WNEW-TV 5, New York- October 17-23, 1965

[highwayman128]

WNEW-TV 5 New York (Metromedia)
October 17-23, 1965 (FALL 1965)

Source: New York Times

Sunday October 17, 1965
7am- Mormon Conference at Salt Lake City (Part 2)
8am- Astro Boy
8:30- King and Odie
9am- Wonderama with Sonny Fox
1pm- Movie- Bataan (1943)
3pm- Metropolitan Movie- She's Working Her Way Through College (1952)
5pm- Movie- Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) (3 straight movies in a row for WNEW 5 that day)
7pm- Assignment Adventure
8pm- The Dakotas
9pm- The Breaking Point
10pm- Opinion in Capital
10:30- Community Dialogue
11pm- News (up against WCBS ansd WNBC)
11:25- Senator Thomas J. Dodd (democrat from Connecticut)
11:30- Wire Services
12am- Sign-Off

Monday October 18-Friday October 22,1965
7:30am- Survey of the Arts
8am- Cartoons
8:15- King and Odie
8:30- Sandy Becker
9:30- Topper
10am- Movie- Crack-up (1937) (Mon), Carnival in Costa Rica (1947) (Tue), Yellow Balloon (1953) (Wed), Barricade (1939) (Thu), Ramona (1936) (Fri)
11:30- Romper Room
12:30pm- King and Odie
12:45pm- Cartoons
1:30pm- Movie- reruns of the 10am showing
3pm- Peter Gunn
3:30- Chuck McCann
4:30- Astro Boy
5pm- Paul Winchell
6pm- Sandy Becker Show
7pm- Soupy Sales Show
7:30- Ensign O'Toole (Mon), Route 66 (Tue), Zorro (Wed), 77 Sunset Strip (Thu), The Outer Limits (Fri)

PRIMETIME
Monday 10-18
8pm- 77 Sunset Strip
9pm- Movie- Johnny Belinda (1948)
11:20pm- Hollywood's Finest- The Young Lovers (1950)
12:42am- Sign-Off

Tuesday 10-19
8:30pm- The Rogues
9:30pm- Colt 45
10pm- Eleventh Hour
11pm- News (up against WCBS, WNBC, WABC, the big dogs in New York at the time)
11:10pm- Hollywood's Finest- Pool of London (1951)
12:35am- Sign-Off

Wednesday 10-20
8pm- The Untouchables
9pm- Movie Greats- Edge of Darkness (1943)
11pm- News
11:45- Movie- The Corn is Green (1945)
1:40am- Sign-Off

Thursday 10-21
8:30- Route 66
9:30- The Third Man
10pm- March of Time- 7 Days in the life of President Lyndon B. Johnson
11pm- News
11:10- Hollywood's Finest- Dark Victory (1939)
12:54am- Sign-off

Friday 10-22
8:30- The Detectives
9pm- Movie Greats- East of Eden (1955)
11:30- Hollywood's Finest- Night has a Thousand Eyes (1948)
12:51am- Sign-Off

Saturday October 23, 1965
8:30am- Topper
9am- Chuck McCann
10:30am- Jungle Jim
11am- Astro Boy
11:30- Sandy Becker Show
12:30pm- Speak Out
1:30pm- Bat Masterson
2:30pm- Saturday Playhouse
3:30pm- East Side Comedy
4:30pm- Horse Racing- "The Man O'War from Aquedect"
5pm- Sahara Invitational Golf Tournament from Las Vegas
6:30- Soupy Sales Show
7:30- Road America 500- (auto race)
8pm- Wrestling
10pm- Metropolitan Movie- Yellow Jack (1938)
11:45pm- Hollywood's Finest- Heaven can Wait (1943)
1:55am- Community Dialogue
2:25am- Sign-Off<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by highwayman128 on 08/20/05 04:45 PM.</FONT></P>

 

[KMRichards]

Rather inconsistent news schedule ...

