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When Did Each All-News Station Begin?
- Thread starter Gregg.
- Start date
KLIV-AM San Jose was all news from 1991-2016. Yes the OTA signal was mainly heard south of the San Mateo Bridge to cover Santa Clara county specifically it's not Bay Area wide as KCBS is.
How about any syndicated national all-news networks, offered either with or without slots for affiliates to drop in their local news? Wasn't there at least one in the 1970s?
There was also CKO, a national commercial news radio network in Canada in the 1970s and 80s that had a low energy delivery and low ratings to go along with it.
There was also CKO, a national commercial news radio network in Canada in the 1970s and 80s that had a low energy delivery and low ratings to go along with it.
AP News - LiveOne - Music, Podcasts and more
AP News on LiveOne. AP News Radio is a full service news station. You'll hear a mix of the day's most compelling news including Headlines, US and World news, Sports, Business, Politics and more. New stories are added frequently throughout the day and you have the power to skip or pause the news...
www.liveone.com
Associated Press | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
Associated Press - The Associated Press is the definitive global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information providing high-quality, informed...
Here's one AP Radio news on major radio apps. Then again one source said AP radio news started in 1994 with affiliates included as Turn Key operations. CNN Headline News at one point had radio affiliates too until the network itself changed named to HLN and those stations either flipped formats or change affiliations when that happened.
All-news radio - Wikipedia
Last edited:
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That was NIS.
Unless you were thinking of AP Radio, which started in the fall of 1974. But it was just TOH newscasts, several sports briefs per day, hourly business reports during the stock market trading hours, and actualities.
Thanks. I guess I thought NIS was something similar to that. I didn't recognize the name and didn't realize from the earlier comments that it was actually a 24/7 feed.
For a deeper dive into NBC’s News & Information Service (1975-1977), here are a couple of YouTube “videos”. The first is actually the last hour of NIS. The recording was made at NBC NY, so is just the NIS network feed. NBC NY O&O (and NIS flagship) WNWS 97.1 had bailed on the all news format effective 1/1/77, turning to a music format and becoming WYNY, several months ahead of the shutdown of NIS.
The Final Hour of NIS
The second link is an in-house audio documentary on NIS. Its formation and its demise.
NBC Radio’s NIS
The Final Hour of NIS
The second link is an in-house audio documentary on NIS. Its formation and its demise.
NBC Radio’s NIS
Well, sure, a station could've done it that way. It's probably more precise to say that the top-of-the-hour slot was up to the individual station to fill; yours chose to do so by using another network; KUDL had local content.
In true southern "style" WLAC was News and Blues in the early 1970's. All news days and John R. and and company Blues and soul at night. All news days ended in 1972. I think it started around 1969 or 70.
Wilmington NC had all news from 6am-6pm in 2013 on 93.7 and 106.3 FM. Two full power FM signals. They then moved to 95.9 FM (translator) and 1180 AM. Don’t recall how long that lasted. But a very small market to do one.
portcitydaily.com
Port City Radio, Wilmington’s only all-news radio, to launch Monday | Port City Daily
It’s here. Port City Radio, Wilmington’s first and only all-news radio station, will launch Monday, April 1. Formerly The Big Talker FM, you can hear Port City Radio on 93.7 and 106.3 FM…
portcitydaily.com
I think all the NBC-owned NIS stations stuck to the suggested hourly news wheel. Local news comes first at :00, while the network line is sending down the hourly NBC network newscast. That's what 97.1 WNWS in NYC did, as I remember it. The station could have run the network but that was getting aired on WNBC 660 anyway. And at :07, the NIS anchor was going to start doing the top of that half-hour's newscast, so it could have been redundant. The stories carried on the NBC network news would be the same or similar to what the NIS anchor would be reading at :07.
But some local NIS stations wanted to keep running the network news with which they had been associated for many years. They either didn't do a local newscast in the first half hour, waiting to do local news at the :30 mark, or they didn't run the NIS network from :07 to :15, using that segment for their local news and features.
I saw the list of NIS stations from a 1977 Broadcasting Yearbook. I think four were owned by NBC, 97.1 WNWS NYC, 101.1 WNIS Chicago, 99.7 KNAI San Francisco and 980 WRC Washington. WRC stuck with its in-house all-news format after NIS folded. But a couple of years later, it switched to Talk.
Yes, CKO was another interesting experiment as an All-News network. It had stations in Montreal (980 AM), Toronto (99.1 FM) and several other FM outlets across Canada. Oddly, the CRTC gave each station the same CKO call sign. Maybe they had number suffixes but didn't use them on the air.
And after all the above suggestions, I'll revise my list and include the other stations tomorrow. (How did I miss KYW? It was the second successful All-News station after WINS and before WCBS.)
