Quote:
Originally Posted by leadlike
Jeff, it looks like if you lived on the west coast, you had a bit more than a three hour delay in some cases:
http://www.metnews.com/reminiscing.htm
go to the "reminiscing" page, then "early television" the first article is called "snowy kinescopes-two weeks late"
He has some neat articles on his early tv experiences. |
I just looked at that page, and it was a real eye-opener. In Los Angeles and elsewhere on the West Coast, network TV shows were often seen two weeks after their original broadcast in New York -- and don't forget network affiliates in Alaska and Hawaii, which more often than not got the shows as late as three weeks or even a month (!) after viewers in most of the lower 48 had seen them. Today's TV viewers do not realize this, having become accustomed to the immediacy of TV programming thanks to satellites (networks no longer use coaxial cable links), the Internet, et al. As I said, I was surprised myself to read the article on the page you mentioned, but then again, I live in Ohio and have never been anywhere west of the state so I have no experience with time delays of TV shows, except for those times when I time-shift programs myself with my VCR. Being used to watching, for example, NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. in this area, it would take me quite a while to become accustomed to watching the same broadcast at 5:30 p.m. if I lived in Chicago, or even Indiana before the latter switched exclusively to Eastern Standard Time across the entire state.
I'm not sure how, in the 1950s-'60s before video tape, West Coast affiliates of the major television networks handled delayed broadcasts of shows that originated at, for example, 5 a.m. on the other coast, or how they handled other time differences for the Mountain and Central time zones. That would mean the West Coast stations would either have to broadcast the show live (at 2 a.m. Pacific time[!]) or videotape it so that they could show it later in the day. Of course, before videotape this would have been impossible except for systems such as the DuMont Electronicam, but then again, there would be the usual two-week delay before the stations out West could broadcast the program.
Videotape made things easier for the stations in the West, I'm sure, but the time zone bugaboo was still a problem. Even today, with the networks all uplinking their programming to satellites for distribution to affiliates, stations in the Pacific time zone often must videotape the programs to fit their schedules. I recently saw a promo for a program on NBC that announced the show would be seen live everywhere in the US; the program aired on the network at some ridiculously early hour of the morning Eastern time. How on earth was it possible for all the US to see this program live? If the show were aired at, say, 6 a.m. Eastern time, it would be seen in the Central time zone at 5 a.m., the Mountain zone at four a. m., and out west in the Pacific zone at
three a.m.! Who is going to get up at three o'clock in the morning in the West (for example) to watch a program, unless it is something of national importance such as a space mission?
This would also be the only time TV stations would stay on the air all night in those days, before infomercials were thought of.
I often wonder who actually watches those paid programs and infomercials that air on most stations from roughly two to four thirty or five a.m. on most networks. I can see the importance of such things as early morning newscasts (all three major networks have them), but those infomercials and paid shows seem to me to be a waste of time, money and RF power for TV stations. It would save the stations quite a bit of money, IMHO, if they would sign off after the last network talk show went off the air, then sign on again at 5 a.m. for their early morning news. That system worked for TV stations in the '50s through the end of the eighties; why not now?
My best guess is that the stations' management feels they can make more money for their stations by running paid shows and infomercials after the networks sign off, but the question in my mind still remains: Who actually watches these things, which are nothing more than television commercials thinly disguised as half-hour shows?