> Sunday October 17, 1965
> 11pm- News (up against WCBS ansd WNBC)
> 11:25- Senator Thomas J. Dodd (democrat from Connecticut)
> 11:30- Wire Services

> Monday 10-18
> 9pm- Movie- Johnny Belinda (1948)
> 11:20pm- Hollywood's Finest- The Young Lovers (1950)

> Tuesday 10-19
> 11pm- News (up against WCBS, WNBC, WABC, the big dogs in New
> York at the time)
> 11:10pm- Hollywood's Finest- Pool of London (1951)

> Wednesday 10-20
> 11pm- News
> 11:45- Movie- The Corn is Green (1945)

> Thursday 10-21
> 11pm- News
> 11:10- Hollywood's Finest- Dark Victory (1939)

> Friday 10-22
> 9pm- Movie Greats- East of Eden (1955)
> 11:30- Hollywood's Finest- Night has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

> Saturday October 23, 1965
> 10pm- Metropolitan Movie- Yellow Jack (1938)
> 11:45pm- Hollywood's Finest- Heaven can Wait (1943)

Sunday, 25 minutes, a political talk, then a half-hour of "wire services". Tuesday and Thursday, ten minutes; Wednesday, 45; Monday, Friday, and Saturday, nothing?

Either WNEW had a very odd philosophy about news or the New York Times omitted some listings info ...<P ID="signature">______________


</P>

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Highwayman 128 noted WNEW-5's news scheduling in the Fall of 1965:

> Sunday, 25 minutes, a political talk, then a half-hour of
> "wire services". Tuesday and Thursday, ten minutes;
> Wednesday, 45; Monday, Friday, and Saturday, nothing?

I think "Wire Services" was really "Wire Service", a fictional drama series that had run on network television back in the late 1950's.

> Either WNEW had a very odd philosophy about news or the New
> York Times omitted some listings info ...

I suspect the latter.

WNEW's 11 P.M. local newscasts must have been killed in the ratings by the network O&O's; in (the Spring of??) 1967, WNEW abandoned 11 P.M. news and started-up a 10 P.M. newscast (sister station WTTG-5 in Washington had started a 10 P.M. newscast the previous year; I think sister station KTTV-11 Los Angeles may have even preceded WTTG with a 10 P.M. newscast) which became quite successful and was copied by independent stations everywhere (with those independents in the Central and Mountain time zones running 9 P.M. local newscasts, which was equvilant to 10 P.M. Eastern/Pacific).

 

[RALfan]

Can someone possibly post the same schedules for the rest of the New York stations (or have they already been posted)?

 

[wbhist]

WNEW's 11 P.M. local newscasts must have been killed in the ratings by the network O&O's; in (the Spring of??) 1967, WNEW abandoned 11 P.M. news and started-up a 10 P.M. newscast (sister station WTTG-5 in Washington had started a 10 P.M. newscast the previous year; I think sister station KTTV-11 Los Angeles may have even preceded WTTG with a 10 P.M. newscast) which became quite successful and was copied by independent stations everywhere (with those independents in the Central and Mountain time zones running 9 P.M. local newscasts, which was equvilant to 10 P.M. Eastern/Pacific).

The irony is that after WNEW launched The 10 O'Clock News in 1967, WPIX - a longtime local news pioneer - itself got killed in the news ratings, setting off a chain of events that led to a series of scandals with their newscasts in late 1968 that in turn led to a well-publicized and highly-reported decade-long license challenge. Another casualty of WNEW's 10 O'Clock News: longtime WPIX news director and anchor John Tillman, whose nearly two-decades-long run with the station came to an end in late 1967.

