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They preempted that for this?

Re: Do your station still pre-empts network shows for local sports?

Never in Phoenix, unless the Cardinals are playing in an ESPN or NFL Network game. All of the other local sports teams are either on cable/satellite (Suns, Dbacks) or don't have a TV contract with a network station (Coyotes). Any ASU game is usually to be found on cable/satellite, if at all, and HS sports are largely ignored.
 
Network shows killed by pre-emptions.

Do you guys know of any shows that aired on the networks primetime/daytime that were cancelled/killed do to too many affiliates pre-empting the show for their own fare? IMO this is probably what killed network daytime game shows in the 90's like Caesars Challenge. This is why I hate WTLV in Jacksonville pre-empting Caesars Challenge for Montel Williams, and didn't get to watch Caesars Challenge until it was re-run on the USA network and other NBC game shows of the 90's that I never got to watch until some of it's episodes were uploaded on YouTube. Obviously the Jacksonville TV market loves pre-empting network daytime shows.
 
ABC decided to end "Edge Of Night" in December 1984 when a number of affiliates announced they were dropping it effective the beginning of calendar year 1985. "Ryan's Hope" was a victim of too many affiliates in the Eastern time zone pre-empting it for noon local news.
 
The 1990 Match Game got preempted in many markets as I recall. (The noon "death slot"!)

-crainbebo
 
A primetime example, American Dreams was killed off by NBC because of constant preemptions. Kinda strange treatment for it, considering that it was a Dick Clark-produced show. But it was on Sunday evenings at, I think, 7:00 p.m. central time, and sometimes would take as much as a month off. Briefly moved to Wednesdays, I think, before cancellation, but by then, it was too late.
 
It sounds like it's not the show, it's the time slot. Put a show on at noon (a traditional slot for local news) or at the beginning or end of the schedule (when affiliates are most tempted to expand their syndicated/local offerings) and you'll get cancelled in markets with business savvy independent affiliates (of course, there are fewer of those now than there used to be).
 
I recall back when KMOL in San Antonio (before it returned to WOAI) didn't air Betty White's game show "Just Men" and Peter Tomarken's "Hit Man" in 1983 at all. I believe The Waltons took over that time slot from airing both shows.
 
FredLeonard said:
It sounds like it's not the show, it's the time slot. Put a show on at noon (a traditional slot for local news) or at the beginning or end of the schedule (when affiliates are most tempted to expand their syndicated/local offerings) and you'll get cancelled in markets with business savvy independent affiliates (of course, there are fewer of those now than there used to be).
Click to expand...

More than anything, I believe you're correct. At least in a lot of larger markets, the preempted shows got usually got cleared on the local independent(s), or you could often times see the uncleared shows on a network affiliate in a neighboring market.

As to what network shows got killed by preemptions, pretty much whatever CBS aired in the 4pm ET/3pm CT-PT slot wasn't cleared by a lot of affiliates, and some of the ones that cleared the shows carried it on a day (or week) delay. Body Language and Press Your Luck (originally on between the Pyramid and The Price is Right before the move to afternoons) were victims of that very thing. CBS gave the stations back that time by fall 1986.
 
"Rango", a mid-1960s western comedy starring North East Ohio's own Tim Conway, may have had its life cut very short because of this type of preemption. WEWS-TV 5 in Cleveland, Ohio (of all stations) didn't air it in its prime time slot. Instead they put it on at 3pm on Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
 
ABC had a difficult time getting its affiliates to carry its Friday lineup from 7:30-9:30 (ET) prior to the introduction of the "Brady Bunch"/"Partridge Family"/"Room 222"/"Odd Couple"/"Love, American Style" block; I remember pre-emptions in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point, Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville, and (I believe) Orlando and Richmond in the late '60s, some as late as 1970. Some were on board in the fall of '70; all were by the time the block mentioned above was in place in 1971.

Likewise, especially during the last season of "Lost In Space" (1967-68), a number of CBS affiliates pre-empted or delayed it from its in-pattern time of Wednesday 7:30 (ET); in 1967-68, I know that not one CBS affiliate from Raleigh to Atlanta aired it in pattern, with WFMY, WAGA, and WSPA carrying it on Saturday afternoons, and the ABC affiliate in Charlotte, WCCB, carrying it on Sundays just before "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea" ("Lost In Space" wasn't carried on WBTV). Norfolk's WTAR (now WTKR) also delayed it to Saturday afternoons.
 
Now that you mention it, the last season of the original Hawaii Five-O (without Danno) was passed up by a lot of CBS affiliates, too. However, I recall reading that some of them did pick-up the final episode (McGarrett captured Wo-Fat).
 
Perhaps the most famous case of a prime-time network show being killed by pre-emptions hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread.

It was Season Two of the NBC version of "That Was The Week That Was", a weekly satirical "news" show which was an ancestor to the "Weekend Update" segment on "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show".

Premiering in January of 1964, the NBC version of "TW3" (as fans called it; based on the original BBC version that became a big hit in 1962; David Frost hosted both versions) was quite successful for the balance of the season, and NBC renewed it for the 1964/65 season.

Moved to the Tuesday 9:30-10 P.M. (ET/PT) slot in September of 1964, "TW3" was pre-empted for several weeks in October of 1964 (according to listings in the Boston Globe), for political specials sponsored by Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater (October 20th was the only week that month "TW3" aired; according to that day's Globe, Goldwater bought a half-hour on CBS in the same time period as "TW3"!).

