More Soap Stuff: KFMB Shifts Longtime Slotters (Apr 1, 2009)

"The Young and the Restless", which has been airing at 11am ever since it debuted on March 26, 1973 on KFMB-TV, will be moving to NOON, while its longtime midday newscast, airing at NOON for the longest time, probably since before I was born, will be airing at 11am.

This puts KFMB-TV's news opposite KGTV's news from 11am-NOON.

For the first time since my community college days, "Y&R" will be on directly opposite "All My Children" on ABC. From January 1978-July 1979, KGTV shifted "AMC" to 11am (previous day's episodes) so it can show its midday newscast at noon, then a half-hour long, followed by a time shifted "Family Feud" at 12:30pm (aired at 11am Pacific Time).

KFMB-TV also time-shifts the previous day's episodes of "Bold and the Beautiful" to 9:30am.

From 11am-NOON, KFMB-TV is the only local station airing network programming through April 3rd. Beginning on Monday, no local station will be airing network programming from 11am-NOON. From NOON-1pm, KFMB and KGTV has network programing. From 1pm-2pm, KNSD joins the two, then it's just KFMB and KGTV from 2-3pm.

In the morning, KNSD is the sole local station with network programming from 9am-9:30am, then is joined by KFMB at 9:30am. At 10am, KGTV joins the other two airing network programming.

In 2009, there were only two hours when all three affilliates air network programming opposite each other. 10-11am, and 1-2pm.

Back as early as April 1977, three network affilliates on the West Coast had network programming from 10am-NOON, then CBS and NBC had an half-hour break for local affilliates at NOON, then all three network shows from 12:30pm-3:30pm. This is when NBC and CBS once had six-hour network schedules, and ABC had five and a half hours beginning on April 25, 1977.

First some soaps started expanding to an hour in 1975 to solve stubborn time slot problems. NBC expanded two of theirs first, then CBS and ABC phased in the expansions of some of their select soaps, taking away the time used for low-rated game shows and other shows and using them for another half-hour for their soaps.

Eventually, we had CBS, ABC, and NBC airing soaps all opposite each other from 11:30am-3:00pm Pacific Time in 1984.

Then in 1984, the bottom began to fall for the daytime schedule when ABC's "The Edge of Night" ceased production due to low affilliate clearances for ever-expanding lucrative syndication fare. ABC gave the 3-3:30pm slot back to local affilliates. In 1986, CBS gave up the 3-3:30pm slot to the local stations. In 1989, NBC gave up on 11-11:30am.

As the 90s wore on, ABC's schedule shrank from 5 to four and a half hours, CBS lost another hour to four and a half, and NBC's morning schedule collapsed further while cancelling "Santa Barbara" in 1993, and its time shrank from five and a half to four hours, then down to three when "Leeza" left in 1999, and down to two at the end of the decade when "Sunset Beach" was cancelled the same year as NBC replaced "Another World" with "Passions".

NBC probably had the worst affilliate clearances for its morning daytime shows, and ABC also suffered the same problem with most of its shows airing before "AMC". CBS had some problems clearing stations to air its 9-10am PT shows. The 3-3:30pm slot was probably a dead zone carried by even fewer stations.

CBS hasn't changed its entire schedule since 1993 when it gave up its 9-10am PT slot to local affilliates. It currently airs four and a half hours of daytime programming.

In the 00's, ABC gave up its 11:30am-NOON slot when it cancelled "Port Charles" in a longtime troublesome slot. In 1997, NBC traded "Passions" for the fourth hour of "Today", so depending on who you ask, NBC either has just one hour of daytime with "Days of Our Lives", or three if they count the third and fourth hours of "Today." ABC has four hours of daytime programming.

If you look at the history of daytime TV shows in their current network pattern time slots on the Pacific Time zone (not the time-shifted slots even on network O&O's), here's how they stack up with the date that the show first moved into their current time slot:

04/25/77 - ABC - 12:00pm-1:00pm - All My Children
01/16/78 - ABC - 1:00pm-2:00pm - One Life to Live
01/16/78 - ABC - 2:00pm-3:00pm - General Hospital
03/05/79 - NBC - 12:00pm-1:00pm - Days of Our Lives
04/23/79 - CBS - 10am-11am - The Price is Right
02/04/80 - CBS - 2:00pm-3:00pm - Guiding Light
06/08/81 - CBS - 11:30am-12:30pm - The Young and the Restless
03/23/87 - CBS - 12:30pm-1:00pm - The Bold and The Beautiful
03/23/87 - CBS - 1:00pm-2:00pm - As The World Turns
12/04/97 - ABC - 10:00am-11:00am - The View

Note that "Y&R" airs from 11:00am-NOON on some Pacific CBS affilliates. Other affilliates air it from 11:30am-12:30pm. On April 6, KFMB-TV shifts it from 11-NOON to NOON-1pm. "B&B" airs on KFMB-TV from 9:30am-10am. "DOOL" airs on KNSD from 1-2pm.

With rumors of the cancellation of "GL" all over the Internet, it leads me to wonder whether CBS will expand "B&B" to an hour and give a half-hour to the local stations, give up the whole hour, or replace it with something other than a soap opera that may not get better ratings in any case.