Re: The ABC/FM Network

["David W. Harris" <dwh@totalnetnh.net>]

Martin J. Waters wrote: "I don't know the history of the ABC decision to
go with the four networks, but I think their own o-and-o situation could
have been part of the thinking. They were running top-40 formats but
were stuck using their own regular hourly news, which didn't really
fit."

WABC PD Rick Sklar devotes (with obvious glee) pages 140-141 of "Rocking
America" (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1984) to the network change.  It
wasn't just the hourly news that didn't fit.  Until the network makeover
in 1968, WABC was forced to stop the top-40 sound every day from 10-11am
for "The Breakfast Club" with Don McNeil and from 5:55-7:20pm for an
assortment of network and local news and features.  Then there were a
half dozen "Flair Reports" every day, described by Sklar as "chatty
features on fashion and cooking that broke the music's continuity."

More from Sklar: "The group vice president for radio, Ralph
Beaudin...had figured out that if ABC abandoned all long network radio
programs, four networks could share the time on the one network
line....Because network radio had been a bust as a business, the
government saw nothing wrong with scrapping the old anti-monopoly rules
and letting ABC go ahead with the experiment."  It wasn't long before
ABC topped #1 Mutual in the number of affiliated stations.

As we seem to have a lot of list participants with fond memories of
working with the ABC clock, perhaps more memories can be stirred with
some old network feed schedules.  "Modern Radio Station Practices"
(Joseph S. Johnson & Kenneth K. Jones, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing, 1978) lists this 4-network clock:
00:00-05:00 Information Radio News
15:00-19:00 FM Radio News
26:00-27:00 Entertainment News in Brief
30:00-35:00 Entertinament Radio News
50:30-51:30 Contemporary News in Brief
54:30-00:00 Contemporary Radio News
Of course, Contemporary did NOT go right up to 00:00, but that's the way
the book has it.  I dug up a 1976-77 clock from WECB ("The Hit 64"
carrier-current station at Emerson) and it shows ABC from 54:30 to
59:00--that sounds more like it!  WECB, by the way, was a commercial
station and did not have to cover net spots--it also got to carry Paul
Harvey.  I think WEZE was the "real" Paul Harvey station in Boston at
the time.

I have a more reliable source for the 6-network feed pattern begun in
January 1982--a color-coded chart distributed by ABC for stations to
post in the studio:
00:00-05:00 Information Radio News
27:00-29:30 Entertainment Radio News Update
30:00-34:00 Entertainment Radio News
38:00-41:30 FM Radio News
42:00-44:30 Rock Radio News
45:00-49:00 Direction Radio News
52:00-55:40 Custom/cast
56:00-59:30 Contemporary Radio News
As I recall, you could take the elements offered by Custom/cast one
little story at a time and string them together however you
pleased--build your own network newscast!  Although we've spoken of the
FM network in association with rock formats, Sklar notes it was
originally developed for "beautiful music" stations; I imagine in 1968
there was a lot more BM than rock on non-simulcast FMs.

By the time the 6-network lineup began, the FCC was already going down
the deregulation road that would bring us to the situation today where
fewer and fewer stations see any point in carrying a network newscast.

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