Retro: Tallahassee, Florida, weekdays, October 14-20, 1979

[Mike Stroud]

***YES!!!! Finally a retro out of me after more than a year!!!***

From "TV Week," Tallahassee Democrat

All times Eastern Standard (stations in Dothan, Alabama and Panama City, Florida in Central Time Zone)


WTVY [4] Dothan, Alabama (CBS; now digital 36; PSIP 4)
not carried on local cable; available only OTA

7 a.m. CBS Morning News
8 Morning Show (local)
9 Captain Kangaroo
10 Beat the Clock (Monty Hall)
10:30 Whew! (Tom Kennedy)
11 Price is Right
12 p.m. Young and the Restless
12:30 Search for Tomorrow
1 Farm Reports (local)
1:30 As the World Turns
2:30 Guiding Light
3:30 One Day at a Time (CBS rerun)
4 Love of Life
4:30 Mike Douglas Show (60 minutes)
5:30 Gomer Pyle, USMC


WSB [2] Atlanta, Georgia (NBC--now ABC affiliate; now digital 39; PSIP 2)
WAGA [5] Atlanta (CBS--now FOX affiliate; now digital 27; PSIP 5)
both stations shared cable channel 5; see parentheses after program for station origination

7 a.m. CBS Morning News (WAGA)
8 Today Show (WSB)
9 Donahue (WAGA)
10 Dinah! (WSB)
11:30 Wheel of Fortune (WSB)
12 p.m. Local News (probably WSB)
12:30 Mary Tyler Moore (probably WSB)
1 Young and the Restless (WAGA)
1:30 As the World Turns (WAGA)
2:30 Guiding Light (WAGA)
3:30 Bewitched (WAGA)
4 Good Times (probably WAGA)
4:30 Mike Douglas (WAGA; 90 minutes)


WCTV [6] Tallahassee, Florida/Thomasville, Georgia (CBS; now digital 46; PSIP 6)
cable channel 9

7 a.m. Good Morning Show (local)
8 Captain Kangaroo
9 Donahue
10 CBS daytime (see WTVY above; until 12 p.m.)
12 p.m. WCTV News
12:30 Search for Tomorrow
1 Young and the Restless
1:30 CBS daytime (until 4:30 p.m.)
4:30 Big Valley
5:30 Joker's Wild


WJHG [7] Panama City, Florida (ABC--now NBC affiliate; now digital 8; PSIP 7)
cable channel 7

7 a.m. Daybusters (local)
8:30 Good Morning America
10 Donahue
11 Laverne and Shirley (ABC rerun)
11:30 Family Feud (Richard Dawson)
12 p.m. Televisit (local)
12:30 Ryan's Hope
1 All My Children
2 One Life to Live
3 General Hospital
4 Edge of Night
4:30 Petticoat Junction
5 Brady Bunch
5:30 Hogan's Heroes


WALB [10] Albany, Georgia (NBC; now digital 10; PSIP same)
cable channel 10

7 a.m. Today Show
9 Merv Griffin Show (60 minutes)
10 Card Sharks (Jim Perry)
10:30 Hollywood Squares (Peter Marshall)
11 High Rollers (Alex Trebek)
11:30 Wheel of Fortune (Chuck Woolery)
12 p.m. Town and Country (local)
1 Days of Our Lives
2 Doctors
2:30 Another World (during its 90-minute phase)
4 Flintstones
4:30 Partridge Family
5 Bewitched
5:30 Andy Griffith


WFSU [11] Tallahassee (PBS; now digital 32; PSIP 11)
cable channel 3

7 a.m. Sesame Street
8 Prime Time
8:30 various programs (probably in-school)
9 Sesame Street
10 Electric Company
10:30 various programs
11:30 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
12 p.m. Sesame Street
1 Over Easy
1:30 in-school programming until 3 p.m.
3 Zoom
3:30 Electric Company
4 Sesame Street
5 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
5:30 Dick Cavett Show


WXIA [11] Atlanta (ABC--now NBC affiliate; now digital 10; PSIP 11)
cable channel 12

7 a.m. Good Morning America
9 Medical Center (reruns of 1969-76 CBS series)
10 $20,000 Pyramid (Dick Clark; tape-delay)
10:30 Edge of Night (tape-delay)
11 Laverne and Shirley
11:30 Family Feud
12 p.m. WXIA News
12:30 ABC daytime (see WJHG above; until 4 p.m.)
4 Gunsmoke
5 Jim Rockford, Private Investigator (Rockford Files reruns)


WMBB [13] Panama City (NBC--now ABC affiliate; now digital 13; PSIP same)
cable channel 13

7 a.m. PTL Club (2 hours)
9 Today Show (60 minutes only)
10 PTL Club (apparently resumed)
11 High Rollers
11:30 Wheel of Fortune
12 p.m. Mindreaders (Dick Martin)
12:30 Password Plus (Allen Ludden)
1 NBC daytime (see WALB above; until 4 p.m.)
4 Card Sharks (tape-delay)
4:30 Gilligan's Island
5 I Love Lucy
5:30 Merv Griffin (60 minutes; until 6:30 p.m.)


