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They preempted that for this?

Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

Say what you will about the NHL's TV ratings, but this is still inexplicable.KING in Seattle is not airing this year's Stanley Cup Finals. It will be shown instead on independent KONG.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

In my areas I've lived in, I can recall two sets of infamous preemptions......KLTV in Tyler for years preempted almost all of the ABC daytime shows in favor of the NBC daytime lineup at the time. (I believe the only ABC soap they carried was The Edge of Night.) I think it was in the mid-80s that they finally started carrying ABC soaps. Add to that, KLTV always preempted Nightline for an hour up until about 1996 or 98, carrying repeats of Cheers and MASH in the 10:30-11:30 hour after the news or in the pre-KETK days, The Tonight Show. They carried Letterman at midnight until about the late 1980s, and then replaced Letterman with repeats of Star Trek and Star Trek:TNG, carrying the repeats nightly, then shrinking them to three days a week Monday was Space Patrol, and Tuesday was Babylon 5, which had ironically been aired in place of NYPD Blue in that show's early days on ABC with Blue airing on KFXK, and Wednesday-Friday aired Trek. That continued until ABC picked up Politically Incorrect and started clearing that show and Nightline during the live network feed and dropped Trek all together. (All of the series switched to what was the UPN LPTV affiliate at the time and then just vanished from ET TV with the exception of Enterprise.)KETK in Tyler never carried Later or the M-Th run of Last Call until about a year or two ago....and back in March, preempted Days of Our Lives and Passions without warning or advertising for two straight days in a row to carry College Basketball games that nobody watched, and failed to air the soaps at a later time. KETK also preempted NBC's Nightside program for a while until 4AM, carrying Gordon Elliott and Jerry Springer in the two hours before then, after then-GM Phil Hurley decided to sanitize the daytime schedule because of viewer complaints. KETK kept it that way until their contracts for those shows ended...Elliott's show was canned, and Springer moved to KFXK.KFXK is good at carrying their programming when scheduled, but with the rare preemption of network programming, I don't think they reschedule those shows.Currently my estimate at the most currently preempted network show is ABC's World News Now....I hear complaints on the WNN Discussion list at Google from time to time about affiliates who preempt that show.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

JPKirby said:
Say what you will about the NHL's TV ratings, but this is still inexplicable.KING in Seattle is not airing this year's Stanley Cup Finals. It will be shown instead on independent KONG.
Every NBC affiliate outside of Raleigh, NC wishes it could dump the Stanely Cup onto a duopoly station. I imagine it's especially bad on the West Coast, where the weekday games will conflict with the evening news and, in some markets, Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

With Bold and the Beautiful, I know KMGH would often air it, then wouldn't air it, then would. Finally, I believe KMGH did air it in the morning a day behind, with The Price is Right coming on after it. I do remember Loving aired on KMGH as well, although I'm not sure if it continued following the switch of '95, as KUSA had never carried any of Loving, and of course Loving was revamped as The City. KCNC, where I worked from '92-'95 in advertising, only had two soaps and aired Days of our Lives not at 1, but at 3, a practice KUSA would continue for awhile following the switch.

I also know KVII in Amarillo didn't All My Children for many years, until the early '00s where it aired overnight before coming to daytime. Interesting that KVII did carry Port Charles it's whole run.

Some one said Edge of Night was cancelled due to pre-emptions. It's very true, as the more pre-emptions, the less the ratings. Same thing with Loving, The City, and Port Charles there on ABC, and Search For Tomorrow, Santa Barbara, and Generations on NBC. I don't believe CBS soaps has had any widespread problems with pre-emptions of it's soaps, except for maybe Bold and the Beautiful in its first few years.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

Russell W. said:
Mention was already made about WKRG-5 (CBS) in Mobile. I have a Gulf Coast Edition TV GUIDE from 1969 I'll have to dig out and post. 'KRG didn't outright preempt gobs of CBS shows so much as they just shuffled 'em around! What I understand in their case was that in the mid-ish '70s CBS either threatened to revoke another affiliate (or outright did - I don't know) for that same practice, and WKRG suddenly got religion.

The 'station' that CBS stripped its affiliation from was KXLY-4/Spokane. They gave it to KREM-2 on August 8, 1976, with KXLY picking up KREM's ABC affiliation. Since then KREM has successfully done well with CBS, likewise with KXLY and their relationship with ABC.

BTW I might post their first week from 30 years ago in a upcoming post, as I do have that listing I clipped from The Spokeman-Review.
 
Detroit pre-emptions, again

Tonight, both WDIV and WXYZ are pre-empting network programming. Instead of Law & Order: SVU at 10, WDIV is showing an Elton John concert from England. And, instead of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban from 8-11, WXYZ had yet another Matlock re-run (with ALF as guest star), and now a 2-hour movie, The Best of Times.