As for Metropolitan Movie, on the Sunday 3 PM and Saturday 10 PM time slots: Apparently, that name took effect the very day the former WABD became WNEW-TV on Sept. 7, 1958 (for the New York TV debut of Angels with Dirty Faces); its predecessor may have been known as Warner Bros. Movie, on which pre-1948 WB titles as allocated to Channel 5 (as opposed to the group of films WCBS had that were premiered on The Early Show and The Late Show) had their New York TV premieres on Sunday nights in prime time. Metropolitan Movie was a reference to what in 1958 had been the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation, which owned Channel 5, and what as of 1965 was the Metropolitan Broadcasting Television division of Metromedia, Inc. (This movie title was also in use by Washington, DC's WTTG Channel 5, per 1961 listings for DC and Baltimore put up recently.) After that division was renamed Metromedia Television in 1967 (which dovetailed with the introduction of a proprietary sans-serif font called "Metromedia Television Alphabet" for use on their TV stations beginning in August), this movie series was rechristened Metromedia Movie, which it remained until 1986 when Fox took over. The Sunday 1 PM movie would doubtless have been 5 Star Movie, another umbrella title which dated to at least 1958 (and, until 1961, run within the same weeknight time slot that Hollywood's Finest, which debuted in 1962, was occupying at this point). I don't know what title(s) their 10 AM and 1:30 PM weekday movies were run by as of 1965, but at the start of the decade they were run under the respective banners of the 10 O'Clock Movie and Late Lunch Movie.

I.I.N.M., WNEW was also the last of the New York commercial VHF TV stations to go color, albeit only with film and slide capacity at the outset (among the first feature films shown in color on Channel 5 were the original Alec Guinness/Peter Sellers The Ladykillers, on the Sept. 9, 1965 Hollywood's Finest, and the Alan Ladd film The McConnell Story, on the Sept. 10, 1965 edition of Movie Greats); WPIX had done some colorcasting since mid-1965, and WOR had broadcast some films in color beginning in fall 1960.

I would presume East of Eden (part of a package of post-1948 Warners' films that, until a few months before this week of 1965, had been with WNBC-TV since 1961) was likewise shown by Channel 5 in color . . .

 

[Stanislav]

Sunday October 17, 1965

9am- Wonderama with Sonny Fox

Monday October 18-Friday October 22,1965

8:30am- Sandy Becker

3:30pm- Chuck McCann

5pm- Paul Winchell
6pm- Sandy Becker Show
7pm- Soupy Sales Show

Saturday October 23, 1965

9am- Chuck McCann

11:30am- Sandy Becker Show

6:30pm- Soupy Sales Show

This is why WNEW was such a great station to grow up with. All of these guys, along with WPIX's Joe Bolton, were like gods to me as a young'un.

That said, there's a lot about this schedule that is perplexing. I don't remember Sandy and Soupy's shows spilling into early evening on weekdays like that (the shows in my memory were more of a late afternoon after-school ritual), and I definitely do not remember those Saturday versions of Chuck, Sandy, and Soupy. I wonder if those were original shows, or they just ran taped repeats of weekday episodes?

 

[Stanislav]

I might add that not only is this schedule emblematic of a long-lost era in TV (local kids' shows), but even in the biggest markets, it's been a long time since you've seen any station doing that many hours per week of local production, period, of any genre other than news.

 

[wbhist]

Also, what was listed as "Paul Winchell" was actually Winchell-Mahoney Time, which was produced out of sister station KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles and syndicated to other stations (besides WNEW). At that point, per TV Guide, only the cartoons shown in-between Winchell's segments were in color.

 

[pqgeorge]

Also, what was listed as "Paul Winchell" was actually Winchell-Mahoney Time, which was produced out of sister station KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles and syndicated to other stations (besides WNEW). At that point, per TV Guide, only the cartoons shown in-between Winchell's segments were in color.

Winchell-Mahoney Time was syndicated via-videotape recordings to several stations including most of the Kaiser Broadcasting stations. WKBG-TV (Channel 56, Cambridge, MA) was one of them. Paul Winchell's show was "wrapped-around" cartoons and other special features including "Clutch Cargo" (that unique cartoon with highly exaggerated mouth movements). The live action parts of the show were in black and white while the cartoons and the other features were in color. I believe the live action parts of Winchell-Mahoney Time were such that the local stations could insert their own local cartoons which they have the rights to air in their market.

