Election Night & Game Shows...

[TimK2003]

In most TV markets last night, wall-to-wall network coverage of election night began as early as 7PM Eastern on the Big 4 networks, and pretty much bumped any & all non-news programming...

...Unless you were in Cleveland.

In the Rock & Roll Capital, CBS affiliate WOIO-19 did not elect to go with the first hour of CBS's national election coverage, even though the other affiliates went to their network feeds at 7pm.  Instead, WOIO stayed local and the one-two punch of "Millionaire" & "Deal" triumphed over Katie Couric, and the 5 or so people who watch her.

Were there any other markets in which the syndicated game shows won out over network election coverage?

And BTW, Kudos to WOIO for providing an alternative to the election night madness, albeit just for an hour!!

/A rare occurrence in which CBS News could not interrupt a game show!!!

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'TimK2003\' post=\'201124\' date=\'Nov 5 2008, 05:06 PM\']
/A rare occurrence in which CBS News could not interrupt a game show!!![/quote]
An affiliate turned down Katie Couric's hard-hitting coverage?

About damned time.

[opimus]

Did any market show wheel yesterday?

[aaron sica]

[quote name=\'opimus\' post=\'201127\' date=\'Nov 5 2008, 08:51 PM\']
Did any market show wheel yesterday?
[/quote]

I'm going to guess that WLNY 55/10 on Long Island probably showed it....

Chuck Donegan, please pick up the white courtesy phone..

[Fedya]

Jeopardy! was on WLNY out of Long Island at 5:00 PM; I presume Wheel followed as usual at 5:30.  (I don't watch Wheel, so I wouldn't know.)

[ChrisLambert!]

As is often the case, Wheel and J! moved from WTHR-13 to WTHR-13.2 to make way for NBC News coverage, which itself was pre-empted most of the night for local coverage.

[PYLdude]

[quote name=\'Fedya\' post=\'201130\' date=\'Nov 5 2008, 09:02 PM\']
Jeopardy! was on WLNY out of Long Island at 5:00 PM; I presume Wheel followed as usual at 5:30.  (I don't watch Wheel, so I wouldn't know.)
[/quote]

You'd presume correctly.

(And how do I know? I watched both.)

[Gus]

WREX showed Wheel; I was under the impression that the 6:00 to 7:00 CT coverage was more or less an extension of Nightly News, so we aired the normal Nightly News at 5:30, then our 6:00 newscast, and Wheel at 6:30 as usual, then joined primetime. Our rationale, I guess, is, what are they going to report on at 6:30? The polls haven't closed yet, etc.

[bscripps]

[quote name=\'TimK2003\' post=\'201124\' date=\'Nov 5 2008, 08:06 PM\']
Were there any other markets in which the syndicated game shows won out over network election coverage?
[/quote]
Cattle Tracks/Traverse City/Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where WPBN/WTOM (NBC) ran their normal lineup of WoF and J!.  I know, 'cause I was running master control at the time at my station, running regular episodes of "Raymond" and "Two and a Half Men".  

Two good reasons for stations to have opted out of the 7-8pm hour:
1) Local advertising.  I can't speak for other networks, but I think the local avails for that hour for CBS affiliates was somewhere in the "nowhere near the fourteen minutes we'll squeeze out of syndicated programs" level.  
2) Did anyone actually watch that first hour of coverage?  I had it on a separate monitor in the control room and occasionally took a peek--IIRC, at 7:55pm, when CBS went to black for the first local cutaway, McCain led Obama in electoral votes by a score of 15-3, or something like that, and each had a popular vote count around one million.  Meh.  There wasn't (and never is) anything really worth an hour of coverage at 7pm.

ObGS: What's the over-under on Rich Fields showing up in a showcase as a CNN-style "hologram" before the end of the season?

[DrBear]

FWIW WLUK Green Bay (Fox) ran the J/WOF hour at 6 pm (CT) before joining Shepard Smith and the Foxies at 7.