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Network evening news at 7/6c?

WSB carried the syndicated version of "Family Feud" in the 1980-81 season (a purchase the station had made before switching to ABC and picking up the daytime version as well); "ET" debuted in the fall of 1981 and, as you noted, is still on Channel 2 at 7:30. In fact, in 33 years, Channel 2 has never changed its Monday-Friday 7-8 PM block of ABC News at 7 and "ET" at 7:30. (It is also, I believe, the only ABC affiliate in the Eastern time zone which still carries its network news at 7; to my knowledge, Montgomery, AL, is the only market that sees it at 6 (CT).)

That quote gave me an idea for this thread: Which Big 3 stations that you know of air their network evening newscasts at 7 ET / 6 CT? Are there any stations in the Mountain or Pacific time zones that do this?
 
ABC used to feed their evening news early with the first feed at 5:30pm and ABC stations, especially O&Os, often ran their news blocks early and counter-programmed with entertainment at 6:30 and 7:00.
 
WRC-TV 4 (NBC) out of Washington DC still airs NBC Nightly News at 7pm, and WJZ-TV 13 (CBS) out of Baltimore airs the CBS Evening News at 7pm as well. WJZ has done this when they were an ABC affiliate as well.
 
WHTM-TV 27 in Harrisburg (ABC) actually carried the national news at 6pm and ran syndicated programs at the 6:30 slot until September 1981, when "ABC World News" moved to 6:30.
 
WLAJ in Lansing used to air World News at 7 for quite a while. It's been airing at 6:30 since WLNS took over operations, but it's gone back and forth within the past decade or so.
 
For years WBTV Charlotte NC had CBS news at 7, after an hour-long newscast. Now WBTV is the only station with a 7:00 newscast that airs after Scott Pelley.

I can remember a few years ago WSOC-TV airing ABC News on Sunday at 6 and having its local newscast at 6:30. I also remember evidence that the other ABC affiliate (I can't remember now if this was way back when that was WGHP) had a separate newscast at a different time. It wasn't that the same newscast was taped and shown 30 minutes later, but it was a whole new newscast.

This is something I was reminded of because Dan Rather was once interrupted by protesters. I must have seen this on WFMY, because when WBTV aired Dan at 7, there were no protesters.
 
At one time there were five markets where all three network newscasts aired at 7: New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, and Atlanta. (And to the person from Charlotte, WSOC aired ABC News at 7 back in the '80s.) The trend away from the 7 PM airtime began when WABC moved "World News" to 6:30 and put "Jeopardy!" at 7, trouncing the competition and forcing WCBS and WNBC to follow suit and move their network newscasts to 6:30 (the same thing may have happened around the same time in Los Angeles--around 1985).

I remember, too, when WSOC carried the 6 PM feed of ABC News on Sunday; WGHP and WLOS carried it at 6:30. WSB and Dallas' WFAA still don't carry ABC News on Sunday.

ABC did its first feed at 5:30 for about a year and a half in 1967 and '68 (I was living in Norfolk and ABC's newscast came on WVEC at 5:30); starting in the fall of '68, ABC's first feed (what some of you call the "practice feed") was at 6, and that lasted until 1982. By that time, most of the stations still carrying the early feed were in the Central time zone (5 PM).

And here's one to chew on: vchimpanzee noted, correctly, that WBTV is the only station in Charlotte with a 7 PM local newscast; only one other station in North Carolina, WNCN, the NBC affiliate in Raleigh/Durham, does a 7 PM local news. By contrast, there are six stations in South Carolina that have local news at 7: WSPA Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville, WIS and WLTX Columbia, WCIV and WCSC Charleston, WPDE Florence/Myrtle Beach.
 
I remember, too, when WSOC carried the 6 PM feed of ABC News on Sunday; WGHP and WLOS carried it at 6:30. WSB and Dallas' WFAA still don't carry ABC News on Sunday.

And here's one to chew on: vchimpanzee noted, correctly, that WBTV is the only station in Charlotte with a 7 PM local newscast; only one other station in North Carolina, WNCN, the NBC affiliate in Raleigh/Durham, does a 7 PM local news. By contrast, there are six stations in South Carolina that have local news at 7: WSPA Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville, WIS and WLTX Columbia, WCIV and WCSC Charleston, WPDE Florence/Myrtle Beach.

Apparently an ABC affiliate nixing the Sunday edition of World News is more common than I thought; WNEP in Scranton has aired "Pennsylvania Outdoor Life" at 6:30pm Sundays for well over 20 years (possibly 25?) now.

As far as 7pm news goes, WHTM in Harrisburg (ABC) will have been airing local news at 7pm for 10 years this fall. Previously the slot was filled with "Friends" reruns (which then went to Fox affiliate WPMT). This is the second attempt at local news in the 7pm slot in this area; the first was WGAL in Lancaster (NBC). I remember being quite disappointed by that move. Previously the 7pm-8pm hour had been "Tic Tac Dough" at 7, followed by a rotating (depending on the day of the week) assortment of shows at 7:30. "Muppet Show", "$100,000 Name That Tune", and some others are what I remember in that slot. However, in the fall of 1980, "Tic Tac Dough" went to WHP-21, same timeslot, and 7:30pm went to PM Magazine. So much for variety! In the fall of 1988, WGAL pulled a slight switcheroo and made the 6-7pm hour all local news and moved the NBC Nightly News to 7pm. It remained this way until early 1991, when the local news hour moved from 6-7 to 5:30-6:30, moving NBC Nightly News back to 6:30 and putting Entertainment Tonight (which had been airing at 5:30) on at 7pm. It still airs there today.
 
When I worked in Great Falls, MT both the ABC (my station) and CBS affiliates carried the network news at 5pm MT with local news at 5:30.

By that September, my station decided to go with a 5/6 newscast with World News in between.

So far as I know, the CBS station still airs network/local from 5-6 (which puts them in pattern with their sister stations throughout the state).
 
It was always interesting to see the differences in the feeds. When I was at the University of Georgia in the '70s, our cable brought in ABC News on WLOS at 6 and WXIA at 6:30. One night during the Yom Kippur War, Harry Reasoner ended the 6 PM feed with a bare headline from the Middle East; that headline became the lead story at 6:30, and I have no idea what was seen at 7.

I could always tell if the 7 PM feed of Cronkite was live or tape because, going into commercials, there was frequently a wide shot of the newsroom with a clock on the wall.
 
7pm network newscasts

some reasoning behind airing the network newscast later is the fact that in many larger cities' afternoon commutes carry well into the evening due to people working later or heavy traffic volume on the highways....

another detail to note would be the shift in "prime time access programming" which is the 7pm-8pm hour on the east coast... in 1984 when wheel of fortune and jeopardy! were first launched...before that the affiliate-programmed access hour was largely made up of local programming like "it's academic", "romper room", or "bowling for dollars". when first-run syndication first became popular, series like the aforementioned gameshows, the original version of people's court, a current affair, and entertainment tonight began taking bigger shares of the ratings...
 
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