All Soaps: Time Zone Question

[BryanHawley]

I will try to be brief as I do my best to shed some light on the time zone situation within the United States. If you go back to the late 1940s a network such as NBC was fed by coaxial cable out of New York city. As stations were added along the Eastern seaboard, NBC grew into a viable TV network. Many of the network shows were live and even those that were taped would be fed out of New York and right on down the line to the stations connected to the network. Stations not connected to the network via the coaxial cable would receive recordings of the network shows to play back on the local station at a later date. These recordings were shipped from station to station and a local station at the end of the line was often airing a network show months after its original air date. Poor quality kinescope recordings were often received for local playback.

The desire was to get connected to the live network feed as soon as possible. It wasn't until 1952 that the coaxial cable extended to the west coast allowing stations in Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Portland and Seattle to be added to the live network. In general programs were fed out from New York to stations in the Eastern, Central and Mountain time zones. A second feed was fed out of Los Angeles to stations in the Pacific Time Zone so that a program seen in New York at 8pm Eastern could also be seen locally at 8pm in the pacific time zone. With this feed pattern the tv program I love Lucy was seen at 9pm Eastern and pacific, 8pm Central and 7pm Mountain. This is not to suggest that every program was fed in this manner. Often, a big live 10pm game show was in fact aired at 7pm on the west coast. This two feed system has been the standard practice for many years.

In daytime, NBC came on the air at 7 am with the Today show. Originally the show was done live for 5 hours. 7am to 12 noon Eastern time. Stations in the eastern time zone would generally air the first two hours 7-9 am but some aired the program from 8-10am. Central time sone stations could choose 6-8 am or 7-9 am. In the mountain time zone the Today show aired from 6-8 am. The last two hours of the live program were for the Pacific time zone ( 7-9am PST). The Eastern feed of NBC daytime line-up would start around 10am and go to about 4:30pm. This was one hour earlier in the central time zone and from 8am to 3:30pm in the mountain time zone. This daytime feed pattern was well in use through the 1960s and 1970s.For the Pacific Time Zone, and for the most part until today.When videotape was developed in the mid 50s a recorded playback of the Today show was fed to the west coast instead of requiring the cast to do additional live hours for the western time zones. In New York, NBC aired Today from 7-9am. From 9-10am the station broadcast non network programming. The primary reason for there being no network programming from 9-10 am was to allow Central and Mountain Time Zone stations to air the secod hour of the Today show . Right at 10am Eastern ( 9 Ct, 8 Mt ) the NBC daytime line-up of game shows and soaps began. In all other time zones except Eastern, the NBC daytime line-up began right after the finish of the Today show. Only in the Eastern time zone were stations needing to plug a non network show in the 9-10am slot. In the days of early TV it was often difficult for stations to find suitable programming to fill that hour. This is why some stations in the East opted to run Today from 8-10am. When feeding the schedule to the west coast NBC opted to air the Today show and go right into its daytime line-up at 9am. This is what started the practice of NBC daytime shows airing at the same time in Pacific time as they also aired in the central time zone. When CBS followed with its own daytime line-up they of course opted to go with the same feed pattern so competing network shows would air opposite each other in each time zone. The ABC network slow to build a daytime line-up didn't follow this same feed pattern for the west coast. ABC chose to air the programs at the same clock time in both the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones rather than having the daytime shows air an hour earlier in the Pacific Time Zone which is what NBC and CBS were doing Monday through Friday. However, within a few years ABC would change its mind and implement the same feed pattern as CBS and NBC. Dayime network tv has changed drastically in the last few years. The NBC Today show is now seen pretty much from 7-11am in all time zones. This would not have been possible years prior. And why does ABC not elect to air its soaps at the same time in each time zone? Because the shows have been in these time slots for years and viewers have gotten used to them. All my Children has aired at noon in the Pacific time zone for over 30 years. Why switch the time of the program today just to match the time the program airs in New York? Stations today have many sources for programming and daytime network schedules are not given the clearance and uniformity that they once were. So many stations air daytime shows when they darn well want to and not in line with the network feed.

Regarding Prime time, with todays technology it would be very easy to delay and feed network shows so that they would air at the same clock time in each time zone. However, In the earlier days of TV it would have been inwieldly and expensive to have separate feeds to accomplish this. It should be noted that viewers in the various time zones have gotten used to the pattern established. What started out as necessity is now an established viewing pattern. Particularly in prime time.

