Retro: Milwaukee (3/24/1980)

[ShawnHill1]

This is probably the second or third time I posted a retro schedule here, after all these years on this board. This one takes place on Monday, March 24, 1980...I was nine days old at this time. Two particular milestones, although not real major ones; first, the debut of WCGV Channel 24, which became the first new station in the city to go on the air since PBS outlet WMVT debuted in 1963. Milwaukee's only other independent station at the time was 24's future sister station, WVTV Channel 18. The second milestone on this date was ABC News' late report regarding the Iran Hostage Crisis officially taking "Nightline" title.

Here's the listings...

Date: Monday, March 24, 1980
Listings are courtesy of the Milwaukee Sentinel. All stations listed broadcast from Milwaukee
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=wZJMF1LD7PcC&dat=19800324&printsec=frontpage&hl=en

WTMJ (4-NBC)
5:55am Gigglesport Hotel
6:25 Exercise Break
6:30 Superman (I presume the George Reeves series)
7am The Today Show (newsbreaks at :25 and :55 past the hour)
9am A New Day
10am Dinah and Friends
11am Chain Reaction
11:30 Password Plus
12pm Days of Our Lives
1pm The Doctors
1:30 Another World
3pm The Dating Game
3:30 Merv Griffin
5pm News 4 Milwaukee
5:30 NBC Nightly News
6pm News 4 Milwaukee
6:30 Family Feud
7pm Little House on the Prairie
8pm NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship: From Indianapolis’ Market Square Arena, Louisville beats UCLA 59-54
10pm News 4 Milwaukee
10:30pm The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson
12am Tomorrow
1am NHL: Toronto at Philadelphia (listing didn’t specify the source of telecast, but the Hughes Sports Network produced national NHL telecasts for ’79-80 season)
Sign-off at 3 or 3:30am

WITI (6-CBS; now Fox)
5:55am TV Chapel
6am CBS News Monday Morning
7am The Long Ranger
7:30 Fury
8am Captain Kangaroo
9am The Young & The Restless
10am The Price is Right
11am Phil Donahue
12pm TV6 News at Noon
12:30 The Jeffersons
1pm As The World Turns
2pm Guiding Light
3pm One Day at a Time
3:30 The Streets of San Francisco
4:30 Jim Rockford, Private Investigator (AKA The Rockford Files)
5:30 CBS Evening News (Walter Cronkite, at this point, entering his final year at the anchor desk)
6pm TV6 News at Six
6:30 Chicken (the story of a high school terrorized by a student gang)
7pm It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (rerun)
7:30 The Stockard Channing Show (debut—Channing stars the behind-the-scenes and on-camera assistant to a popular consumer advocate on his TV show)
8pm M*A*S*H
8:30 Flo (debut—Flo [Polly Holliday], on a dare, buys a roadside café in her hometown of Cowtown, Texas)
9pm Lou Grant
10pm TV6 Late News
10:30 Mary Tyler Moore
11pm Columbo
12:40 Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
1:15 TV6 Late News (rerun)
1:45 Late, Late Show (“No Time for Comedy”, stars Jimmy Stewart and Rosalind Russell)
3:30 TV6 Editorial
3:45 TV Chapel (sign-off afterwards)

WMVS (10-PBS; only station in the area operating 24 hours)
5:30am Over Easy
6:00 Making Things Work
6:15 AM Weather
6:30 3-2-1 Contact
7am Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
7:30 Wonderful Stories of Professor Kitzel
8am ECB Teacher In-Service (Wisconsin Education Communications Board supervises the educational radio and TV programming throughout the state)
8:30 Guten Tag, Wie Geht’s
8:50 Wavelengths
9am Thinkabout
9:15 All About You
9:30 Inside/Out
9:45 Search for Science
10am The Electric Company
10:30 ECB Special
11am Word Shop
11:15 This Our Country
11:30 Sesame Street
12:30pm Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
1pm Two Cents’ Worth
1:15 Wordsmith
1:30 Lands and People of Our World
1:45 ECB Special
2pm Introduction to Photography
2:30 The Growing Years
3pm Over Easy
3:30 Dick Cavett
4pm Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
4:30 Sesame Street
5:30 3-2-1 Contact
6pm TV High School
6:30 The MacNeil-Lehrer Report
7pm MKE at 7: At Issue (candidates for Circuit Court Branch 37, Thomas P. Schneider and Arlene D. Connors)
7:30 Over Easy
8pm Song by Song (lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II are explored)
9pm The American Short Story
10:30 Dick Cavett (first of a five-part interview with Broadway producer Jed Harris)
11pm Sneak Previews (Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert exam 1970s films)
11:30 Wildlife in Crisis
12am Song by Song (encore of 8pm showing)
1am The American Short Story (encore from 9pm)
2:30 Synthesis
3am Dick Cavett
3:30 ABC Captioned News
4am MKE at 7: At Issue (encore from 7pm)
4:30 Introduction to Photography
5am The MacNeil-Lehrer Report

