Retro: West Virginia Mon, Sept 10, 1979

[Bluenoser]

from TV Guide-West Virginia edition

3 WSAZ-NBC Huntington
4 WOAY-ABC Oak Hill
4c WCMH-NBC Columbus
6 WVVA-NBC Bluefield
6c WTVN-ABC Columbus
7 WTRF-NBC/ABC Wheeling
8 WCHS-CBS Charleston
9 WSWP-PBS Beckley
9c WNOW-Cable Parkersburg
10 WBNS-CBS Columbus
12 WBOY-ABC/NBC Clarksburg
13 WOWK-ABC Huntington (also on 11 Charleston and 75 Marietta)
15 WTAP-NBC Parkersburg
17 WTBS-Ind Atlanta
19 WXIX-Ind Cincinnati
20 WOUB-PBS Athens
33 WMUL-PBS Huntington
57 WKYH-NBC Hazard

Morning
5:00
17 Dragnet

5:25
6 Arthur Smith

5:30
17 World at Large

5:45
13 Farm Report

5:50
13 PTL Club

5:55
6 PTL Club
10 Summer Semester (urbanization of suburbia)

6:00
6-8 700 Club
7-15 PTL Club
17 It's Your Business

6:15
19 Perspectives

6:25
10 For Our Times

6:30
4 Testimony Time Today
4c Columbus Today
17 Dragnet

6:45
3 Morning Report

6:50
13 Good Morning, West Virginia

6:55
6 Thought for Today
10 Chuck White Reports
13 News

7:00
3-4c-6-7-15-57 Today
4-6c-12-13 Good Morning America
8 Monday Morning
10 Batman
17 Three Stooges/Little Rascals (bw)
19 Romper Room

7:15
33 AM Weather

7:30
10 Family Affair
19 New Zoo Revue
33 Sesame Street

8:00
8-10 Captain Kangaroo (season premiere #25)
12 News
17 Leave It to Beaver
19 Fred Flintstone & Friends

8:30
9 Cover to Cover
12 Testimony Time
17 Romper Toom
19 Groovie Goolies & Friends
33 Instructional Programs

8:45
9 AM Weather

9:00
3 Bob Braun
4-4c-7-13-15 Phil Donahue (a mixed bag in the Mountain State...4/13 talk about beauty contests with former beauty queens, 4c has test-tube baby Louise Brown and her parents, and 7/15 has Perry Como)
6 Coffee Break
6c Big Valley
8 Porky Pig & Friends
9 Sesame Street
10 Love of Life
12 Rocky & His Friends (Bullwinkle)
17 Lucy Show
19 Tom & Jerry
33 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
57 700 Club

9:30
6 Romper Room
8 Bob Newhart
10 Hogan's Heroes
12 $20,000 Pyramid
17 Green Acres
19 Flintstones
33 Instructional Programs

10:00
3-4c-6-7-12-15-57 Card Sharks
4-6c Edge of Night
8-10 All in the Family
9 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
13 Morning Magazine
17 Movie "State Fair"
19 Dennis the Menace (bw)

10:30
3-4c-6-7-12-15-57 Hollywood Squares
4-13 $20,000 Pyramid
6c Andy Griffith (bw)
8-10 Whew!
9 Electric Company
19 Courtship of Eddie's Father
33 MacNeil-Lehrer Report

10:55
8 CBS News
10 House Call

11:00
3-6-7-15-57 High Rollers
4-6c-12-13 Laverne & Shirley
4c Doctors
8-10 Price is Right
9 National Geographic "Voyage of the Hokule'a" (90 min, sailing from Hawaii to Tahiti in a double-hulled canoe)
19 Love, American Style
33 Know Your Schools

11:30
3-6-7-15-57 Wheel of Fortune
4-6c-12-13 Family Feud
4c News
19 Bewitched
33 James Michener's World "Spain: The Land and the Legend"

Afternoon
noon
3-4-6c-7-8-10-13 News
4c Bob Braun (Columbus got live 90 min version, Charleston/Huntington got a taped hour)
6-15 Mindreaders
12 Midday West Virginia
19 Medical Center
57 New Zoo Revue

