[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'210022\' date=\'Mar 10 2009, 02:17 PM\']
PYRAMID, for all of its endurance and success as a daytime network series, was hampered by a time period restriction (it was prohibited from running prior to 4 PM ET because of fears of conflicting with the CBS run)
Thanks for the info...that's great information.
Interestingly, in fall 1987, WIVB Buffalo picked up
Win, Lose or Draw for 7 PM, and bumped the third year of
$100,000 Pyramid to 7:30 AM (yes, AM). They didn't air the daily
$25,000 Pyramid at that time, instead running
Sally Jesse Raphael in that slot.
I'm wondering...did that time period restriction only apply to cities in which both aired...or was it something like you couldn't air the $100K version between certain hours (say 8 AM and 4 PM)?
Just wondering...
[/quote]
(Again going on roughly 20-odd years of faded memory)...By the fall of 1987 PYRAMID's lineup had softened considerably, with WIN LOSE in particular aggressively scooping up a lot of 4-8 PM real estate (it was Disney's first syndication effort and was similarly targeted away from daytime since NBC had also bought the Vicki Lawrence run for that daypart)and there was much scrambling to keep enough national clearance to make national ad sales viable. In most cases, that meant accepting post-2 AM graveyard clearances (including a handful of the FOX-owned stations that shoehorned it in as a favor between news rebroadcasts and paid programming) that were essentially in-house favors (no license fee) and obviously ratings-doomed. In a couple of cases, there were somewhat more opportunistic clearances offered by maverick CBS affiliates such as Buffalo and, as I recall, WWL in New Orleans as well, where special dispensation was negotiated--the time periods did not conflict with CBS' actual daytime footprint of 10 AM-4 PM ET, which was the territory they were trying to protect, and the affiliates in question weren't significant enough to truly make a difference. We suspect they felt that if the rules were capable of being "bent", let it be with one of their own. Actually--and I'll defer to this group for confirmation--I believe WWL actually programmed both $100K and $25K in the same morning line-up.