WISN (12-ABC)
6:30am Body Buddies
7am Good Morning America (newsbreaks at :25 and :55 past the hour)
9am All My Children
10am Laverne & Shirley
10:30 Family Feud
11am The $20,000 Pyramid
11:30 Match Game
12pm Dialing for Dollars
1pm One Life to Live
2pm General Hospital
3pm The Edge of Night
3:30 The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
4pm Happy Days
4:30 M*A*S*H
5pm ABC World News Tonight
5:30 Channel 12 Action News
6pm Tic Tac Dough
6:30 PM Magazine
7pm That’s Incredible
8pm ABC Monday Night Movie (conclusion of “Doctor Zhivago”; stars Omar Sharif and Julie Christie)
10pm Channel 12 Action News
10:30 M*A*S*H
11pm ABC Late News (this is the night where Nightline becomes the official name of the Iran Crisis Hostage report)
11:15 Barney Miller
11:50 Police Story
1:50 Channel 12 Action News (10pm encore)
Sign-off at 2:20am

WVTV (18-Independent; now CW)
11am The Ross Bagley Show
11:30 The 700 Club
1pm UWM News Focus
1:30 The Ed Allen Show
2pm The Beverly Hillbillies
2:30 Casper and Friends
3pm Krofft Superstars
3:30 The Flintstones
4pm Bugs Bunny & Friends
4:30 Tom & Jerry & Friends
5pm The Brady Bunch
5:30 Bewitched
6pm I Love Lucy
6:30 The Andy Griffith Show
7pm The Bowling Game
8pm Movie (“The Gossip Columnist”; Kim Cattrall, Robert Vaughn)
10pm Benny Hill Present
10:30 Prisoner: Cell Block H
11pm The Twilight Zone
11:30 Dragnet
12am Love, American Style
12:30 News Final (sign-off immediately after)

WCGV (24-Indepdenent, now MyTV; this is 24’s first day of operation)
9:25am Tempo 24 News
9:30 Journey to Adventure
10am The PTL Club
12pm The New Zoo Revue
12:30 Uncle Waldo
1pm Movie Matinee double feature (“My Favorite Brunette” with Bob Hope, followed by “Luck of the Irish” starring Tryone Power)
5pm Chico and the Man
5:30 Get Smart
6pm Bonanza
7pm and on through the night was SelecTV programming.

WMVT (36-PBS)
3pm Hatha Yoga
3:30 Villa Alegre
4pm The Electric Company
4:30 TV High School
5pm Communications Skills
5:30 Wally’s Workshop
6pm The Big Blue Marble
6:30 Cinematic Eye
7pm Cinema 36 (“La Strada”)
8:45 Flim Feature
9pm David Susskind
10pm Footsteps
10:30 ABC Captioned News
Sign-off at 11pm

 

[only1moore]

I remember WCGV's first day on the air. It went off the air AT 7PM. SelecTV wasn't on the air until that Summer.

 

[ShawnHill1]

I remember WCGV's first day on the air. It went off the air AT 7PM. SelecTV wasn't on the air until that Summer.

I wasn't sure if SelecTV went on the air yet, but thanks for the correction.

 

[Ultimajock]

I remember WCGV's first day on the air. It went off the air AT 7PM. SelecTV wasn't on the air until that Summer.

I wasn't sure if SelecTV went on the air yet, but thanks for the correction.