12:30
4-6c-12-13 Ryan's Hope
6 News
7-57 Password
8-10 Search for Tomorrow
9 Over Easy
15 Not for Women Only
17 Movie "The Glass Menagerie" (bw)
33 Electric Company

1:00
3-6-7-15-57 Days of Our Lives
4-6c-12-13 All My Children
8-10 Young & the Restless
9 Paint Along with Nancy Kominsky
19 Movie "Dead Ringer" (bw)
33 Instructional Programs

1:30
4c Days of Our Lives
8-10 As the World Turns
9 Photography

2:00
3-6-7-15-57 Doctors
4-6c-12-13 One Life to Live
9 MacNeil-Lehrer Report

2:25
17 News

2:30
3-4c-6-7-15-57 Another World
8-10 Guiding Light
9 Dick Cavett
17 Gigglesnort Hotel

3:00
4-6c-12-13 General Hospital
9-20 Lilias, Yoga & You
17 I Love Lucy (bw)
19 Woody Woodpecker
33 James Michener's World (repeat from 11:30)

3:30
8 M*A*S*H
9 Villa Alegre
10 Joker's Wild
17 Flintstones
19 Popeye
20 Over Easy

4:00
3 Mister Cartoon
4 Brady Bunch
4c-13-19 Tom & Jerry
6-15 Password
6c Merv Griffin
7 Mike Douglas (from England, co-host Burt Reynolds)
8 Beverly Hillbillies
9-20-33 Sesame Street
10 Six Million Dollar Man
12 Edge of Night
17 Spectreman
57 PTL Club

4:30
3 Lone Ranger (bw)
4 Gomer Pyle, USMC
4c-17 Gilligan's Island
6 Beverly Hillbillies
8 Petticoat Junction
12 Brady Bunch
13 Bionic Woman
15 Little Rascals (bw)
19 Spiderman

5:00
3 Bonanza
4 Six Million Dollar Man
4c-8 Sanford & Son
6 I Love Lucy (bw)
9-20-33 Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
10-12 Gomer Pyle, USMC
15 Abbott & Costello (bw)
17 My Three Sons
19 Gilligan's Island

5:30
4c-13 Happy Days Again
6 Hogan's Heroes
6c News
7 Carol Burnett & Friends (guest star Betty White)
8 Gomer Pyle, USMC
9-20 Electric Company
9c Maverick (bw)
10 Mary Tyler Moore
12 Beverly Hillbillies
15 Lucy Show (guest star George Burns)
17 I Dream of Jeannie
19 Superman
33 Doctor Who

Evening
6:00
3-4-4c-6-7-8-10-12-13-15-57 News
6c ABC World News Tonight
9 Zoom
17 Carol Burnett & Friends
19 Superman
20 Villa Alegre

6:30
3-4c-6-7-15-57 NBC Nightly News
4-9c-12-13 ABC World News Tonight
6c-19 Carol Burnett & Friends (Jim Nabors guest stars on 19, no info listed for 6c)
8-10 CBS Evening News
9-20 Over Easy
17 Bob Newhart

7:00
3 Cross-Wits
4 M*A*S*H
4c-8 Tic Tac Dough
6 Hollywood Squares
6c-13 Newlywed Game
7 NBC Nightly News
9 MacNeil-Lehrer Report
9c Communique
10 News
12 Happy Days Again
15 Love, American Style
17 Sanford & Son
19 Mary Tyler Moore
20-33 Dick Cavett
57 Dolly

7:30
3 That Good Ole Nashville Music
4 Happy Days Again
4c PM Magazine
6 Dolly (guest Karen Black)
6c Muppet Show (guest Joel Grey)
7-57 Wild Kingdom
8 Joker's Wild
9 Dick Cavett
9c Real McCoys (bw)
10-13 Family Feud
12 Diff'rent Strokes
15 Nashville on the Road (guests the Kendalls, and Terry Gibbs)
17 My Three Sons
19 Odd Couple
20-33 MacNeil-Lehrer Report

