Press Your Luck and Challenger Explosion

[Vahan_Nisanian]

Does anyone know if the Challenger Explosion interfered with Press Your Luck or not? The disaster happened at 11:39 AM EST. By this point, the show was now at three different timeslots, depending on the area: 11:00 AM, 12:00 PM, or 4:00 PM.

[clemon79]

By this point, the show was now at three different timeslots, depending on the area: 11:00 AM, 12:00 PM, or 4:00 PM.

I promise you it never aired at any of these times in my market.

[Dbacksfan12]

Does anyone know if the Challenger Explosion interfered with Press Your Luck or not? The disaster happened at 11:39 PM EST. By this point, the show was now at three different timeslots, depending on the area: 11:00 AM, 12:00 PM, or 4:00 PM.

I didn't know NASA launched flights around midnight.

[NickintheATL]

If it was on at any time other than 4:00pm, it was on a tape delay.  What happened then was up to the local station.

By the way, at this point, PYL was on so few stations at all it wasn't funny.

/Side comment: And if we're talking about Eastern stations, I can guarantee you they would never put it on at 11:00am.

[Fedya]

I didn't know 12:00 PM was midnight.

I was home from school that day, because the school district had some sort of state-mandated midterm testing or something that only certain grades took.  This being a Major News Event, I have a pretty distinct memory of what happened, which is that there was a brief interruption of the second Showcase Showdon on TPIR which irritated me because it seemed more like a technical glitch. Cut back to TPIR for a few more seconds, before we got the CBS News Special Report music and rolling news coverage for the rest of the day.

[SRIV94]

Does anyone know if the Challenger Explosion interfered with Press Your Luck or not? The disaster happened at 11:39 AM EST. By this point, the show was now at three different timeslots, depending on the area: 11:00 AM, 12:00 PM, or 4:00 PM.

3:00 PM too.

According to the Vanderbilt TV News Archive, CBS had coverage (with the exception of a 10-minute gap in the 1PM ET hour) from the time the story broke until about 5:13 ET.  So I would say PYL was pre-empted, unless the West Coast ran the intended episode at 3PM PT (my guess is they didn't--but it's only a guess).

[BrandonFG]

I didn't know 12:00 PM was midnight.

He's talking about Vahan's saying the launch was at 11:39 PM. Still a really, really minor nit to pick.

As for PYL, I thought it was 10:30am EST at first, then moved to 4pm EST in early-1986. Never heard of it being on at noon.

[Vahan_Nisanian]

He's talking about Vahan's saying the launch was at 11:39 PM. Still a really, really minor nit to pick.

As for PYL, I thought it was 10:30am EST at first, then moved to 4pm EST in early-1986. Never heard of it being on at noon.

I know the New York and Los Angeles areas had it during the final months at Noon and 11:00 a.m. respectively.

[SuperMatch93]

Just checked Chicago's listings, it was on at 11:00am by the end.

On a related note, did PYL mention the end of the series on the last show?

[snowpeck]

Just checked Chicago's listings, it was on at 11:00am by the end.

On a related note, did PYL mention the end of the series on the last show?

No, and the last month of shows followed a month of reruns, so it seems the plug was pulled abruptly. There was also some effort to sell the show to syndication, but all that managed to happen was a rerun package.

[Vahan_Nisanian]

Nicholas said that if it was on at any time other than 4:00 p.m. in 1986, it was on a tape delay.

By that, does he that these particular stations would air an episode from the day or week before? The Detroit CBS affiliate I heard would do that with the show, and from January to June 1986, the Detroit affiliate aired it at 9:00 a.m.

[snowpeck]

Nicholas said that if it was on at any time other than 4:00 p.m. in 1986, it was on a tape delay.

By that, does he that these particular stations would air an episode from the day or week before? The Detroit CBS affiliate I heard would do that with the show, and from January to June 1986, the Detroit affiliate aired it at 9:00 a.m.

Most likely the day before. The station would roll tape on the network feed at 4PM and then play it back the following day at whatever time. That also means it's entirely possible that the final episode didn't air in any of those timeshift markets. Not that anyone at the time would have noticed the difference.

If indeed CBS was in news coverage until after 5PM the day of the Challenger disaster, that could have affected the Press Your Luck air schedule.

[Bryce L.]

If indeed CBS was in news coverage until after 5PM the day of the Challenger disaster, that could have affected the Press Your Luck air schedule.

Would that day's episode have simply not aired, or would they just push everything back a day (like NBC did with their shows)?

[snowpeck]

If indeed CBS was in news coverage until after 5PM the day of the Challenger disaster, that could have affected the Press Your Luck air schedule.

Would that day's episode have simply not aired, or would they just push everything back a day (like NBC did with their shows)?

That's a good question. With a show like TPIR, the pre-empted show would air at a later date (like the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981. The preempted show ended up airing in January according to the TPIR Timeline.) But I'm not sure what the policy was for a show with returning champions or if there even was a different policy. I don't think there were any other large scale breaking news preemptions during PYL's run to compare it to. And as pointed out earlier, there's a possibility the episode in question only aired on the west coast. The affiliates that were still carrying it had to air something in PYL's slot, after all.

[Ian Wallis]

I was wondering about myself.  In the '70s, anything that was pre-empted would air the next day, so nothing was skipped.  This is why Match Game and Tattletales frequently changed celebrity panels in mid-week.  By the mid-80s, I'm not sure CBS was still doing that.  I don't think a show like $25,000 Pyramid ever straddled weeks, and I'm sure it must have been pre-empted a few times.