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They preempted that for this?

Re: Detroit pre-emptions, again

come to think of it, i remember wsyx, abc 6 out of columbus, ohio pre-empted harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban for some cheap, theatrical movie from 8 to 10 pm eastern. afterwards, from 10-11 pm, aired fox 28 newscenter, which i think was very redundant, because abc 6 newscenter aired at 11.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

In Milwaukee WITI 6 then CBS now FOX from the early 80s to the end didn't clear the 9-10 am or 3 pmCT shows instead airing a delayed Young&the Restless and airing Donahue and later Sally at 11 am. The only game show from that hour I recall them having was a delayed $25,000 Pyramid at 8 am and even that wasn't until 1985 or so, they never had as far as I know Child's Play, Press Your Luck, Ewbanks Card Sharks, Body Language, Now You See It 89, CBS Wheel of Fortune or CBS Family Feud.I don't believe they carried Monty Hall's Beat the Clock or Whew either.
WTMJ 4 was also bad with preemptions as they didn't carry Super Password until the last 6 months or so, never had Las Vegas Gambit, Hit Man, Ceasars Challenge, To Tell The Truth 1990, daytime Win, Lose or Draw or Wordplay, Match Game/Hollywood Squares hour, ran on and off with Sale of the Century. In the eraly 80s they used syndicated fare such as Your New Day Vidal Sassoon, John Davidosn, Dinah, Merv Griffin, Richard Simmons, Woman To Woman. By the mid 80s they usually bumped an hour off for reruns such as Quincy, Little House on the Prarie, Magnum PI. They also bumped off the Tonight Show for syndicated reruns in the mid 80s.
WISN 12 also bumped off some programing. It seems that for the longest time they didn't carry Ryan's Hope and only carried Loving for the first year or so. Eventually they bumped off the Home Show for a local show Milwaukee's Talking and moved the delayed All My Children from 9 am to 11 am.

Madison wasn't quite as bad as WISC TV 3 seemed to carry most of CBS daytime shows until Jnauary 1991 when Barbara De Angeles show premiered and Sally was moved form 8 am to 9 am. WKOW 27 Madison seemed to do their own thing from 10-11 as they didn't have Double Talk, Bragain Hunters, Home for its early run, Mr. Bevedere, Webster, who's the Boss reruns. NBC 15 in the mid 80s usually only preempted one hour in the morning for Donahue or Geraldo, first at 11 then in early 1988 at 9 am and for a short time had Super Password on delay at 10 am and Wheel at 4 pm.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

genius said:
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.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall KUSA delaying One Life To Live until 2 PM (MT) because of a conflict with its noon news.
I also seem to recall that in the late '70s it ran the ABC daytime schedule like this (somebody correct me):

9 AM Happy Days (or Laverne & Shirley in '79)
9:30 Family Feud
10 AM $20,000 Pyramid
10:30 Ryan's Hope
11 AM All My Children
12 N 9 News
12:30 Edge Of Night
1 PM General Hospital
2 PM One Life To Live
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

Matlock has always been a staple on WXYZ (ABC) Channel 7 in Detroit. They have long pre-empted ABC prime-time programming to run it, especially on weekends. Over in Erie, PA, pre-emptions for infomercials on weekend mornings have always been common on WICU (NBC) Channel 12 and WJET (ABC) Channel 24.

I have heard that WVNY (ABC) Channel 22 in Burlington, VT has long pre-empted various ABC programming - General Hospital was not seen on WVNY in the late 80s, and ABC's Friday night programming was not seen either. In 1987, it replaced I Married Dora with Sea Hunt. Into The Night Starring Rick Dees and other ABC shows were replaced by infomercials in the early 90s, and more recently, Kimmel Live was replaced by infomercials.

Pre-emptions are almost unheard of in Canada nowadays, unless it's a regular basis issue such as with CBET 9 in Windsor with its position in the Detroit market. Some CBC shows are not shown on some CBC affiliates, although usually it is the least lucritive programming that isn't shown. Also, in the 70s and 80s, many CBC affiliates showed morning and afternoon CBC programming at different times than the O&O stations - it was not uncommon to see Mr. Dressup at (I'm making these up) 10:00 on CBLT, 9:00 on CFPL, and 11:30 on CKWS. CBC's Midday was shown at 2 PM on CFPL, instead of at noon.