8:00
3-4c-6-7-15-57 Holocaust (pt 1)
4-12-13 240-Robert
6c Edward the King (pt 1)
8-10 How Bugs Bunny Won the West
9-20-33 Bill Moyers' Journal
9c High School Football: Wheeling Park-Parkersburg (taped the preceding Friday, Steve Hewitt calls the action)
17 Falcons Football (preview of the game against Philly)

8:30
8-10 Puff the Magic Dragon

9:00
4-6c-12-13 NFL: Atlanta-Philadelphia
8-10 M*A*S*H
9 Farouk: Last of the Pharaohs (King Farouk, who ruled Egypt from 1936 to 1952)
17 Movie "Sex and the Single Girl"
19 Merv Griffin (from Vegas)
20 Once Upon a Classic "Hijack!"
33 Murder Most English

9:30
8-10 WKRP in Cincinnati

10:00
8-10 Lou Grant
9-33 Poldark (pt 11)
9c 700 Club
20 News

10:30
19 Cross-Wits
20 Coping with Kids

11:00
3-4c-6-7-8-10-15-57 News
9 Jack Benny (bw)
9c Movie "Soldier Blue"
19 Bedtime Stories
20 Dick Cavett
33 Book Beat

11:30
3-4c-6-7-15-57 Tonight Show (Kenny Rogers fills for Johnny)
8 Harry O
9-33 Captioned ABC News
10 Movie "Caprice"
17 Movie "The File on Thelma Jordan" (bw)
19 Gong Show

Late Night
midnight
4-6c-12-13 News
19 Medical Center

12:05
12 Bionic Woman (12's late news was usually a half hour)

12:30
4 College Football '79
6c FBI
13 Emergency One!

12:40
8 McMillan & Wife

1:00
3-4c-7 Tomorrow
15 News
19 Ironside

1:30
13 News

1:35
17 Movie "24 Hours to Kill"

3:35
17 News

3:55
17 Open Up

 

[DToTheJ]

11:00
19 Bedtime Stories

Hmmm, did they have TV ratings back in 1979?

I doubt that this was a children's show...

 

[mleach]

Not long ago I saw two copies of TV Guide from about the same time as these listings. One for Central Virginia ( Roanoke-Lynchburg ) and Eastern Virginia ( Richmond, Hampton Roads, Harrisonburg and Charlottesville ). For me its interesting to see West Virginia's too.

Two things stand out between Virginia TV and West Virginia TV back in 1979..

1. West Virginia had far more of their local stations doing news at noon than what was offered in Virginia. Not talking about Richmond's WTVR doing 'Richmond Today" or WBOY's "Midday West Virginia" which I assume were talk shows with some news mixed in but NEWS...and news only. Even a far bigger market like Hampton Roads, as I can recall for manyyears only WTAR/WTKR did news at news..while WAVY would flip flop from doing network fare at lunch or local news. WVEC didn't do news at noon until well into the mid 80's.

2. Even though WOWK and WWVA aired Jim Bakker...there was far less religious TV airing during the week in West Virginia than it was the case in Virginia where Jim Bakker had a prime slot at Harrisonburg's WHSV at 9am and Charlottesville's WVIR I believe at the time had 700 Club either at 9am or late afternoon..don't remember exactly what time though. And that trend continues today( unless it has changed very recently ) with the 700 Club airing at either 10 or 11am in the Richmond, Roanoke and Hampton Roads..and its airing on channels like WAVY, WSLS and WRIC...the more popular stations in their markets ( though they may not be the top dog in their market ). Kinda surprised that little'ole WOAY didn't do the Jim Bakker thing during their weekday line-up but instead aired a healthy dose of syndication..like Phil Donahue for example.

 

[Mike Stroud]

On previous posts, I have talked about the fact that small WKYH-TV in Hazard, Kentucky did not get listed in TV Guide at all until the station was 10 years old. Serving the isolated, impoverished coal-mining mountain country of southeastern Kentucky, WKYH operated on an impossible UHF channel of 57 (see my comments earlier this week about Lexington's WTVQ) and probably used second-hand equipment it bought from larger stations for many years, as the following clip on YouTube attests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYx_zcxWNE. Scroll down the page to find a rare comment by a former employee ("oldsoundguy") who recalls a Conrac tuner being used to grab the NBC feed from the stations in Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee or Lexington. Of course NBC was not about to make a major investment in constructing network lines over unforgiving territory for a small station like that, so owner Bill Gorman had no other way of getting the feed other than reliance on translator relays.

