WPTV and WSM to become ABC affiliation in the 80s

[DucNguyen0131]

April 1, 1985

WJET-TV and WICU announced that the 1982 swap was ordered to be reversed, as WICU was reverting to an NBC affiliate full time. Since 1982, NBC would run on a UHF station in Erie, that of WJET-TV.

This came because ABC was not satisfied of the preemptions concerning WICU-TV.

WJET-TV was formerly an ABC affiliate until 1982, when the station went on to be a NBC affiliate.

Jet Broadcasting's owners were also not happy with NBC's preemptions on WJET-TV, concerning that WJET-TV was a distant third.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

April 8, 1985

On CBS' highly successful game show The Price is Right, a new pricing game is introduced. It was based on a old TV format Goodson had, Call My Bluff. The TPIR pricing game, called "Call My Bluff" is a revival of the old game Mark Goodson had produced 20 years earlier.

This version of Call My Bluff on TPIR shows two contestants giving the word, in order to win for a maximum price of $5,000.

Compared to the version that was on NBC, Call My Bluff on TPIR is miniature-sized, like most pricing games, and determine the correct definition to obscure words.

By noted, a new nighttime version, hosted by Bert Convy (OTL, this was hosted by Tom Kennedy) was introduced for the syndication market, on CBS O&Os. In New York, this resulted in the displacement of Wheel of Fortune from WCBS.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

April 10, 1985

The PBS station KRMA (channel 6) in Denver announced that they would move to channel 5. In return, the NBC station KOAA (channel 5) in Colorado Springs announced that they would move to channel 6.

This was done because the fact that they would reduce interference with each other's stations.

Channel 5, which was used to be commercial station in Colorado Springs became a non-commercial station in Denver (now on channel 6), and vice versa.

This was done in accordance with the VHF channel allocation realignments since the 1950s.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

April 15, 1985

Tribune Broadcasting, who owns WGNE-TV, announced plans to launch a news operation for the Boston station to compete with the established and highly successful WLVI-TV newscast, called "Action 25 News".

Action 25 News would only be seen at 10:00pm, like most other independent stations.

It borrowed WPIX's "Action News" format, as well as the "Move Closer to Your World" theme music.

What is now WGNE-TV originally started in 1977 as WXNE-TV under the leadership of the Christian Broadcasting Network, until Tribune took over the station in 1984.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

April 18, 1985

The Federal Communications Commission was in review for Times-Mirror Company to acquire WHEC-TV from the Henry family, and it was officially approved by the FCC.

The FCC readily wanted to gave Times-Mirror a permanent waiver to keep both the Syracuse and Rochester stations.

Times-Mirror owns two CBS-affiliated stations and five NBC-affiliated stations.

Times-Mirror Cable was also one of the most successful television pioneers in the cable industry.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

April 24, 1985

The E.W. Scripps Company, who owns Scripps-Howard Newspapers, United Media Enterprises and Scripps Howard News Service, is finalizing their offer to purchase struggling movie studio Orion Pictures Corporation.

Orion Pictures Corporation is a mini-major motion picture studio, with such troubled box office bombs, save for a few hits like The Terminator.

Scripps also owns Kartes Video Communications, and production company United Media Productions. With that, Kartes became the distributor for Orion's video library.

Kartes Video Communications entered into the top 10 video market. It is expected that the MPAA would make Orion Pictures a major motion picture studio. Scripps is using Orion's vast motion picture library as leverage for three independents KNXV, KCPQ and KSHB.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

May 6, 1985

WNGE-TV in Nashville renamed the title of the newscast from "Channel 2 News" to "NewsCenter 2" in order to reflect the sister stations General Electric is owning, such as KGEB (soon to be KNCN-TV) in San Francisco, and WCRN (formerly WRGB) in Schenectady.

This came in because "NewsCenter" is a more appealing title for the Nashville audiences than "Channel 2 News".

When it was an ABC affiliate, it was under the "NewsWatch 2" branding. It was replaced by "Channel 2 News" when it was switched to NBC, and now it was "NewsCenter 2". WNGE was formerly an ABC affiliate until 1980, when it swapped affiliations with WSM (as ABC wanted a stronger signal for Nashville) and became an NBC affiliate.

