Airing programming "early"?

[RFCCRadioAudio]

With NBC putting the US/Canada Gold Medal women's hockey game just into what would be the 11 Eastern (10 Central) news, this is the first time I've ever seen the late news scheduled early.

Other than breaking news, has the local news or other local or network programming in your areas ever been scheduled to air early?

 

[NYCsporty]

NBC did this on New Year's Eve airing local news at 10 Eastern before Miley Cyrus's live NYE special in Miami at 10:30 although some stations in the Central time zone didn't air it until 10:30 local time.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

I don't have first-hand knowledge of this as I never lived in that DMA (or have even been in deep southern Illinois for that matter), but I've seen other posters on here in the past mention this occurred.

I've seen reports that during the "Cosby Show" run on NBC, even Thursday night was not immune to preemptions on Paducah, KY NBC affiliate WPSD-6 (Paducah/Cape Girardeau/Carbondale/Harrisburg DMA in far S IL, W KY, SE MO and even far NW Tennessee). Due to Kentucky Wildcats basketball. However, on those nights apparently WPSD was allowed to obtain that night's Cosby early and thus was able to air the show before basketball began (presumably at 6:30 PM).

 

[crainbebo]

Game shows run early during Olympics periods on KNDO in Yakima. This time around, it's Jeopardy! and Feud in the early-mid afternoon before they go into Olympics coverage later. Wheel of Fortune was shown at 2:30PM during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago, hours before non-NBC Pacific time affiliates, and before any non-NBC station in the U.S. This time around, it's on their SWX subchannel at 10PM.

WPSD may have obtained the Cosby Show early from a satellite wild-feed that was intended for Canadian stations. Those feeds were 'clean' from the production company, so Carsey-Werner, zero commercials, a TRT of 22-23 minutes, and often fed in the middle of the night 1-3 days in advance. Some satellite viewers (and Trekkies) taped the clean feeds of Star Trek TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Babylon 5 to avoid the commercials.

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

Oscar Sunday has recently brought early local news and World News Tonight availabilities in the east on ABC affiliates.

 

[TexasTom]

It's a long time ago, but back when "Star Trek: Enterprise" had its series finale on UPN, the UPN station in Dallas/Fort Worth (KTXA-21) had a conflict with a Dallas Mavericks game and actually made arrangements with the network to start the episode a half hour early. Unfortunately, for the handful of viewers (including myself) that could watch in high definition at the time, it was a lousy deal because we only got the crappy standard definition version.

 

[newsmark]

Game shows run early during Olympics periods on KNDO in Yakima. This time around, it's Jeopardy! and Feud in the early-mid afternoon before they go into Olympics coverage later. Wheel of Fortune was shown at 2:30PM during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago, hours before non-NBC Pacific time affiliates, and before any non-NBC station in the U.S. This time around, it's on their SWX subchannel at 10PM.

WPSD may have obtained the Cosby Show early from a satellite wild-feed that was intended for Canadian stations. Those feeds were 'clean' from the production company, so Carsey-Werner, zero commercials, a TRT of 22-23 minutes, and often fed in the middle of the night 1-3 days in advance. Some satellite viewers (and Trekkies) taped the clean feeds of Star Trek TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Babylon 5 to avoid the commercials.

I find it unlikely that WPSD aired Cosby from a wild feed. NBC would have had a cow about a station running Cosby without the network commercials. (And there's no way they wouldn't find out.)

 

[crainbebo]

It would be the same scenario as the Dateline and 48 Hours episodes on Saturdays after sports runover. All PSAs and promos and plenty of opportunities for local stations to cover them with ads.

 

[gr8oldies]

Game shows run early during Olympics periods on KNDO in Yakima. This time around, it's Jeopardy! and Feud in the early-mid afternoon before they go into Olympics coverage later. Wheel of Fortune was shown at 2:30PM during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago, hours before non-NBC Pacific time affiliates, and before any non-NBC station in the U.S. This time around, it's on their SWX subchannel at 10PM.