It was 40 years ago next month that this small miracle occurred, that commercial television came to one of America's poorest, most culturally isolated regions. You can imagine the gamut of reactions, from joy at finally getting a daily taste at what the rest of the world was like, to old-time preachers blasting the intrusion of that tool of Satan into homes to corrupt people's morals and make them "worldly."

All of this is to clearly indicate that Appalachia at the time was a generation behind other parts of the U.S., and economics had a lot to do with it. People eking a living out of the coal mines and farming the hard, rocky soil had barely enough money for necessities, let alone luxuries like electronic gadgets. Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter" (song and movie) tells that story more pointedly than anything I know. When TV came, it sought to serve the people who would watch (initially probably the better-to-do, whose poorer relatives likely watched when paying a visit), and old-time music and old-time religion filled the bill for many years, hence the occupation of the full two-hour "PTL Club" at 4 p.m. in this listing and "700 Club" at 9 a.m.

A former employee created a hodgepodge tribute page on his site to the former station: http://wobz9.com/REMEMBERWKYH.html. Of course, things changed considerably in 1985 when the owners of WKYT in Lexington bought WKYH, changed the call letters to WYMT, changed networks to CBS, and upgraded the equipment. Still, WKYH is a rare specimen of television operating in an unusual environment, one rivaled only by parts of the Rockies such as Idaho and Montana or perhaps Alaska, in the U.S. at least.

I actually have a listing of the station from 1974, from an edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal my grandparents picked up while on vacation. When I have time and find the clipping, I'll post it as a special.

 

[azumanga]

I actually have a listing of the station from 1974, from an edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal my grandparents picked up while on vacation. When I have time and find the clipping, I'll post it as a special.

Too bad you don't have the entire listings pages -- the paper's state edition had a wide spread of TV stations serving Kentucky, from West Virginia to Missouri.

 

[classictvfan]

What was on WXIX channel 19 at 8:00 PM?

 

[Mike Stroud]

I actually have a listing of the station from 1974, from an edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal my grandparents picked up while on vacation. When I have time and find the clipping, I'll post it as a special.

Too bad you don't have the entire listings pages -- the paper's state edition had a wide spread of TV stations serving Kentucky, from West Virginia to Missouri.

When I said "clipping," I was understating things. Indeed I do have what you are in fact indicating, and, when I get some real spare time on my hands, I will post the multi-market (Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati, Charleston-Huntington, Southeast Kentucky, Tri-Cities TN/VA, Knoxville, Nashville, Evansville, Cape Girardeau-Paducah-Southern Illinois) listings. I've got to look it up, though, as I believe it is in my cedar chest, buried under other newspapers I've saved over a lifetime. You can bet your (expletive deleted) I won't be splashing my cute comments on these, as I will be going in a "straight column" way through each station, not having program descriptions as in TV Guide.

Stay tuned, though!

 

[Bluenoser]

What was on WXIX channel 19 at 8:00 PM?

Gunsmoke.

 

[mleach]

On previous posts, I have talked about the fact that small WKYH-TV in Hazard, Kentucky did not get listed in TV Guide at all until the station was 10 years old. Serving the isolated, impoverished coal-mining mountain country of southeastern Kentucky, WKYH operated on an impossible UHF channel of 57 (see my comments earlier this week about Lexington's WTVQ) and probably used second-hand equipment it bought from larger stations for many years, as the following clip on YouTube attests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYx_zcxWNE. Scroll down the page to find a rare comment by a former employee ("oldsoundguy") who recalls a Conrac tuner being used to grab the NBC feed from the stations in Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee or Lexington. Of course NBC was not about to make a major investment in constructing network lines over unforgiving territory for a small station like that, so owner Bill Gorman had no other way of getting the feed other than reliance on translator relays.