The November 3rd edition was pre-empted for NBC News' live election-night coverage.

Supposedly, on the November 10th "TW3" (which I think was only the third or fourth time the show had been seen since mid-September), the show began with a clip of Goldwater's concession speech with an announcer telling viewers that "The scheduled Barry Goldwater Paid Political Program will not be seen tonight. Stay tuned for 'That Was The Week That Was'".

But all those pre-emptions (not to mention the move from Fridays to Tuesdays) cost the show it's large viewership. "TW3" lasted through the season, but was cancelled in the Spring of 1965.
 
FredLeonard said:
Now that you mention it, the last season of the original Hawaii Five-O (without Danno) was passed up by a lot of CBS affiliates, too. However, I recall reading that some of them did pick-up the final episode (McGarrett captured Wo-Fat).
Click to expand...

Ironically, in Cleveland, the first three seasons (I think) of the show were banished to Saturday afternoon, and the first few years of Medical Center weren't shown at all.

I recall reading that a number of new shows that began in January 1991 ended up getting cancelled in part due to numerous preemptions because of the Gulf War.
 
There was also "Grandpa Goes to Washington," a short-lived NBC dramedy starring the late Jack Albertson(of "Chico and the
Man" fame), back in the fall of 1978. KYW-TV 3, then the Philly NBC affil, didn't show it in its usual Tuesday 8 pm slot, airing
some useless public-affairs shows instead. Then-indie WPHL 17 aired "Grandpa" at 6 pm the following Sunday, which pretty much
explains why that show failed.
 
Joseph_Gallant said:
Perhaps the most famous case of a prime-time network show being killed by pre-emptions hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread.

It was Season Two of the NBC version of "That Was The Week That Was", a weekly satirical "news" show which was an ancestor to the "Weekend Update" segment on "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show".

Premiering in January of 1964, the NBC version of "TW3" (as fans called it; based on the original BBC version that became a big hit in 1962; David Frost hosted both versions) was quite successful for the balance of the season, and NBC renewed it for the 1964/65 season.

Moved to the Tuesday 9:30-10 P.M. (ET/PT) slot in September of 1964, "TW3" was pre-empted for several weeks in October of 1964 (according to listings in the Boston Globe), for political specials sponsored by Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater (October 20th was the only week that month "TW3" aired; according to that day's Globe, Goldwater bought a half-hour on CBS in the same time period as "TW3"!).

The November 3rd edition was pre-empted for NBC News' live election-night coverage.

Supposedly, on the November 10th "TW3" (which I think was only the third or fourth time the show had been seen since mid-September), the show began with a clip of Goldwater's concession speech with an announcer telling viewers that "The scheduled Barry Goldwater Paid Political Program will not be seen tonight. Stay tuned for 'That Was The Week That Was'".

But all those pre-emptions (not to mention the move from Fridays to Tuesdays) cost the show it's large viewership. "TW3" lasted through the season, but was cancelled in the Spring of 1965.
Click to expand...

This is a different issue. TW3 was preempted by a network political buy. The other shows mentioned here were cancelled (at least in part) because affiliates declined to clear them.
 
The short-lived 1975 ABC comedy, "Hot L Baltimore" was "so controversial" that a number of affiliates either didn't show it all on Friday nights, or, like the Cleveland affiliate (WEWS), banished it to being shown after the Sunday night 11 p.m. news.

Of course, Friday night was a wasteland overall for ABC--one of the jokes at the time was that Patty Hearst (who was still a fugitive) was starring on a Friday night ABC show--that's why no one could find her.
 
firepoint525 said:
A primetime example, American Dreams was killed off by NBC because of constant preemptions. Kinda strange treatment for it, considering that it was a Dick Clark-produced show. But it was on Sunday evenings at, I think, 7:00 p.m. central time, and sometimes would take as much as a month off. Briefly moved to Wednesdays, I think, before cancellation, but by then, it was too late.
Click to expand...

NBC kept the budget for this show as low as possible, with liberal use of clips from Clark's "American Bandstand" (which had actually moved to L.A. by this time), historical events shown on TV's at the father's appliance store that all just happened to be on NBC (allowing them to use footage from their archives), and limiting the season to 18 episodes--instead of the usual 22. In addition, a number of episodes during one of the seasons dealt with one of the kids collecting Campbell's Soup labels for some prize--allowing for some blatant product placement.
 
One classic example of death by pre-emption was Nat "King" Cole's 1957 NBC series. Stations in the South refused to carry the first variety show with a black performer as star. (Some of them ran instead "The Gray Ghost," a syndicated Western with a Confederate hero; cynically sold as counterprogramming by CBS's film sales division.) Many of Cole's friends in show biz, both black and white, appeared as guests on his series at minimum scale as a favor; including Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr, Ella Fitzgerald, Frankie Laine, Mel Torme, Pearl Bailey, the Mills Bros, etc. If I recall correctly, Liebmann Brewing (Rheingold Beer) sponsored the show at least regionally in the Northeast. But the show continued to lose money and ratings, and NBC dropped it after a little over a year.
 
BD Sullivan said:
Of course, Friday night was a wasteland overall for ABC--one of the jokes at the time was that Patty Hearst (who was still a fugitive) was starring on a Friday night ABC show--that's why no one could find her.
Click to expand...

I remember a late 60's joke..."Wanna end the Vietnam war? Put it on ABC and it'll be over in 13 weeks!"
 


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