At the time, most of the shows were "bicycled around" the various markets around the country and were returned to KTTV in Los Angeles. Metromedia had a bad habit at the time to simply recycle "spent" videotapes after the run was done. As a result, except for a few tapes toward the end of the show's run, most were lost. The late Mr. Winchell was NOT pleased at all. Who could have blamed him. Paul Winchell, a man with unique and varied talents including the patent for an artificial heart, saw many hours of his renowned children's programming go by the way of the Metromedia dumpster. I used to watch the show, back in the day, on WKBG-TV in Cambridge (Boston). I loved it. It ran on Channel 56 well into 1968.

 

[John Murphy]

"I think "Wire Services" was really "Wire Service", a fictional drama series that had run on network television back in the late 1950's."

Wasn't that program known as "Deadline for Action" in syndication?

 

[TVCOOL]

WNEW-TV 5 New York (Metromedia)
October 17-23, 1965 (FALL 1965)

Source: New York Times

Sunday October 17, 1965
7am- Mormon Conference at Salt Lake City (Part 2)
8am- Astro Boy
8:30- King and Odie
9am- Wonderama with Sonny Fox
1pm- Movie- Bataan (1943)
3pm- Metropolitan Movie- She's Working Her Way Through College (1952)
5pm- Movie- Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) (3 straight movies in a row for WNEW 5 that day)
7pm- Assignment Adventure
8pm- The Dakotas
9pm- The Breaking Point
10pm- Opinion in Capital
10:30- Community Dialogue
11pm- News (up against WCBS ansd WNBC)
11:25- Senator Thomas J. Dodd (democrat from Connecticut)
11:30- Wire Services
12am- Sign-Off

Monday October 18-Friday October 22,1965
7:30am- Survey of the Arts
8am- Cartoons
8:15- King and Odie
8:30- Sandy Becker
9:30- Topper
10am- Movie- Crack-up (1937) (Mon), Carnival in Costa Rica (1947) (Tue), Yellow Balloon (1953) (Wed), Barricade (1939) (Thu), Ramona (1936) (Fri)
11:30- Romper Room
12:30pm- King and Odie
12:45pm- Cartoons
1:30pm- Movie- reruns of the 10am showing
3pm- Peter Gunn
3:30- Chuck McCann
4:30- Astro Boy
5pm- Paul Winchell
6pm- Sandy Becker Show
7pm- Soupy Sales Show
7:30- Ensign O'Toole (Mon), Route 66 (Tue), Zorro (Wed), 77 Sunset Strip (Thu), The Outer Limits (Fri)

PRIMETIME
Monday 10-18
8pm- 77 Sunset Strip
9pm- Movie- Johnny Belinda (1948)
11:20pm- Hollywood's Finest- The Young Lovers (1950)
12:42am- Sign-Off

Tuesday 10-19
8:30pm- The Rogues
9:30pm- Colt 45
10pm- Eleventh Hour
11pm- News (up against WCBS, WNBC, WABC, the big dogs in New York at the time)
11:10pm- Hollywood's Finest- Pool of London (1951)
12:35am- Sign-Off

Wednesday 10-20
8pm- The Untouchables
9pm- Movie Greats- Edge of Darkness (1943)
11pm- News
11:45- Movie- The Corn is Green (1945)
1:40am- Sign-Off

Thursday 10-21
8:30- Route 66
9:30- The Third Man
10pm- March of Time- 7 Days in the life of President Lyndon B. Johnson
11pm- News
11:10- Hollywood's Finest- Dark Victory (1939)
12:54am- Sign-off

Friday 10-22
8:30- The Detectives
9pm- Movie Greats- East of Eden (1955)
11:30- Hollywood's Finest- Night has a Thousand Eyes (1948)
12:51am- Sign-Off

Saturday October 23, 1965
8:30am- Topper
9am- Chuck McCann
10:30am- Jungle Jim
11am- Astro Boy
11:30- Sandy Becker Show
12:30pm- Speak Out
1:30pm- Bat Masterson
2:30pm- Saturday Playhouse
3:30pm- East Side Comedy
4:30pm- Horse Racing- "The Man O'War from Aquedect"
5pm- Sahara Invitational Golf Tournament from Las Vegas
6:30- Soupy Sales Show
7:30- Road America 500- (auto race)
8pm- Wrestling
10pm- Metropolitan Movie- Yellow Jack (1938)
11:45pm- Hollywood's Finest- Heaven can Wait (1943)
1:55am- Community Dialogue
2:25am- Sign-Off<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by highwayman128 on 08/20/05 04:45 PM.</FONT></P>

8pm Wrestling was it WWWF Washington Wrestling? WWE's first TV show

 

[CTListener]

8pm Wrestling was it WWWF Washington Wrestling? WWE's first TV show

I believe a show was also taped in Bridgeport, CT, in those early years of the WWWF. Maybe that's what was shown in New York.