CFCF 12 in Montreal and BCTV often pre-empted CTV for local stuff back in the 90s. CTV bought CFCF, and established its own station on Channel 32 to compete with BCTV which in turn moved to Global.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

I think this topic is more about pre-emptions of network programming by local stations, not the cutoff of a network game by the network itself (such as the "Heidi" game).

Back to the topic, if you like to look at the present, how about when prime-time network programming gets bumped by an infomercial? This past Saturday (12/2), according to the Michigan Buzzboard, Toledo's WTOL bumped CBS programming after the Florida / Arkansas game for a Time-Life infomercial.
 
Most inexplicable pre-emption? NFL football

Yes, the NFL.

There were times in the late 80's when NBC had a Sunday NFL doubleheader and KYW-3 in Philadelphia would only carry one game -- because the other game was opposite an Eagles road game. This was at a time when the Eagles weren't a good club.

KYW's NFL pre-emptions stopped and for good reason. Somebody in a position of power must have complained.
 
Re: Most inexplicable pre-emption? NFL football

chuckydoll said:
Yes, the NFL.

There were times in the late 80's when NBC had a Sunday NFL doubleheader and KYW-3 in Philadelphia would only carry one game -- because the other game was opposite an Eagles road game. This was at a time when the Eagles weren't a good club.

KYW's NFL pre-emptions stopped and for good reason. Somebody in a position of power must have complained.
Click to expand...
WCAU-TV 10 Blacked out a lot of Eagles games when they was CBS O and O I guess in the 70's and 80's and early 90's true?
 
KYW-3 pre-empting the NFL

Julius, this had nothing to do with home-game blackouts.

Please reread the earlier post. If NBC had an NFL doubleheader and the Eagles were playing a game on the road at 1, then KYW-3 would only carry the NBC game that aired at 4. This was happening on Sundays when KYW-3 was allowed to carry two NFL games! I remember seeing that in the Philadelphia edition of TV Guide.

As I said before, KYW stopped because somebody in a position of power complained. NBC could have revoked the KYW affiliation contract for cause.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

I have a Cleveland area TV Guide from April of 1964 and it has KYW [then in Cleveland] not running "The Bullwinkle Show" when NBC aired it Saturdays at 12:30 EST, opting to show "English For Americans", KYW also did not clear "Ruff And Reddy" at 9:30, showing the last half-hour of "Barnaby" [WIIC in Pittsburgh, fortunately, did clear "Bullwinkle", but delayed "R&R" until Sunday Morning.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

I know in the mid-90s KWTV-9-Oklahoma City would push "The Price Is Right" to the 11am hour for "The Donnie and Marie" talk show. Young and the Restless would air at 4:00pm against Oprah. KWTV was interesting in that in the early years of online streaming, they threw up their entire signal to the internet. I was an office drone at the time and would watch TPiR on my lunch hour.

Some other stations that I can think of that would push Young and the Restless to the 4:00 hour was Belo's KMOV-4-St Louis. I don't know if they still air Y&R in that hour.

"Match Game 90" almost never aired on most ABC affiliates because they had midday newscasts. In Atlanta, it was punted over to WUPA-69 which ran it with the John Davidson-hosted "$100,000 Pyramid" in the early afternoon.

