Poking through the Newspaper Archive on Google (which I didn\'t know until today, thanks to Aaron Sica!), I wanted to learn more about what NBC wanted affiliates to schedule in 1987. Much of this information may have been covered in old threads but I hope most agree it\'s still fun to talk about.
Here\'s a Sunday TV insert from http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=ZuSUVyMx-TgC&dat=19870222&printsec=frontpage&hl=en\'>early 1987. It\'s upside down.
The Reading Eagle is a terrific TV insert, because it pulled in data from four markets: Philly, Scranton, Harrisburg/Lancaster, and a couple channels from Baltimore for some reason.
Looking through this insert, the four NBC stations listed are WMAR (2) Baltimore, KYW (3) Philly, WGAL (
Lancaster, and WBRE (28) Scranton.
First of all, what all game shows did NBC send out to affiliates in Feb \'87? SP, Scrabble, WoF, Wordplay, Blockbusters, $ale - three total hours? Growing up in Lancaster, we received KYW and WGAL on cable, and I have very little recollection of a few of these shows because neither station cleared them in their original runs. I do remember Scrabble and Wordplay, and Wheel of course.
2, 3, and 8 picked and chose what they wanted to air and pre-empted much of the schedule, while 28 seemed to air everything.
Were the affiliates expected to clear them all? What was the penalty for a station if they chose to carry Donahue instead of $ale? I am curious about the differences between the affiliate agreements between NBC and CBS for daytime. The CBS affiliates seemed to clear much more of the daytime game schedule than NBC.
Other things I\'m noticing from this 1987 TV insert is that WPVI was double-running J! at 11am and 7pm, which I didn\'t know could be done at the time...and WHP running Card Sharks at 4pm, which looks to be Eubanks from a pre-empted 10am hour where they programmed something called \"Valuevision.\"