WABW [14] Pelham, Georgia (PBS/Georgia Public Television; now digital 6; PSIP 14)
cable channel 8

7:45 a.m. A.M. Weather
8 in-school programming until 4 p.m.
4 p.m. Sesame Street
5 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
5:30 Electric Company


WTBS [17] Atlanta (Independent--now WPCH, or "Peachtree TV"; now digital 20; PSIP 17)
cable channel 2

7 a.m. Three Stooges
7:30 Little Rascals
8 Leave it to Beaver
8:30 Romper Room (unknown if local or syndicated)
9 Lucy Show (1962-68)
9:30 Green Acres
10 Movie
12 p.m. Love, American Style
12:30 Movie
2:30 Gigglesnort Hotel
3 I Love Lucy
3:30 Flintstones
4 Spectreman
4:30 Gilligan's Island
5 My Three Sons
5:30 I Dream of Jeannie


WECA [27] Tallahassee (now WTXL; ABC; now digital 27; PSIP same)
cable channel 4

7 a.m. Good Morning, America
9 PTL Club (60 minutes)
10 In Person (probably local)
11 Laverne and Shirley
11:30 Family Feud
12 p.m. $20,000 Pyramid
12:30 ABC daytime until 4:30 p.m.
4:30 Merv Griffin (60 minutes)
5:30 WECA News (30 minutes; ABC World News Tonight at 6 p.m.)

 

[gregg75]

That channel 5 cable thing is interesting. Don't think I've ever heard of two stations
sharing a cable channel.

They're getting a lot of Atlanta stations. And there seems to be a lot unnecessary CBS/ABC
duplication.

 

[Mike Stroud]

That channel 5 cable thing is interesting. Don't think I've ever heard of two stations
sharing a cable channel.

They're getting a lot of Atlanta stations. And there seems to be a lot unnecessary CBS/ABC
duplication.

That's-a-the way it wuz back in ole timey days, hoss. Other posts have dealt with multiple markets on one cable system, and that's how 12 channels got filled up in the days before the likes of the Chicken Noodle Network, WGN from Chi-cogger, and Eeeessspeeenn. Where I grew up in Alabama, we got Huntsville (all three and Alabama Public Television), Birmingham (ABC and NBC), AND Nashville (all three) in the early Seventies. The first non-market station was, of course, WTCG--same as Tallahassee in this listing.

What's perhaps curious about things is the fact that WXIA, the third-ranked station in the market back then, got a channel all to itself while the top two stations, WSB and WAGA, had to be shoehorned. Actually, there was only one full CBS on the cable, local channel WCTV, while there were two other NBCs (WALB in Albany and WMBB in Panama City) and no fewer than three ABCs (local WECA, WXIA and Panama City's WJHG). It would have made better sense to allocate a full channel to WAGA and make WSB split with WXIA. But I suspect financial considerations came into the mix here as the cable company decided on what Atlanta stations to carry.

Think about this fact: Tallahassee is over 250 miles away from Et-lanter (as we say it down here in Dixie, boys), and the Big Three certainly had to use microwave relays. Now we know that Terrible Ted Turner set up, before getting on the beam up in outer space, an extensive system of them to carry WTCG into all of Georgia, most of South Carolina and Alabama and maybe eastern Tennessee (Chattanooga at least). I imagine it's possible that WSB, WAGA, and WXIA may have leased space on Turner's equipment. This would make sense when you realize that, even to this day, much of South Georgia still does not have one or more networks OTA yet--the area around Valdosta, to my knowledge, only has CBS (formerly an ABC affil), which is a semi-satellite of Tallahassee's WCTV. WSB, now with ABC, is carried on many if not most cable systems in the region (WXIA probably also, since the area's in a dead spot between Albany's WALB and Savannah's WSAV). I'm not sure about WAGA, which is, of course, now FOX (its weekday newscasts, though, are available on-line for those interested in, say, news about Georgia state government).