WTVW-7 (then ABC, now Fox) in Evansville would air "Ryans Hope" in the early 80s in the 9:30am slot (probably delayed 1-day) so they could air their midday newscast. Very fuzzy recollections of it, but I'm pretty sure their line was this:

9:00 Richard Simmons
9:30 Ryan's Hope
10:00 Love Boat/Fantasy Island
11:00 Family Feud (network)
11:30 News
11:45 Midday Farm Report (don't know if this was the actual name, I do remember some big guy in overalls standing behind feed barrels reading the grain and livestock prices).
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

KMOV still runs Y&R at 4. Likewise, WAFB/9 Baton Rouge
airs TPIR at 11 AM (CT) and Y&R at 4.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

A few more quirks from Birmingham---

*In the late 70's and early '80's WAPI-TV (now WVTM) would pre-empt NBC's Sunday afternoon college basketball package in order to carry the Sun Belt Conference game of the week. That meant that people in central Alabama were forced to watch games featuring Virginia Commonwealth, Western Kentucky, UNC-Charlotte, South Alabama, and of course, the hometown team, UAB.

*Throughout the early '70's, WAPI didn't carry the second game of NBC's NFL doubleheader so that they could show the Bear Bryant Show (Alabama football highlights) at 4:00 and the Auburn Football Review at 5:00. The NBC late games ended up on WBMG-42 in Birmingham, WCFT-33 in Tuscaloosa, and WHMA-40 in Anniston.

*WBRC didn't carry AM America or Good Morning America for the first few seasons it was on the air, and then carried only the first hour of the program in order to carry the locally produced "Morning Show".
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

WFAA Dallas/Ft. Worth carried only the second hour of GMA
back in 1976 and '77; their "A.M." show ran from 7 to 8.

In the fall of '72 WSB Atlanta, then an NBC affiliate, used to
pre-empt the second game of NBC's NFL doubleheader in order
to get Lawrence Welk started on time at 6:30. In the late '70s,
Channel 2 pre-empted practically all of NBC's Sunday sports
programming from January to September (including "Sportsworld,"
which wasn't carried in Atlanta until WXIA moved to NBC) and
ran movies, followed by Welk at 5 PM.

WLOS Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville pre-empted "One Life
To Live" for its first five years (1968-73), when it ran on ABC
at 3:30. For four of those years it ran "The Flintstones," then
in 1972-73 it ran movies.

Re Birmingham: WBRC was also one of the last two stations to
pick up ABC's newscast, in August 1972 (WJRT Flint, now an
ABC o&o, was the other). Prior to that, Channel 6 ran "I Love
Lucy" at 5 PM (Central).
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

bpatrick said:
Re Birmingham: WBRC was also one of the last two stations to
pick up ABC's newscast,
Click to expand...

Wasn't this because the station thought ABC's news had a liberal bias?
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

It wasn't because of a "liberal bias" as much as it was that Channel 6's newscast was a cash cow for the station...plus, it was that much better than Channel 13's newscast. Throughout the 50's, 60's, and well into the '70's, WBRC was so dominant over the other two commercial stations in Birmingham (WAPI-13 and WBMG-42), that they could have shown anything and had a commanding ratings lead. Keep in mind, also, that ABC was a distant third in the national news race at the time.

Birmingham wasn't shut out from the national newscasts, though. Channel 13 showed Huntley-Brinkley, and Channel 42 carried Walter Cronkite.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

...I just remembered something -- WLUK/11 in Green Bay, then an ABC affiliate, pre-empted "Wide World of Entertainment" for most of its run in order to carry "The CBS Late Movie", with then-CBS affiliate WBAY-TV/2 running (I think) its own movie packages and, later, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and off-network repeats. Later, when indie WLRE/26 first signed on circa '80, "The CBS Late Movie" popped up on their schedule, too. I also recall WLUK running an NBC baseball game one Sunday afternoon in the early '70s because then-NBC affiliate WFRV/5 and satellite WJMN/3 Escanaba pre-empted it; for the life of me, I can't recall what 5 and 3 were running that led them to refuse an NBC sports event (as I recall, the Green Bay telethons of the era were either on WBAY-TV or WLUK)...
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

Charles1 said:
It wasn't because of a "liberal bias" as much as it was that Channel 6's newscast was a cash cow for the station...plus, it was that much better than Channel 13's newscast. Throughout the 50's, 60's, and well into the '70's, WBRC was so dominant over the other two commercial stations in Birmingham (WAPI-13 and WBMG-42), that they could have shown anything and had a commanding ratings lead. Keep in mind, also, that ABC was a distant third in the national news race at the time.