 

[TVCOOL]

What no talks shows (I.e. Maury, Jerry Springer, Steve Wilkos)aired in those days on WNEW?

 

[K.M. Richards]

What no talks shows (I.e. Maury, Jerry Springer, Steve Wilkos)aired in those days on WNEW?

1965.

What few first-run talk shows were in existence were tame, celebrity-driven affairs such as Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. Both were syndicated by Group W at this point in history; my recollection is that Group W programming tended to be aired on WPIX/11 in the 1960s.

After Griffin went to CBS in 1969 and was cancelled in 1972, his second syndicated show was indeed carried on WNEW (in prime-time, as with the rest of Metromedia's stations). Douglas stayed in syndication and was with Group W all the way to 1980 (a close to 20-year relationship).

Have you done any research on the history of television talk shows? I'm guessing not if you think shows like Springer and Maury existed in 1965.

 

[Gregg.]

Well, maybe that was a joke, since Channel 5 today runs so many of those types of rowdy talk shows.

I thought it was a good alternative that Merv Griffin aired on Channel 5 in prime time (and as you mention, on the other Metromedia independent stations around the country). If ABC, NBC and CBS didn't have something of interest to you, or they were airing repeats, you could tune to Merv for some banter and fun. Unlike a movie or off-network drama seen on most independents in prime time, it didn't matter when you tuned in or tuned out.

That's why I didn't think it was a radical idea when NBC tried stripping Jay Leno at 10pm on weeknights, since WNEW-TV had done it decades before. But of course, Leno in prime time didn't work out at all.

 

[TVCOOL]

When WNEW-TV moved their news from 11pm where they were losing to the other channels at that hour and moved to 10pm it established them at 10pm that is still around to this day.

 

[K.M. Richards]

When WNEW-TV moved their news from 11pm where they were losing to the other channels at that hour and moved to 10pm it established them at 10pm that is still around to this day.

Once again, you made something up because you don't know the history.

WNEW-TV made the move to 10:00 for their newscast because all of the Metromedia stations did that at the same time. It was a corporate-wide decision and was more a case of being able to expand to an hour when most independents in their markets were still doing 30 minutes. Their research had determined that no one would sit through a 60 minute newscast that started at 11:00, but would if the start time was 10:00. (An hour earlier for their stations in Central Time, of course.)

It was more about having a longer newscast to sell spots in than it was how they were doing in the ratings against WCBS, WNBC and WABC.

 

[Gregg.]

But surely some counter-programming to the big three network O&Os was involved. If you look at some LA TV Guides, Metromedia's KTTV 11's 10pm news may have been 60 minutes but KCOP 13 ran its 10pm news for only 30 minutes. (LA's 2, 4, 5 & 7 were all at 11pm.)

Then at 11pm, while everyone else had news, the Metromedia stations could counter-program with a sitcom or something else to grab the audience that didn't care about news. Before 10pm news for independent stations became commonplace, some independent stations, and even ABC affiliates, would delay their late news to 11:30, so they could run an entertainment show at 11pm, while the CBS and NBC affiliates were running their late news.

 

[Ultimajock]

But surely some counter-programming to the big three network O&Os was involved. If you look at some LA TV Guides, Metromedia's KTTV 11's 10pm news may have been 60 minutes but KCOP 13 ran its 10pm news for only 30 minutes. (LA's 2, 4, 5 & 7 were all at 11pm.)