In fact, Wikipedia claims that WSB is carried in almost the entire state (except for the southeastern coastal region, served by Savannah's WJCL, and the area around Augusta, where WJBF's signal is dominant), even into the extreme western part of North Carolina and extreme eastern central Alabama.

One thing is for certain, though: the Atlanta stations probably disappeared off Tallahassee's cable systems in the mid-1980s, when an NBC affil started up, WTWC, and the basic cable revolution got underway. Dunno about Panama City and Albany, though; they might have stayed on somewhat longer.

 

[azumanga]

That channel 5 cable thing is interesting. Don't think I've ever heard of two stations
sharing a cable channel.

Many communities, mainly those not in major markets, had a channel shared by more than one out-of-town affiliate -- mainly used as a "wildcard" channel for shows not available locally. In Bay City, Michigan, Gerity Cablevision (now Charter) had one channel, later two, that was used as wildcards, carrying WXYZ Detroit, WWTV Cadillac and WOTV (WOOD) Grand Rapids for shows that the local stations pre-empted or did not carry in syndication.

And I had a 1980 TV Guide from Southern Oregon that I recently gave up to sell on eBay, which had listings for several wildcards on cable -- some from Portland and others from Sacramento and/or San Francisco; I thought of keeping it, mainly to present as a retro schedule here someday, but decided against it, mainly due to the fact that there was no mention on what community got what wildcard channel (all were listed in the movies and sports page as "Southern Oregon Cable"; to make matters worse, there were tow channel 6s that were wild cards).

One thing is for certain, though: the Atlanta stations probably disappeared off Tallahassee's cable systems in the mid-1980s, when an NBC affil started up, WTWC, and the basic cable revolution got underway. Dunno about Panama City and Albany, though; they might have stayed on somewhat longer.

When I was in Tallahassee in 1992, the Comcast system there carried only the local channels, plus WABW and WALB from Albany -- amazingly, WALB was never blacked out; furthermore, they had better production quality than WTWC, which looked like it was stuck in the early-1980s.

 

[harrisburgpatv]

That channel 5 cable thing is interesting. Don't think I've ever heard of two stations
sharing a cable channel.

Happened here in Harrisburg, too...WMAR-2 and WBAL-11 (Baltimore) shared channel space, as did WPVI-6 and WCAU-10 (Philly)....This arrangement, however, was gone by 1990. The only out-of-town station that is on what is now Comcast Cable is WPHL-17 from Philadelphia. WPIX-11 was on up until 2005 or so...

 

[Mike Stroud]

What's perhaps curious about things is the fact that WXIA, the third-ranked station in the market back then, got a channel all to itself while the top two stations, WSB and WAGA, had to be shoehorned. Actually, there was only one full CBS on the cable, local channel WCTV, while there were two other NBCs (WALB in Albany and WMBB in Panama City) and no fewer than three ABCs (local WECA, WXIA and Panama City's WJHG). It would have made better sense to allocate a full channel to WAGA and make WSB split with WXIA. But I suspect financial considerations came into the mix here as the cable company decided on what Atlanta stations to carry.

Some clarification here, friends: What I meant by the last sentence was that the Tallahassee cable system paid less per program (or however the rates were structured) to carry WXIA than either WSB and WAGA, or maybe both put together. This meant that it could afford to have all WXIA's programs on one channel, while having to cherry-pick from the other two, according to cost and ratings of a particular show. Since the balance of the daytime sked rested with WAGA, this indicates that it was cheaper, since it was likely in second place in the Atlanta market, behind WSB. Only the top-rated WSB shows got cleared as a result, I suspect.

Tell ya what: give me a little time, and I'll post a sked from one of the weeknights, and maybe if you all are nice, one from one of the weekend days too. BTW, does anybody who worked on CATV systems back in the day know how things like that worked?

 

[azumanga]

...the Tallahassee cable system paid less per program (or however the rates were structured) to carry WXIA than either WSB and WAGA, or maybe both put together. This meant that it could afford to have all WXIA's programs on one channel, while having to cherry-pick from the other two, according to cost and ratings of a particular show. Since the balance of the daytime sked rested with WAGA, this indicates that it was cheaper, since it was likely in second place in the Atlanta market, behind WSB. Only the top-rated WSB shows got cleared as a result, I suspect.

Did syndex also play a role in what programs were shown on cable 5? I believe that rule was still in effect for another few months, at least.

 

[charlestondxman]

Wow, they had WXIA and the Atlanta big 3 all the way down in Tallahassee? That's interesting. That's almost a five-hour drive now, probably more in 1979.