It was 40 years ago next month that this small miracle occurred, that commercial television came to one of America's poorest, most culturally isolated regions. You can imagine the gamut of reactions, from joy at finally getting a daily taste at what the rest of the world was like, to old-time preachers blasting the intrusion of that tool of Satan into homes to corrupt people's morals and make them "worldly."

All of this is to clearly indicate that Appalachia at the time was a generation behind other parts of the U.S., and economics had a lot to do with it. People eking a living out of the coal mines and farming the hard, rocky soil had barely enough money for necessities, let alone luxuries like electronic gadgets. Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter" (song and movie) tells that story more pointedly than anything I know. When TV came, it sought to serve the people who would watch (initially probably the better-to-do, whose poorer relatives likely watched when paying a visit), and old-time music and old-time religion filled the bill for many years, hence the occupation of the full two-hour "PTL Club" at 4 p.m. in this listing and "700 Club" at 9 a.m.

A former employee created a hodgepodge tribute page on his site to the former station: http://wobz9.com/REMEMBERWKYH.html. Of course, things changed considerably in 1985 when the owners of WKYT in Lexington bought WKYH, changed the call letters to WYMT, changed networks to CBS, and upgraded the equipment. Still, WKYH is a rare specimen of television operating in an unusual environment, one rivaled only by parts of the Rockies such as Idaho and Montana or perhaps Alaska, in the U.S. at least.

I actually have a listing of the station from 1974, from an edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal my grandparents picked up while on vacation. When I have time and find the clipping, I'll post it as a special.

Your comments about WKYH reminds me of an article I can remember seeing in Colorado's now defunct Rocky Mountain News with several former employees at Grand Junction's KREX-TV. The article came out not long after KREX had their massive fire. The former KREX employees who had found higher paying jobs in bigger markets ( mainly Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City ) many of them actually somehwat missed working in small market TV, like Grand Junction. One woman who was interviewed who was working in TV in Los Angeles ( wish I could remember her name ) said something to the tune of "....at least in markets like Grand Junction one can still be themselves AND work in televsion news !!". I would imagine her comments were like that in small markets one doesn't have to deal with contracts full of various clauses from non-competes to morals to even whether or not one can even have friends in the biz.

But going back to West Virginia, not sure how accurate this is but sometime ago WOWK weatherman Spenser Atkins had posted a message on a Virgina website. More/less saying that very few West Virginia anchors are "under contract" and there really isn't such a thing as "non-competes". This would explain why Martinsburg, WV's now-defunct WYVN FOX 60 when they were on the air had allowed some of their employees to work part-time at Hagerstown, MD's WHAG-TV and WJAL-TV while they worked full-time at WYVN even though all three stations were in the same region and of course, WYVN had NOTHING to do with WHAG or WJAL.

This could also explain popular longtime Charleston-Huntington anchor Tom McGee. Despite his DUI run-ins and obviously his drinking problem plus I believe he had a massive amount of gambling debts and McGee I seem to recall had a thing for visiting strip clubs too...depsite all of that McGee was still allowed to continue to do the news in that market whereas had McGee worked in a major market like Pittsbugh, Cincinatti or Washington, DC..chances are he would had been fired ( no doubt they would scream "violation of our morals clause" ) and as a result he would be prettymuch blacklisted from appearing on TV or radio there.

I guess in most smaller-markets viewers can be more "forgiving" and can accept the fact that the perople they see on TV or hear on the radio..DO have a private side where as in bigger markets for some reasonmany people have this idea that they "work" in the biz 24/7.

 

[Tim L]

People that have Free-To-Air Satellite Systems (Which DO NOT have to involve stealing DBS) have a unique opportunity in much of the country..On KuBand the only network affiliate available is KTWO-ABC channel 2 in Casper, Wyoming..Their "K2 News" broadcasts are definitely small-market looking..The anchors do'nt look to be more than about 18 years old..Lots of "human-interest" features and such and they really seem like they are trying hard..Interesting contrast to "Big City" News..

 

[DToTheJ]

6:30
3-4c-6-7-15-57 NBC Nightly News

7:00
7 NBC Nightly News

Was this an error, or did WTRF actually air a double-run of "NBC Nightly News"? Did they actually air ABC's news in one of the slots, being they were a dual affiliate at the time?

