Clearance of network radio programs

When I started following radio in the late 80s, almost all network radio affiliates aired just the TOH news. The one exception was the CBS affiliate, which aired tons of features like the Osgood File and also weekly baseball/football games. But as late as the 70s, networks still aired stuff like convention coverage and lots of election night coverage. How much of this programming was aired, especially in your local market? And what did an affiliate have to air to keep its network link?

installLSC said:

When I started following radio in the late 80s, almost all network radio affiliates aired just the TOH news. The one exception was the CBS affiliate, which aired tons of features like the Osgood File and also weekly baseball/football games. But as late as the 70s, networks still aired stuff like convention coverage and lots of election night coverage. How much of this programming was aired, especially in your local market? And what did an affiliate have to air to keep its network link?

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I started at a small-town station (KIBS in Bishop, California) in 1971, and we carried ABC News at the top of the hour, plus Paul Harvey and Howard Cosell's Speaking of Sports. I don't know how much of that was mandated.

At KOLO in Reno six years later, we were NBC and carried a lot of their feature stuff (David Brinkley commentaries, weekend sports updates with Jack Buck) until '78 or so when things were more competitive in the market and we just started delaying the spots.

installLSC said:

When I started following radio in the late 80s, almost all network radio affiliates aired just the TOH news. The one exception was the CBS affiliate, which aired tons of features like the Osgood File and also weekly baseball/football games. But as late as the 70s, networks still aired stuff like convention coverage and lots of election night coverage. How much of this programming was aired, especially in your local market? And what did an affiliate have to air to keep its network link?

Click to expand...

I programmed a small (1kw) station in the late 80s, and when we were selecting a network (terminating a relationship with CNN radio), we found that ABC was the most flexible and easiest to work with. NBC was not available for us, and CBS required carrying too many of their features. Since we also had Sally Jesse Raphael and Tom Snyder at night, along with ABC-C TOH newscasts simulcast overnight with our programming on a sister station some 40 miles away, ABC was always flexible about pre-empting--for example for high school sports. ABC was always quick to provide custom news liners on request, and accommodate us with that occasional re-feed down the line when we had an "oops"

I worked at a full-service CBS affiliate in the early 1980's. We carried TOH news plus most (or all) of the features, like sports and The Osgood File, etc. Carried many of their sports broadcasts too (I recall college basketball). We even had some features we'd record to play back on our automated FM sister station.

In my area, we've also had split affiliations; for years Mutual was heard here on a daytime-only country station (and I mean RURAL; most of their local spots were for tractor dealers and feed stores, and their big daily feature was reruns of Gene Autry's old radio show.) When Larry King took off big time for Mutual, the CBS station (a full-service "granny" format) picked up his show. If memory serves, we got CBS news TOH and Mutual's news quickies at :30; I think the CBS affil occasionally also picked up some of Mutual's live sports in night time slots.

JeffM said:

When Larry King took off big time for Mutual, the CBS station (a full-service "granny" format) picked up his show. If memory serves, we got CBS news TOH and Mutual's news quickies at :30; I think the CBS affil occasionally also picked up some of Mutual's live sports in night time slots.

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Similar here, except that my station was an NBC affiliate. It was strange whenever Jim Bohannon would fill in for Larry, and Camille Bohannon would be heard at TOH doing NBC news. Someone (a caller) once queried Jim about this, to which he explained that Camille was his ex-wife! Big oopsie!!

Later, when I worked at a station that was, at that time, an ABC affiliate, we were required to carry the spots that aired with the :20 after the hour sports break. Only problem was that a program that we had been carrying on CD briefly reverted back to cassette (I never found out why), thus forcing me to air the entire ABC sports break (during a commercial break of the syndicated program) which actually threw the timing off (for the rest of the hour), but what could I do? Since the program we were airing was on cassette, I could not use the cassette deck to record the spot. I seem to recall that at least once, in frustration, I simply stopped the cassette mid-song to air the ABC spots directly off the satellite, then resumed the syndicated program on cassette a minute later. I had no way of recording those spots, but was expected to air them.

At my first job in Athens at a CBS affiliate, we cleared everything the network piped down. On one of my first days I forgot to start the reel recorder for the feed of FACE THE NATION which we are at 6:06P, not the feed time of 12:06. Not a problem, I figured, having seen on the printed network schedule a second feed of FTN at 1:06. I recorded that and left it for the evening guy. Big mistake. The 1:06 feed was edited to :24 minutes, not the :54 of the earlier feed. I was lectured and never missed a pre-feed again.

But locally we had a "guaranteed time spot" that had to run at :58:50 so it would end and you did the ID and had the BONG start the TOH news. Called for back-timing every hour starting with about :45. Certainly was grateful once we started carrying Braves Sunday afternoon ball games!

Other than FTN I do not recall any network programming that was db'ed so we cleared everything paid for on the network. We also never exited early from the TOH news or covered a network spot with a local one, even with the network was running a PSA or promo. Same thing with the features. Our life was "Follow the NetAlert box!"

I worked at an FM station in west-central Ohio in the mid-1960's that had the Mutual Network. The station did not have a news machine and carried Mutual news on both the hour and half-hour. It might be noted that at that time, Mutual's main newscast was on the half-hour. On Saturday evenings, the station stayed on later and carried many of Mutual's programs such as: Hawaii Calls, The Big Lie and Lombardo Land. By way of explanation, Hawaii Calls featured Hawaiian Music; The Big Lie featured taped news & commentary from Radio Moscow and other Soviet-block stations showing how false information was being aired by those outlets. Lombardo Land, as you might guess, featured music by the Guy Lombardo Orchestra although made it sound as though it was being done live from a ballroom.

In our market, basically all that clears is the network news on our CBS affiliate. The ABC affiliate (WTMA) though clears the ABC news, plus features each day. For a while, they did the ABC sports reports in the morning.

We used to have WOKE 1340 in Charleston, and they cleared almost everything CBS did into the 80s. Sports roundups, the mystery theater, all newscasts, and other programs.

My 1st radio job was at an AM/FM combo near my hometown and our AM was an ABC Information Network affiliate. We were also an affiliate of the Minnesota Twins and did other sports. During Twins(and other pro/college sports) games we had a reel to reel tape player set up to record the network news spots. During our local high school games our sports director took a long enough break to allow us to do the full ABC TOH newscast. We also did Paul Harvey three times a day. The 1st one was live at 7:30 AM(CT) and we taped the other two for airing at Noon and 5:05 PM CT. Abc was very wasy to work with.