WPSD may have obtained the Cosby Show early from a satellite wild-feed that was intended for Canadian stations. Those feeds were 'clean' from the production company, so Carsey-Werner, zero commercials, a TRT of 22-23 minutes, and often fed in the middle of the night 1-3 days in advance. Some satellite viewers (and Trekkies) taped the clean feeds of Star Trek TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Babylon 5 to avoid the commercials.

When I worked at a TV station in the 90s, I used to see satellite feeds of shows, which I always assumed was from the production company to the network.

 

[crainbebo]

Most were in the overnight hours at very strange times. Y&R always fed at 4:15 AM ET on one of the Anik E2 transponders, along with Days of Our Lives an hour later. They were taped by a lot of satellite soap fans. Canadian fans still get Y&R earlier than CBS does, as Bell-Philip sends the show to Global a day ahead. Reruns air on days that CBS has preemptions (like the European soccer the last few weeks and the upcoming March Madness games).
ER and Friends also put out clean feeds in the very early hours of the morning, anywhere from 18 hours to 3 days in advance of the network. A good majority of primetime shows did this, usually not newsmagazines like 60 Minutes however. An old OnSat Magazine I acquired off eBay last year has two whole pages dedicated to network and syndicated feeds.

 

[anotherguyTN]

I find it unlikely that WPSD aired Cosby from a wild feed. NBC would have had a cow about a station running Cosby without the network commercials. (And there's no way they wouldn't find out.)

Firepoint525 (Who at one time lived in WPSD's signal area) has mentioned it before in other threads that WPSD did manage to air Cosby at 6:30 on nights when there was a Kentucky basketball game. I don't know how often it happened but I'd think it probably did happen at times. Here's a thread where he mentions it: https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/they-preempted-that-for-this.471618/post-5330934

They once carried a UK basketball game on Thursday evening, right at the height of the popularity of the Cosby Show! They actually carried Cosby a half-hour early that evening (at 6:30!), while delaying the rest of the NBC Thursday lineup to overnights, so that everyone could tape it.

 

[gr8oldies]

Firepoint525 (Who at one time lived in WPSD's signal area) has mentioned it before in other threads that WPSD did manage to air Cosby at 6:30 on nights when there was a Kentucky basketball game. I don't know how often it happened but I'd think it probably did happen at times. Here's a thread where he mentions it: https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/they-preempted-that-for-this.471618/post-5330934

Unless NBC somehow sent a pre-feed to WPSD, which I can't imagine happening, there's no other way for them to contractually get the show.

 

[gr8oldies]

Most were in the overnight hours at very strange times. Y&R always fed at 4:15 AM ET on one of the Anik E2 transponders, along with Days of Our Lives an hour later. They were taped by a lot of satellite soap fans. Canadian fans still get Y&R earlier than CBS does, as Bell-Philip sends the show to Global a day ahead. Reruns air on days that CBS has preemptions (like the European soccer the last few weeks and the upcoming March Madness games).
ER and Friends also put out clean feeds in the very early hours of the morning, anywhere from 18 hours to 3 days in advance of the network. A good majority of primetime shows did this, usually not newsmagazines like 60 Minutes however. An old OnSat Magazine I acquired off eBay last year has two whole pages dedicated to network and syndicated feeds.

When I was working at that TV station, I religiously picked up OnSat for that purpose, for "DXing" the satellite when I was there late night. I remember the last episode of Cheers feeding somewhere around 6:30am the day it would air that evening. There was one night I was at the station all night and remembered from the satellite guide that Northern Exposure was on the satellite Sunday morning at 4am, before Monday's airing. That particular night it "froze" about 15 minutes in. I also remember CBS pre-feeding special shows in advance for affiliates, presumably for sales and promotion purposes. Of course, there were all the feeds of syndicated talk, game and off-network reruns for stations to record. (Amaze your friends! Watch Jeopardy a week early!)