San Juan's WUNO-1320 (AM), formerly Radio Uno, became NotiUno and all news in 1983. It competed with WKAQ-580 which had been all news since about 1979. Other stations that were all news for a period of time in the market were WAPA 680 and WKSN 1320. All had "network" repeaters in other parts of the market as no station covers it entirely.
In 1982, WQII San Juan briefly went all-news under GM Glenn Tryon. That lasted about a year, and the AM and its sister FM were each sold to separate buyers.
In 1982, WQII San Juan briefly went all-news under GM Glenn Tryon. That lasted about a year, and the AM and its sister FM were each sold to separate buyers.
IMO, it would, because talk radio is not news reporting, and should not be treated as such (especially if the same things are talked about over and over again).
WNUS 1390 Chicago, then owned by Gordon McClendon, went all-news in September 1964, as did its associated FM outlet. It used a 15-minute news cycle, mostly rip-and-read with some reporters in the field. One of the on-air reporters was Bernard Shaw. It switched to beautiful music in 1968 when WBBM went all-news.
Loved the News and Information Service.
To make NIS happen, NBC had to explain to the FCC how this wouldn't be running two networks in violation of the Chain Broadcasting Act which forced RCA to sell NBC Blue in the 1940s. (I'm presuming ABC had to explain its four-network split several years earlier.) The explanation was simple: NBC would use the same AT&T line to feed both NBC and NIS, so they couldn't be on simultaneously. The only network programs on both original NBC and new NIS would be special reports ("NBC News Hotline Reports," they were called) and a handful of Sunday programs, such as the radio feed of Meet The Press and religious programs such as The Eternal Light.
The one exception, which the FCC apparently signed off on, was live sports. NBC Radio still had the rights to the World Series, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, AFC Championship and, in alternating years with CBS, the Super Bowl in that era. I distinctly recall both WMAQ and WNIS in Chicago carrying the 1975 World Series.
NBC wanted a different station in each market to buy the NIS service, not the original NBC Radio Network affiliate.
Here's an older thread:
To make NIS happen, NBC had to explain to the FCC how this wouldn't be running two networks in violation of the Chain Broadcasting Act which forced RCA to sell NBC Blue in the 1940s. (I'm presuming ABC had to explain its four-network split several years earlier.) The explanation was simple: NBC would use the same AT&T line to feed both NBC and NIS, so they couldn't be on simultaneously. The only network programs on both original NBC and new NIS would be special reports ("NBC News Hotline Reports," they were called) and a handful of Sunday programs, such as the radio feed of Meet The Press and religious programs such as The Eternal Light.
The one exception, which the FCC apparently signed off on, was live sports. NBC Radio still had the rights to the World Series, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, AFC Championship and, in alternating years with CBS, the Super Bowl in that era. I distinctly recall both WMAQ and WNIS in Chicago carrying the 1975 World Series.
NBC wanted a different station in each market to buy the NIS service, not the original NBC Radio Network affiliate.
Here's an older thread:
On a few occasions, WMAQ's ratings surpassed those of rival WBBM. Below is an air check from 26 August 1991:
I remember in the 1990's that was the case for smaller radio markets to use CNN Headline News simulcast as part of their all-news operations in some parts of the country. That was until WB renamed Headline News to HLN and the stations changed affiliations and flipped formats by 2005-2006 timeframe.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Yes, NBC had to essentially make the same argument for NIS as ABC had to make for the four-network split a half-dozen years earlier. In fact, avoiding the issue made it impossible for the primary NBC network affiliate to delay the newscast if there was also a NIS affiliate in the market, unless the delay was to one of the optional time periods and the NIS station was covering that with local content:
So NBC primary could be delayed to anytime ending before :15, or to :30, but I don't recall reading or hearing of any station that did either.
I do know of a case where the ABC networks were delayed for close to a half-hour, in my hometown market of Oxnard-Ventura CA:
Information was carried live @ :00 by 1400/KQIQ (later KAAP)
FM was delayed from :15 to :30 on 104.7/KPMJ*
Entertainment was thus delayed from :30 to :55 on 1450/KVEN in order to finish airing before KQIQ joined ABC/I at the TOH*
Contemporary was delayed from :55 to :20 on 1520/KACY
*-There was one exception: KPMJ sold the 6:30-7:00am timeslot to a religious program, which forced the ABC/FM newscast to air @ 6:25 (just as KACY was finishing running the 5:55am ABC/C newscast) and KVEN took advantage of that to run the 6:30 ABC/E newscast live, which accommodated the airing of the morning Paul Harvey news in its place at 6:55. That all went away when 1590/KBBQ affiliated with NBC in 1976 and KPMJ picked up Mutual, although the arrangement with the three other ABC affiliates remained unchanged.
BTW, tvnut, that was an excellent job of condensing the history to just a few paragraphs without losing any of the relevant facts. 🙂
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