Re: The ABC/FM Network

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Chris wrote:
>Radio networks weren't always like this, of course.  To name but one
>example, when NBC owned it The Source was a treasure trove of news and
>features; it was absolutely the finest effort ever at targeting a
>young adult audience with this sort of programming.
<snip>

        CBS was the last of the traditional networks to pull back from a
strenuous policy of trying to get the affiliates to clear all or nearly all
the programs and to run them when they were fed. Like CBS-TV, the news
division seemed to have had a lot of power until everything started
changing in the '80s. They woke up one day and found out that in a lot of
cases they couldn't shove around an affiliate anymore by threatening to
switch to another station in that market, because nobody else wanted the
affiliation.
         I remember hearing from a relative of a radio network news exec
that there was a major dispute in the late '70s when the format of the
hourly news was changed so the newscaster opened, "CBS News," gave a
sentence or two introing the top story, then said, "This is Announcer's
Name reporting on the CBS Radio Network." The old intro was, "CBS News.
Announcer's Name reporting," then into the news. The addition of the second
line mentioning the network name in full was seen as crass promotion and
the news people didn't want to waste the three seconds of their precious
six-minute newscast on it. Seems quaint now, eh?
        For years, they argued about shortening the news to 5 minutes,
which finally was done in relatively recent years. By then, the 15-minute
newscasts, World News Roundup at 8 a.m. and World Tonight at 8 p.m. (5 p.m.
Pacific time!), were being cut off even by the o-and-o's. They used to have
no outcues for stations that wanted to bail out early. Even all-news
stations, including WCBS, didn't want to stay with the network for 15
minutes at 8 a.m. First they started using up the local commercial
availabilities for traffic and weather, and kept nibbling away from there.
At one point, WCBS would just dump it at one of the commercial breaks. I
believe those newscasts now are 10 minutes, but hardly any stations,
including the all-news o-and-o's, stay past the outcue at :05.

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