn't open it specifically for me. But then again, I was only about seven at the time! ;D

 

[mleach]

And there are those, including folks here in Nashville (!), who think WSM and WSMV are still jointly owned! : Several years ago, when WSM flirted with the idea of dropping its country format, WSMV's message board was crammed with messages complaining about it! And when WSM recently dismissed Keith Bilbrey, someone posted a comment under the WSMV story about it that they would no longer watch channel 4 because of it! :

Its more/less the same thing in Buffalo with WKBW-TV and WWKB radio AM 1520. There are those who still think the two are still jointly owned even though they havent been for over 20 years now.

Of course one cant really blame people for thinking that way. When Buffalo's 1520 AM did oldies some years back, they were airing the old WKBW jingles ( EX: "....KB Radio 15...W K B W" ) even though the call letters were ( still is ) WWKB. Even though 1520 has since went talk, I believe they still use the letter's "KB" when they promote themselves.

And on top of that the last time I was in Buffalo ( 2006 ), their channel 7 was still calling themesleves right on the air.."WKBW" not hidden in the background like what Washington DC's WRC-TV does.

Of course there was that Jim Carrey flick "Bruce Almighty". Since the call letters "WKBW" were mentioned in that movie, I wonder how many people in Buffalo who went to see that movie really believed that longtime WKBW/WWKB radio morning guy Danny Nevereth would be making an appearance in "Bruce Almighty"?