Network shows that Boston was home

[Scott Fybush]

At 12:40 PM 1/25/2004 -0500, A. Joseph Ross wrote:

>For some reason, when WCVB replaced WHDH-TV on Channel 5, CBS decided to 
>switch
>their affiliation back to Channel 7.  This was considered a blow to WCVB 
>at the time, since
>ABC was always the third network, but a few years later, ABC became Number 
>One in the
>national ratings.

The concern, as I understand it, was over the prospect of extensive 
prime-time preemptions of CBS programming on the new channel 5. As part of 
the promises they made to the FCC to wrest the license from the 
Herald-Traveler, Boston Broadcasters vowed to maintain an extensive 
schedule of local documentaries and other local productions, which would 
inevitably have meant lots of pre-emptions of network fare. CBS didn't want 
to deal with that, and WNAC-TV was more than happy to give up ABC (the #4 
network in a three-network world, as the joke went) for the powerful CBS 
lineup of the early seventies.

By the time ABC began its ratings surge (1977 or thereabouts), many of 
Boston Broadcasters' initial promises had already begun to fall by the 
wayside - and in any event, the advent of the Prime-Time Access Rule that 
limited network programming to three hours nightly between 7 and 11 PM 
created the "access slot" from 7-8 PM that provided a home for local shows 
like Chronicle without requiring that network programming be pre-empted. 
Without having a stack of TV Guides to swear by, I'd guess that by the 
1977-1978 season WCVB was pre-empting less than an hour a week of ABC 
prime-time on average.

And of course the sale of WCVB to Metromedia in 1982 meant the end of the 
rest of the big dreams with which the station was born - no more "Park 
Street Under" or any of that...

s