[/
WABC programmed Oprah Winfrey at 10 AM when it launched, and realized quickly they had a phenomenon on their hands, so switched it to 4:00 PM to go head-to-head with Phil Donahue, starting December 15. The station was running Jeopardy at 4 and Rafferty Card Sharks at 4:30, so they switched time slots - but since WABC couldn't run Rafferty Card Sharks before 4 PM (in order to avoid competition with CBS's network run), Split Second ran instead. A few weeks later, WABC opened up the 7:00 PM slot for Jeopardy, which cause a small kerfuffle among TV critics (all of the New York stations had always run network news at 7, so this was a major change; within a few years all three stations had moved the network news to 6:30).
[/quote]
The same day that Split Second premiered on 12/15/1986 was when all the changes took place on WABC. Year-old Jeopardy reruns aired at 10AM, Split Second at 10:30, Oprah moved to 4PM, bumping the current season of Jeopardy to 7PM where it remains 33 years later. Hollywood Squares stayed at 7:30, Card Sharks moved to 5AM then 4:30 (still Monday to Friday and not Tuesday through Saturday early morning). For awhile I think it was paired up with Elaine Joyce Dating Game.
ABC network news moved to 6:30 that night, which was big news back in the day and pretty unheard of. WCBS did follow by moving its news to 6:30 September 1988 to make way for syndicated Win Lose or Draw second season (which didn’t last long... moved back to weekend late nights in January). WNBC finally switched in September of 1991 to make room for Love Connection which was suddenly doing well around the country, and later flipped with Cops reruns.