At the same time, CBS is picking up a new Paramount project, American Crime, which is loosely based in part, on the West Germany show Tatort, which is backed by writers Robert Sabaroff and Brian Alan Lane and executive producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. It is revealed that the big three cities doing each week were Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. The cities play each week, starting from Los Angeles, followed by another week in New York, and another in Chicago, and returned to Los Angeles another week and so on.

Also at the same time, Metromedia would sell all six of the television stations to Fox and News Corporation for $450 million.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

May 12, 1985

KTVY, the ABC affiliate in Oklahoma City is now using WSB-TV's "Action News" format, partly after Cox took over The Detroit Press, and decided to rebrand it as "Channel 4 Action News", and hired WDVM/WBBH voiceover Scott Chapin to perform the voiceover for the newscasts. Scott's introduction:

"From KTVY Oklahoma's Emmy award winning news channel, this is Action News with Terry Cook, Dan Slocum, Dan Threlkeld with weather, and Bob Berry Jr. with sports."

KTVY's management says they'll gonna look like the WSB-TV news format. They would change the news theme to "Newschannel" by Frank Gari.

KTVY and WSB-TV were formerly NBC affiliates until the early 1980s, with ABC taking the role of both stations, while Gannett's KOCO and WXIA (now WUSA) would became NBC affiliates.

Cox has been using the "Action News" format on several stations, such as WSB-TV in Atlanta.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

May 19, 1985

WCNC (formerly WVIT, WHNB, WNBC and WKNB) in New Hartford/Haven, was unveiling a new look, in order to do towards direction to the news programming. WCNC is stood for the station's own slogan "Connecticut's News Channel" and also named for co-owned KCNC-TV in Denver.

The first WCNC new program is First News, which is based off the format used by KOA-TV in Denver, and also be used by other General Electric stations.

The second new program on WCNC was The Connecticut Evening News, which featured some of the high profile Connecticut news talent.

Also, General Electric and Sande Stewart teamed up to create new game show hosted by Nipsey Russell, Your Number's Up, which debuted on all General Electric-owned television stations this fall, and 20th Century Fox Television signed on to distribute series, with intentions of going national by 1986 if it succeeded.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

May 26, 1985

After an airing of the Saturday Night Live off of KGEB-TV/channel 4 in San Francisco, KGEB-TV-AM-FM is changing its call letters to KNCN. The callsign was acquired from an unrelated radio station in Corpus Christi.

KNCN, the Corpus Christi radio station would change its call letters to KCOR, which stood for the first three letters of the city.

This reflected the owner General Electric's "perspective" on an "all-news" television format.

The callsign was stood for "Northern California's News Channel", and it was also named for the Durham station on channel 22, WNCN.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

May 31, 1985

WCIX, the Metromedia station is upgrading their transmission tower, so it can add more viewers in Broward County, where it was initially unviewable by most residents, so people can watch for some stations.

Metromedia announced its plans to launch a Broward County translator of its own WCIX signal.

The reason cited for its upgrades was to protect WCPX, the NBC affiliate in Orlando, which was owned by Outlet Communications.

It is confirmed that WCPX and WESH would swap ownerships, and reversed their 1982 affiliation swap in Orlando, as NBC had just been number one thanks to the success of The Cosby Show.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

June 3, 1985

The Coca-Cola Company announced a healthy $650 million offer to purchase production company Aaron Spelling Productions, Inc., who was currently producing hits like Dynasty, Hotel and The Love Boat, all currently for ABC. The company's latest shows Finder of Lost Loves, Glitter and MacGruder and Loud all bombed. The company currently has a deal with Warner Bros. Television Distribution, but with the deal ending in 1988, Columbia took over all distribution of the Spelling series.

Three years earlier, Columbia also bought a production company Spelling-Goldberg Productions, known for Charlie's Angels and the currently-producing T.J. Hooker, for more than $40 million.

Ted Turner's purchase of MGM has been butterflied away, leaving in for movie producer Jerry Weintraub to become Columbia Pictures chairman and CEO, based on the success of The Karate Kid (instead of employing at United Artists).

In a separate deal, three weeks later, The Coca-Cola Company also purchased Embassy Communications, backed by Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio for $485 million.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

June 7, 1985

Barely a month after Tribune Broadcasting announced its purchase of KTLA, Tribune agreed to sell KWGH-TV in Los Angeles to Community Television of Southern California, which was converted channel 9 to became an educational station.