...you appear to not realise that, unlike New York, the anchors on the two bigger indies in Los Angeles -- KTLA/5 and KTTV/11 -- were usually bigger stars than the network O&Os had. George Putnam and Hal Fishman were on both KTLA and KTTV during their careers, and Alex Dreier arrived from WBKB/7 Chicago at KTTV in '67; the closest to such "star" anchors at the O&Os was Jerry Dunphy at CBS' KNXT/2 and Jack Latham at KNBC/4. On the other hand, the other indies -- RKO General's KHJ-TV/9, Chris Craft's KCOP/13, and eventually KIIX and KPOL-TV/KWHY both on Channel 22, KMEX/34 and KXLA/40 -- always played catch-up ball with their newscasts. One of KHJ's anchors was Ann Marshall, better known as an actress (My Favorite Martian, My Three Sons) and pop singer (The Mike Curb Congregation, Heaven Bound). After losing some notables (Hal Fishman to KTTV, Baxter Ward to KABC-TV/7) in the early '60s, KCOP's most notable anchor wasn't a journalist, but game show announcer and former KRLA/1110 disc jockey Charlie O'Donnell. The news departments at KHJ and KCOP were so weak that by 1967 they'd both quit 10:00 newscasts; KHJ would have Allan Moll read headlines in-between prime-time movies at various times and lengths, and KCOP limited itself to one midday newscast at 11:00 AM. KIIX's target audience, the African-American communities on Los Angeles' South Side and suburbs, limited anything they were able to try (though one of their staffers, Larry McCormick, spent decades at KTLA afterwards), as did KMEX's Spanish-speaking audience. The stock market reportage during KWHY's daytime constituted their news department, and Bilingual KXLA used their 8:00 PM newscast to split its schedule blocks, with Lyn Sherwood's first 15 minutes winding up English for the day, and Miguel Alonso's next 15 minutes kicking off the night's Spanish programming. Thus, the news market was most realistically spread five ways, between KNXT, KNBC, KTLA, KABC and KTTV, and comparing KTTV to KCOP is like comparing the Dodgers to the Loyola Marymount Lions...

 

[K.M. Richards]

the anchors on the two bigger indies in Los Angeles -- KTLA/5 and KTTV/11 -- were usually bigger stars than the network O&Os had. George Putnam and Hal Fishman were on both KTLA and KTTV during their careers

The former became such a major personality that he literally walked back and forth between KTLA and KTTV several times during his career (usually at contract renewal time, sometimes because he would anger management with his editorializing) -- the stations were literally across Van Ness Ave. from each other on the south side of Sunset Blvd. -- and whichever station had him at the time would bill the 10:00 news, both in print ads and on the air, as "George Putnam News".

And the audience would invariably follow George from channel 5 to channel 11 and then back again.

In the early 1960's, KTTV also did a 15-minute newscast in the 6:00pm hour, competing with the network O&Os' casts, with Putnam as the anchor. It was there that he developed his trademark sign off: "Ladies and gentlemen, that's the news, up-to-the-minute, that's all the news. Back at ten, see you then!" (I bet King Daevid remembers that as clearly as I.)

He had another trademark signature, created when KTTV management finally gave up on ever getting him to stop editorializing and gave him a specific segment of the 10:00 news to do so. As George was about to make his point, he would precede it with "and it is this reporter's opinion that ..." (similar to way Dennis Miller would always segue from his monologue to the rant with the signal "now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but ..." -- maybe Dennis got the idea from George!).

When he originally left the television anchor chair in 1975, he moved to radio, where he hosted a conservative interview and call-in talk show called "Talk Back" which aired on AM 870 for more than a quarter-century, then via the CRN network. For many years it originated at a remote studio in downtown L.A. at the ARCO Plaza building, where there were chairs set up for people to sit and watch the show through plate glass windows; they even had a microphone on the audience side of the windows for people to comment as if they were calling in.

He returned to anchor weekend television news at KHJ-TV and KCOP for brief stints in the 1990s, and passed away in 2008. Putnam was more right-wing than William Buckley -- his anti-Communism commentaries were legendary in their own way -- but he struck a resonant nerve with the Los Angeles viewers and was a genuine star personality.