Birmingham wasn't shut out from the national newscasts, though. Channel 13 showed Huntley-Brinkley, and Channel 42 carried Walter Cronkite.
Click to expand...

Also, remember that in the late '60s and early '70s ABC had about a 60% clearance rate for its newscast;
things didn't begin to turn around until two things happened. First, in December 1970, Harry Reasoner moved
over from CBS and co-anchored with Howard K. Smith, which caused an uptick in the ratings. Second, as I've
mentioned more than once, Reasoner chastised the holdout affiliates at the 1971 ABC affiliates' convention,
saying that "any station with a network affiliation and not carrying that network's news is a disgrace."
(I remember that not long after that, Smith and Reasoner began airing in Atlanta.) The main reason ABC took
so long to achieve parity with CBS and NBC was, of course, ratings, but a number of affiliates had dropped the
broadcast in 1968 because they did believe Frank Reynolds (whom Reasoner replaced) was too liberal in his
commentaries (Smith was brought in in 1969 to balance him).

In Birmingham, I believe Channel 6 dropped ABC's newscast when it expanded from 15 to 30 minutes in 1967,
then began doing its own 15-minute "world news" program with Joe Langston. That little 15-minute broadcast
beat both Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley for more than five years. Although I was living in Birmingham in 1972,
I never saw or heard a specific reason why 6 decided to pick up ABC's newscast (probably pressure from the
network), but in '72 and '73 6 was undergoing a massive overhaul of its late-afternoon/early-evening schedule,
dropping its 3:30 movie in favor of syndicated reruns, and (because of the access rule) replacing its 6 PM block
of Westerns with To Tell The Truth five nights a week at 6, and once-or-twice-a-week game shows like Hollywood Squares and the Dennis James version of The Price Is Right at 6:30.
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

When WGHP was the ABC affiliate for Greensboro/Winston-Salem/
High Point it routinely pre-empted whatever the network was carrying
at 4 PM except on two occasions: "Love, American Style" from 1972
until it left ABC daytime in '74; and "Pyramid" briefly in '74.

For a time it ran "Dark Shadows" in the morning but its core audience
was in school and not around to see it. Still, Ch. 8 would not air it at
4. Fast forward to the period 1975-84, when ABC carried "Edge Of Night"
at 4. Channel 8 never carried it, although one station employee told me
they got a lot of protests about it (WFMY had carried it for the 19
years it was on CBS and the show was in the middle of a hot storyline when
it changed networks). Eventually, one of the independents picked it up at
9:30 AM but I don't recall it working out too well.

Along the same lines, KPIX San Francisco dropped "Secret Storm" in the
fall of 1973 (the show would end in February 1974), and they got a lot
of calls wanting to know why Mike Douglas was suddenly on at 3 PM (PT)
and what certain characters on "Secret Storm" were doing. KPIX, like KDKA,
was Westinghouse-owned and was more or less obligated to carry Mike, but
couldn't they have finished out "Secret Storm"'s run?
 
Re: Most Inexplicable Network Program Pre-Emption

Reading back through this older post, and bringing back the SNL topic...Detroit's Channel 4 (WWJ-TV/WDIV) bumped the early days of Saturday Night Live off to then-indie WKBD (there's a promo for it on FuzzyMemories.com). I had to assume that Channel 4 ran its own movie package in the 11:30pm Saturday slot; I also have to assume like with most other NBC stations that didn't clear SNL, they picked it up by the time the original cast left.

Maybe another inexplicable network pre-emption by a local station (according to Wikipedia*), was Las Vegas' NBC affiliate on Channel 3 (now KSNV) didn't broadcast any part of the 1978 World Series. Supposedly, NBC caught wind of this (because of viewer complaints), and they and the FCC essentially forced an ownership, selling the station to its current parent company.

Although it would be only interesting to us TV geeks, someone should write a book documenting all these local stations pre-empting network shows, and the reasons why (money, morality, etc.). It would certainly be an interesting read.
 


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