...I'd moved briefly from Oshkosh to Milwaukee the previous week; I can confirm that WCGV/24 did indeed sign off the air at 7:00, and in fact did so after the Saturday and Sunday 6:00 screenings of AWA All-Star Wrestling too...

 

[azumanga]

WTMJ (4-NBC)
1am NHL: Toronto at Philadelphia (listing didn’t specify the source of telecast, but the Hughes Sports Network produced national NHL telecasts for ’79-80 season)
Sign-off at 3 or 3:30am

Normally:
1AM: Cisco Kid (Mondays to Thursdays); Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Fridays)
1:30AM: Health Field
2AM: Sign Off

WITI (6-CBS; now Fox)
6:30 Chicken (the story of a high school terrorized by a student gang)

One of those "Young People's Specials" from Multimedia, which bumps "The Joker's Wild".

WMVS (10-PBS; only station in the area operating 24 hours)

Funny that it's a pubcaster that's on the air around the clock and not the commercial station. I thought WISN was the first commercial station to begin round-the-clock service at one point.

7:30 Wonderful Stories of Professor Kitzel

Was this the same series of shorts that was seen in the early 1970s?

 

[ShawnHill1]

Thanks for the help, azumanga; I'm curious myself as to why WMVS was the area's only 24-hour station at the time, I figured it probably would have been one of the other network stations. Fast-forward a few years into the mid-80s, WITI was at least carrying CBS News Nightwatch into the wee-hours of the morning, and WTMJ was carrying Headline News overnights when they weren't carrying NBC programming.

As to Professor Kitzel, according to Wikipedia*, it was indeed the animated shorts from the early '70s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Kitzel

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

What about the very late morning sign-on for WVTV? For 1980, a major-market independent owned by a prominent group (Gaylord) waking up near midday, and not even staying up that late is odd...

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

As late as 1975, Boston's UHF independents (WSBK-38 and WLVI-56) didn't sign-on during the week until around 10:30 or 11 A.M.

In fact, until ABC launched "A.M. America" in early 1975, Manchester New Hampshire's WMUR-9 usually wouldn't sign-on until 10 or 10:30 A.M. on weekdays (unless ABC was broadcasting live coverage of a special event like a space launch; then WMUR would sign-on just before the network coverage began).

This was actually a common practice, since many UHF independents lost a lot of money in their early years, and wo0uldn't have been able to attract many viewers early in the morning anyway.

So to narrow their loses, they decided on an abbreviated broadcast day.

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

As late as 1975, Boston's UHF independents (WSBK and WLVI) didn't sign-on during the week until around 10:30 or 11 A.M.

This was actually a common practice, since many UHF independents lost a lot of money in their early years, and wouldn't have been able to attract many viewers early in the morning anyway.

So to narrow their loses, they decided on an abbreviated broadcast day.

But this was now 1980. The rough days of UHF were largely in the past, independents as a whole were in much better shape (both on- and off-air) and, as I said, Gaylord was a major broadcaster with independents in Fort Worth/Dallas (KTVT), Houston (KHTV), Tacoma/Seattle (KSTW) and Cleveland (WUAB) in addition to Milwaukee...their prominence in that category was third among group owners, behind Field and Metromedia. So I have a hard time believing that WVTV's late morning sign-on was of some financial consequence.

 

[only1moore]

What about the very late morning sign-on for WVTV? For 1980, a major-market independent owned by a prominent group (Gaylord) waking up near midday, and not even staying up that late is odd...

It wasn't always that way for WVTV. During the early 1970s, the station did sign-on early in the morning, usually around 6:30AM, but by around 1973 it cut back to around 12:30PM before moving it up back to 11AM in 1974 and eventually moving back to signing on in the mornings around 1981.

 

[Ultimajock]

...in fact, wasn't it only circa 1979 that Field's WFLD/32 Chicago started signing on earlier than Noon?...

 

[chris12]

WVTV started early morning sign-ons prenamently in he fall of 1980 with early moring cartoons and the 9-11 time frame with NBC daytime shows passed on by WTMJ which was notorious for bumping an hour or two of daytime programming for usually talk shows or sometimes off net drama reruns. In Chicago WFLD 32 started its early morning sign-ons on Labor Day September 4, 1978 before then they signed on around 10:30 am or so.