Let's take a minute and discuss prime time. Until 1971 network prime time ran from 7:30-11pm Eastern time. 7-11pm on Sundays. This was an hour earlier in the Central time zone. A second feed to the west coast out of Los Angeles allowed stations on the west coast to have prime time from 7:30-11pm also. This is a pretty well known fact. What people do not understand is how this is handled in the mountain time zone. Historically, stations in the mountain time zone were just given the eastern feed. The mountain time zone was not very populated so stations were pretty much left to fend for themselves. In the late 1950s many TV stations were equipped with video tape machines that would allow them to delay the network feed. Many smaller mountain time zone stations did not have these machines or it became very inconvenient to dleay the network feed in a consistent manner. In lookin at old TV schedules in the mountain time zone, it is obvious stations were not using any consistent procedure. Many opted to just start the evening shows at 5:30pm directly off the network line. Others would start airing prime time at 6;30pm which was identical with the start time in the central time zone. The difference however is that many stations were signing prime time on at 6:30pm but opting to air the live feed which would be an airing of the 8:30pm Eastern program. The first hour might be delayed until 9pm when the network feed ended in mountain time or the show might be delayed to another date altogether. Some stations would delay the programs for a week so that it was easier to start at the desired clock time. Some stations opted not to delay and prime time ended at 9:00pm and Johnny Carson started at 9:30pm. There just wasn't any uniform practice. When the FCC shrunk prime time in 1971 and required prime to be 8-11pm 7-10 central, it was about this time that the networks began to get most of their mountain time zone affiliates on a uniform schedule.

Here is an example of the CBS stations in MST for a typical Saturday night evening in FEB 1967.

CBS Feed -

7:30Eastern/ 5:30 MST Jackie Gleason

8:30/ 6:30 Mission Impossible

9:30/7:30 Pistols N Petticoats

10/8:00 Gunsmoke

Channel 10 in Roswell NM aired the schedule like this-

5:30 MST Jackie Gleason

6:30 Mission Impossible

7:30 Pistols N Petticoats

8:00 Gunsmoke

9:00 News

9:30 Movie

Channel 4 in El Paso Texas for the same evening.

6:00 MST Lost in Space ( from Thursday at 5:30 MST)

7:00 Coliseum ( from Friday at 5:30 MST )

8:00 Gunsmoke

9:00 College Basketball

( Mission Impossible was delayed to Monday Night at 8pm and Jackie Gleason was delayed to Thursday at 9pm)

Channel 13 in Alb, NM

6:00 MST Lost in Space ( from Thursday at 5:30 MST)

7:00 Gilligan's Island ( from Wednesday at 5:30 MST)

8:00 Gunsmoke

9:00 Jackie Gleason ( delayed from earlier that evening at 5:30 pm)

10:00 news

( Mission Impossible was delayed to Sunday nights at 9pm)

Although the scheduling had not been uniform, one thing that had been consistent is that viewers in MST were accustomed to prime time ending at 9 or 10pm. The only variance among stations is what program MST affiliates decided to air at what clock time.

It was decided that stations in Mountain time would adopt the same clock time as the central time zone. For prime time and late night each station would delay the network feed for one hour each night. The show that arrived at the station at 6pm would be delayed and aired at 7pm. To compensate the local affiliate for this inconvenience, the networks allowed each station an extra minute of local ad time in each night of prime time. This would be known as the mountain minute. This extra minute of ad time was a boon to local stations in MST and accomplished the goal of getting more uniformity in this time zone without having to institute a separate feed which would not make economic sense due to the few people living in the mountain zone. In a few instances, larger stations in Denver fed a delayed feed to some smaller stations in the region. In recent years, some networks actually started sending a direct prime time feed to the mountain time zone.

When the networks switched to satelite feeds in the 80s and 90s a direct feed could also be received in Alaska and Hawaii. Until that time TV programs were shipped to the local stations there causing a weeks delay or more in airing.

Eastern feed ( live to EST, CST amd MST ). Prime time and late night shows are delayed one hour in MST if the network does not have a mountain

feed.

Pacific Feed ( Goes to PST, Alaska and Hawaii ). Hawaii stations delay the prime time feed one hour ( two hours in the summer months).

I hope this adds some history to the time zone question within regards to network TV.

[EricMontreal22]

Woot, that was quite the read, I think I wrapped my head around it. But I ahd heard some of that before, so thanks for answering so well exactly what I was asking.