 

[NeilRattigan]

It must be a typo. From my college days in Wheeling, I recall WTRF did an hour of local news from 6-7 pm weeknights.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Why would any West Virginia Guide list WTRF in Wheeling and not WSTV in Steubenville, Ohio?
They are maybe 25 miles apart, and from Steubenville you can literally throw a rock into West
Virginia. Hard to imagine viewers would want to know what is on one and not the other.

 

[bpatrick]

11:00
19 Bedtime Stories

Hmmm, did they have TV ratings back in 1979?

I doubt that this was a children's show...

LA DJs Al Lohman and Roger Barkley hosted this combination game/advice show.
In its original format two married couples, each interviewed in their bedrooms,
gave advice on how to maintain a successful relationship; they then played a
game in which they tried to predict how 100 people answered a sex-related
question. After two weeks, the format became more like "The Newlywed Game,"
with each couple trying to guess how the other couple answered three questions
at $500 apiece. After two months, the whole thing went the way of a lot of marriages.
(I got this from "The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows," BTW; I don't recall ever seeing
the show.) Needless to say, this was post-11 PM fare, and I don't recall many
stations carrying it (Benny Hill was becoming the show independents favored).

 

[mleach]

11:00
19 Bedtime Stories

Hmmm, did they have TV ratings back in 1979?

I doubt that this was a children's show...

LA DJs Al Lohman and Roger Barkley hosted this combination game/advice show.
In its original format two married couples, each interviewed in their bedrooms,
gave advice on how to maintain a successful relationship; they then played a
game in which they tried to predict how 100 people answered a sex-related
question. After two weeks, the format became more like "The Newlywed Game,"
with each couple trying to guess how the other couple answered three questions
at $500 apiece. After two months, the whole thing went the way of a lot of marriages.
(I got this from "The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows," BTW; I don't recall ever seeing
the show.) Needless to say, this was post-11 PM fare, and I don't recall many
stations carrying it (Benny Hill was becoming the show independents favored).

I remember "Bedtime Stories" though barely. The show also aired on DC's WTTG and considering that both WXIX and WTTG were part of Metromedia at the time ( I assume WXIX was )..that Bedtime Stories was a Metromedia thing. Anyway the show was a bomb and for some reason I seem to recall reading elsewhere ( I am thinking it was Reelradio.com ) where neither Al Lohman and Roger Barkley would actually "admit" doing this show in their later years. I have also heard the story where Lohman & Barkley had actually paid to have all tapes of this show destroyed.
Oh course who knows since, sadly neither man is with us today..

 

[azumanga]

I remember "Bedtime Stories" though barely. The show also aired on DC's WTTG and considering that both WXIX and WTTG were part of Metromedia at the time ( I assume WXIX was )..that Bedtime Stories was a Metromedia thing.

Maybe in the sales of the show to Metromedia stations, as the program was produced by Heatter-Quigley (the producers of "The Hollywood Squares") and distributed by its parent, Filmways.

I recall seeing this series at least once when it aired on WEYI, at the time the CBS affiliate for Flint and the Tri-Cities, in lieu of an 11PM newscast.

...I seem to recall reading elsewhere ( I am thinking it was Reelradio.com ) where neither Al Lohman and Roger Barkley would actually "admit" doing this show in their later years. I have also heard the story where Lohman & Barkley had actually paid to have all tapes of this show destroyed.
Oh course who knows since, sadly neither man is with us today..

I wonder what their opinions were of "Name Droppers", an NBC game show of ten years earlier that they also hosted (and Heatter-Quigley also produced)?

 

[mleach]

I wonder what their opinions were of "Name Droppers", an NBC game show of ten years earlier that they also hosted (and Heatter-Quigley also produced)?

That is if they even had remembered "Name Droppers" at all. Last year one of my former co-workers had interviewed actor Randy Mantooth from Emergency. After the interview she had asked him about his short lived late 70's ABC sitcom titled "Detective School". From what she had told me Mantooth had no memory of doing that show at all.

Ah I think its a safe bet to say that he did but..well you get the idea.