Who remembers when prime time was longer? (television, series, cast)
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Prime generally last three hours a night Monday - Saturday evenings, except for Sundays, when it is four hours. But until the early 1970s it used to be four hours a night seven days a week.
Prime generally last three hours a night Monday - Saturday evenings, except for Sundays, when it is four hours. But until the early 1970s it used to be four hours a night seven days a week.
I remember local programing from7 to 8 then prime time 8 to 11. I think I can actually remember when they had some decent shows on Saturday prime time.
I think there is a little confusion here. In 1963, prime time went from 4.0 hours to 3.5 hours. However, that wasn't actually a real change, since all five days, the first half-hour of prime time was a combination of local and national news programming. Starting in 1963, that simply was no longer considered part of prime time (yet, of course, it was still being provided by the network).
In 1971-1972, prime time went from 3.5 hours down to 3.0 hours. However, that's not clear-cut either: Up until that time, one or another network would only have 3.0 hours on one or two nights a week, with prime time that night on that network only lasting until 10:30 pm. What we see happening by the mid 1970s is a much more consistent block of programming 8:00 - 11:00.
What I would really love to see is a comparison of how many hours of prime time dramatic television there were back in the day versus today. My instinct is that it hasn't changed much. There was a lot of "variety" (read: reality) programming back in the 1960s and 1970s.
The four hours of prime time seems to largely be based on which part of the Country one lived. For example, I remember when I lived on the West Coast the Tonight Show aired before the late night news hour. On the East Coast, after. I also do not recall any prime time shows beginning at 7 pm except for on Sundays as 7 pm was still news hour meaning that for as long as I can remember prime time television aired between 8 pm and 11 pm; being capped by the nightly news and late night news.
Thanks for posting that. I probably once knew that, but surely had forgotten if I had, that the reduction from 3.5 hours down to 3.0 hours per night was imposed in the interest of constraining the power of the networks.
It is interesting to note that since PTAR was swept away as part of comprehensive deregulation of the industry, an increasingly high percentage of programming has been produced by networks themselves. Just looking at CBS alone, right now, 14 of 20 programs are owned at least in part by CBS itself, and of those CBS has no hand in, half are owned by the one big production company that doesn't have a broadcast network (Times Warner).
And there was the "Primetime begins at 7:30pm" experiment in 1987 on NBC.
The only memorable shows from that time were "Out of this World" and "She's the Sheriff".. OotW ran for 4 seasons, while She's the Sheriff was notoriously bad and somehow made it 2 seasons.
And there was the "Primetime begins at 7:30pm" experiment in 1987 on NBC.
The only memorable shows from that time were "Out of this World" and "She's the Sheriff".. OotW ran for 4 seasons, while She's the Sheriff was notoriously bad and somehow made it 2 seasons.
I remember those two series, but I assumed they were syndicated.
The following two paragraphs are from Wikipedia:
"In the fall of 1987, NBC conceived a syndication package for its owned-and-operated stations, under the brand "Prime Time Begins at 7:30", consisting of five sitcoms that each aired once a week, and were produced by various production companies contracted by NBC. The series included Marblehead Manor (from Paramount Television, airing Mondays), centering around a mansion owner and the people who live with him;[33] She's the Sheriff (from Lorimar-Telepictures and airing Tuesdays), a comeback vehicle for Suzanne Somers which cast her as a widowed county sheriff;[33] a series adapted from the George S. Kaufman play You Can't Take It With You (airing Wednesdays), starring Harry Morgan; Out of This World (from MCA Television and airing Thursdays), which starred Maureen Flannigan as a teenager born to an alien father and human mother that develops supernatural abilities on her 15th birthday;[34] and a revival of the short-lived 1983 NBC series We Got It Made (produced by Fred Silverman for MGM Television and closing out the week on Fridays), as part of an ongoing trend at the time in which former network series were revived in first-run syndication.[34]
The package was aimed at attracting viewers to NBC stations in the half-hour preceding prime time (8:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zone, 7:00 p.m. elsewhere),[34][35] and was conceived as a result of the FCC's loosening of the Prime Time Access Rule, legislation passed in 1971 that required networks to turn over the 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) time slot to local stations to program local or syndicated content; and the relaxation of the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, which had prevented networks from producing content from their own syndication units to fill the void.[35] The shows that were part of the package were regularly outrated in many markets by such syndicated game shows as Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and Hollywood Squares. Marblehead Manor, We Got It Made and You Can't Take It With You were cancelled at the end of the 1987–88 season, with She's the Sheriff lasting one more season in weekend syndication before its cancellation. Out of This World ran for three additional seasons, airing mainly on weekends, and was the most successful of the five series."
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