Federal law prohibits one company from owning duopolies in the same market, hence why Tribune wanted to sell the lower-rated KWGH-TV (channel 9) in Los Angeles.

KTLA would took on the KWGH call letters, staff, on-air talent and management, which would be moved to channel 5, and also KTLA acquired KWGH's stronger syndicated television programming. Channel 9 took on the KCET calls, while KCET, channel 28 would change its call letters to KCEQ.

Telepictures Corporation is also planning on to distribute All-Star Blitz in syndication for the 1985-1986 television market.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

June 16, 1985

KVEO, the NBC affiliate owned by Capital Cities swap its network affiliations with the Manship family's ABC affiliate KRGV-TV, which is now recovering its NBC affiliation it lost in 1976. This was due to Hearst's acquisition of Capital Cities Communications, which owned a large number of ABC affiliates in Houston and Philadelphia.

Other non-ABC stations owned by Capital Cities in Baton Rogue, Durham and Fresno would soon swap affiliations.

WVLA-TV in Baton Rouge was currently a NBC affiliate and WTVD in Durham and KFSN in Fresno were currently CBS affiliates, they had to soon switch to ABC by July, August and September.

This was part of a lead up to the acquisition of Capital Cities by Hearst Communications, owners of the ABC television network.

 

[stratonapba]

June 14, 1985: Richard Dawson airs his Final Episode of Family Feud on ABC Daytime

June 17, 1985: JM Productions (who produced Starcade and The Video Game) stepped up into the Network Daytime Game Show Bandwagon by Debuting Finders Keepers on ABC at 10:30 AM ET/PT hosted by Nee-Fi (who is played by Mark Pitta who competed in Season 1 on Star Search in the Comedy Category winning a few episodes) with Sci-Fi as his sidekick (being played by Christopher Kreisa) with Kevin McMahon doing the announcing as Two teams of two (one orange, the other yellow and one in the studio who is the navigator and one somewhere in the country who is the runner) compete in a race to find hidden treasures for valuable prizes and the Team with the Most Value in Prizes gets a chance to play for a Cash Jackpot which starts at $5,000 and increases $500 if not won, however there were No Returning Champions in the show, Two New Teams compete in each episode.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

Well amazing.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

June 21, 1985

After its first successful showing on ABC, Ted Turner looked into the program, and signed a contract with JM Productions in order to syndicate the nighttime version of Finders Keepers, through Turner Program Services.

Among the clearances for the nighttime version were WTBS in Atlanta, Capital Cities, Knight Ridder and the ABC O&Os.

The relationship began in the 1980s when WTBS aired Starcade.

Turner said they wanted to start the program in the September of 1985, as other nighttime hits followed.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

June 30, 1985

After an airing of Saturday Night Live off WGEB, the station would change its call letters to WTNC (for Twin Cities' News Channel). This was done for an "all-news" purpose throughout the General Electric TV stations.

The call letters were a slightly modified version of the original WTCN call letters prior to 1983.

WTNC was a NBC affiliate starting in 1979, before that it was an independent television station.

All of the television stations owned by General Electric were affiliates of the NBC television network, with WCRN in Schenectady and KNCN in San Francisco being the flagship stations.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

July 7, 1985

WVLA-TV, the NBC affiliate owned by Capital Cities Communications, and WBRZ-TV, the Manship family's ABC affiliate swapped network affiliations, reversing the 1977 affiliation swap in Baton Rouge, due to the incoming acquisition of Capital Cities by Hearst.

Accompanying a new identity for WBRZ-TV was a version of "Hello News" by Frank Gari, called "Hello Baton Rouge".

Two more swaps in Durham and Fresno were happened.

WTVD in Durham and KFSN in Fresno would switch from CBS to ABC by August and September.

 

[DucNguyen0131]

July 12, 1985

Media General reached a deal with The Manships to buy WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge and KRGV in Brownsville, both of them NBC affiliates for $1.2 billion. This made Media General the highest bidding broadcaster ever.

Media General owns WFLA in Tampa, WCBD in Charleston and WJKS in Jacksonville, both of them were currently NBC affiliates.

This made Media General five VHF television stations, which are all NBC affiliates.

Media General's flagship television station ever is WFLA in Tampa/St. Petersburg.