 

[crainbebo]

Some syndicated shows fed the whole week in a multiple-hour timespan on the same transponder. I have Wonder Years reruns in my 1994 OnSat appearing at 12:20PM ET on T402-7, five episodes in a row (M/Tu/W/Th/F). Seemed convenient for stations. Tape the whole week, put your local ads into the black, and voila!
The SiskelEbert.org website, which is full of classic episodes of the movie review show, has a bunch of episodes that were taped from the satellite feed complete with the :30 promos preceding the show. OnSat showed a feed at 5:30 PM Thursday on T402-6. Those feed watchers must have been the smartest folks that weekend at the theatres. They avoided the two thumbs-down stinkers that everyone else filled the house for.
Married...with Children had at least three feeds of the new episode for Sunday night. Wonder why it was fed three times throughout the week, all of them around 2 AM ET or so?
Interestingly, the NBC Sunday Movie was fed on Thursday morning at 3AM, but the CBS and ABC Sunday Night Movies didn't get a feed listing for some reason. I heard some of those TV movies were fed in a 'rough cut' for reviewers.

 

[gr8oldies]

Some syndicated shows fed the whole week in a multiple-hour timespan on the same transponder. I have Wonder Years reruns in my 1994 OnSat appearing at 12:20PM ET on T402-7, five episodes in a row (M/Tu/W/Th/F). Seemed convenient for stations. Tape the whole week, put your local ads into the black, and voila!
The SiskelEbert.org website, which is full of classic episodes of the movie review show, has a bunch of episodes that were taped from the satellite feed complete with the :30 promos preceding the show. OnSat showed a feed at 5:30 PM Thursday on T402-6. Those feed watchers must have been the smartest folks that weekend at the theatres. They avoided the two thumbs-down stinkers that everyone else filled the house for.
Married...with Children had at least three feeds of the new episode for Sunday night. Wonder why it was fed three times throughout the week, all of them around 2 AM ET or so?
Interestingly, the NBC Sunday Movie was fed on Thursday morning at 3AM, but the CBS and ABC Sunday Night Movies didn't get a feed listing for some reason. I heard some of those TV movies were fed in a 'rough cut' for reviewers.

Interesting about The Wonder Years. The only off-network reruns I remember us taking at the time was MASH, which were still "bicycled". We used our regular (and very bad) insertion system for the commercials, but I remember the last station that had the tapes leaving their commercials in one week. I don't know why Married With Children would feed 3 times. I'm only assuming these "wild feeds" were from the production company to the network, I welcome other explanations. The weekly movies "rough cut" makes sense, I remember the "rough cut" of the Sinatra mini-series and that it had "temporary music". It ran around 2am Eastern, after Letterman and whatever followed it, (or it may have been pre-Letterman, in that case after the second "Crime Time After Prime Time".

It was always fascinating what was on. I remember Sam Donaldson just sitting at a desk for several minutes. Mexican channels or feeds with US shows dubbed into Spanish, weird news feeds, 974 shopping channels, and "Shepards Chapel" 24/7

 

[crainbebo]

"Sinatra" was aired 11/8 and 11/10/92 in 2 parts, so Letterman was still on NBC at that point. "Temporary music," it probably aired a month before the airdate and they had yet to get the rights from Capitol Records (and others) to Sinatra's music.
Yes, strange to see MWC being fed 3x during the week (and each of them said 'new', so obviously the new episode for Fox). Thursday morning at 2:30AM, Saturday morning at 3:30AM and Sunday morning at 3AM, all Eastern, at that point.
Another rerun package getting all 5 shows for the week at the same time was Roseanne, running on T302-22 at 6:30AM ET Sunday morning.
The original Star Trek was not fed on satellite as the stations were given videotape copies of the episodes to air and insert local ads into. KNDO Yakima was one of those stations. TNG was the same way for weeknight repeats.

Bad insertion system for commercials...sounds like my locals here in Yakima during the '90s. Occasionally, a KVEW promo went out on KAPP for a few seconds before it was caught. And I've seen KCYU (Fox) recordings with KBWU (Tri-Cities) and even KAYU Spokane promos accidentally going out. Vice versa with the Tri-Cities semi-satellite stations that had to cover Yakima ads...occasionally I've seen a few seconds of a Yakima ad go out on old KNDU/KVEW recordings. KIMA/KEPR wasn't so bad about that.