Sure, the stations probably make more money running the alternate programming (especially WDIV in this case), but one of two things should happen at the network level for the sake of viewers. One is to cut a deal with a station like WADL to clear the movie and the episode of L&O at the regular time, or force the stations to air all primetime network programming as part of the affiliation contracts.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

A line about "MUST CARRY" for a net affiliate is VERY ILLEGAL. No "affiliate" would ever agree to "moving" any show to another station unless they did not clear the whole series.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

Both stations may have had a lot of "make-goods" that they owed advertisers, so they dumped them on a night when almost no one is watching. Even fewer people would have been watching had the World Series gone to a game 6.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

Buddy Hayes said:
Both stations may have had a lot of "make-goods" that they owed advertisers, so they dumped them on a night when almost no one is watching.

How on earth can you make anything good about a Matlock rerun featuring ALF?
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

WDIV and WXYZ may have decided to pre-empt once
they knew the Tigers were going to be in the World
Series; they might have anticipated a Game 6 and
realized that WJBK would have the biggest audiences.
My question would be: did they anticipate Game 7
tonight? I can't imagine WDIV pre-empting football
or WXYZ pre-empting "Desperate Housewives."

There used to be a thing called "option time," wherein
an affiliate would have to notify its network no less
than 56 days before a program was to air if it intended
to pre-empt, otherwise the network could exercise its
"option" and force the affiliate to carry the program.
That was declared illegal in the 1960s, although in recent
years the networks have gotten tougher about pre-emptions.
They do happen (WSB viewers know what I'm talking about),
but not with the frequency they once did.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

bpatrick said:
WDIV and WXYZ may have decided to pre-empt once
they knew the Tigers were going to be in the World
Series; they might have anticipated a Game 6 and
realized that WJBK would have the biggest audiences.
My question would be: did they anticipate Game 7
tonight? I can't imagine WDIV pre-empting football
or WXYZ pre-empting "Desperate Housewives."

There used to be a thing called "option time," wherein
an affiliate would have to notify its network no less
than 56 days before a program was to air if it intended
to pre-empt, otherwise the network could exercise its
"option" and force the affiliate to carry the program.
That was declared illegal in the 1960s, although in recent
years the networks have gotten tougher about pre-emptions.
They do happen (WSB viewers know what I'm talking about),
but not with the frequency they once did.

When WJBK-TV was the CBS affiliate in Detroit, they used to pre-empt network shows regularly. For a few years, they did not even carry the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, although they did run promos touting "The CBS Newscope" used on Eyewitness News (it was a video tape unit, they'd record stories from the network news and play them in the local news). JBK also never carried any of the CBS Morning shows.

Some CBS shows ended up on other stations; some were delayed and show on the weekend; most were not seen at all. JBK was very quick to dump any network show that did not perform well - or any the George Storer did not like (for reasons personal or political).

But Detroit stations have always gone their own way. Even when WXYZ-TV was an ABC owned station, they occasionally bailed on the network.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

Sort of off-topic, but on-topic too: WAGA Atlanta
was also owned by George Storer and was a CBS
affiliate until it became a Fox o&o in 1994. It, too,
pre-empted Cronkite in the mid-'60s and ran "Amos
'n' Andy" instead. It also pre-empted Edward R.
Murrow's "See It Now" in the 1950s, the "CBS Morning
News With Mike Wallace" when it aired at 10 AM from
1963-65, and CBS's morning programming in the early
'80s and again in the last year or two before it went
to Fox. Like WJBK, WAGA tended to go its own way
a lot (although not as much as Cox's WSB). I'd have
to say that it sounds to me, too, like a Storer characteristic--
pre-empting news programs that didn't fit Storer's political
leanings. BTW, wasn't Milo Radulovich, who was the subject
of one of the first "See It Now" McCarthy-related programs,
from Detroit?
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

Situations like this would be a perfect argument for having two sets of affiliates to choose from.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

Can't you pick up Toledo in Detroit with a good antenna aimed south?
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

toby said:
Situations like this would be a perfect argument for having two sets of affiliates to choose from.

Which is why I'm glad I get NBC and ABC affiliates from Erie on cable here, even if the picture quality is mediocre at best.

If it can be picked up with an antenna, it should be offered on cable. Does any of the Detroit market get any Toledo stations on cable? I know WTVG and WTOL are on cable in Windsor, and some places near Windsor also get WNWO and/or WUPW.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

fred flintstone said:
Some CBS shows ended up on other stations; some were delayed and show on the weekend; most were not seen at all. JBK was very quick to dump any network show that did not perform well - or any the George Storer did not like (for reasons personal or political).

Wasn't WADL's slogan once "Detroit's Alternate CBS Station"? I can see why.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

Toby, TWO sets of affilliates?

Do YOU kow what it costs to put a tv station on the air, engineering, lawyers, recruit people, get a net affiliation? (same old mantra warning) MONEY is the biggest affiliation for any station.

TWO affiliates in a market defeats the whole purpose of "exclusive" affiliations. Get cable. Have you heard? There are plenty of choices.

"If it can be picked up with an antenna, it should be offered on cable." Tell that to the zillion low-power stations NOT on cable. Cable systems have rules too.
 
Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

I can't answer whether Toledo stations can be picked up
in Detroit since I don't live there, but I've heard other people
say they started watching CBS on WTOL after CBS changed
from WJBK to WWJ, simply because the Channel 62 signal was
so poor. How far into the Detroit DMA WTOL goes, I wouldn't
know.
 


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