Season 36 Pre-emptions Thread

A couple of updates on Stanley Cup pre-emptions, both positive.


First, KKCO Grand Junction had been airing Wheel at 2:00AM MT due to opting to air a rerun of Dateline NBC at 9:00 without a need to pair Wheel with J! since its time slot is unaffected.

Seems somebody listened, because Wheel is no longer relegated to 2:00 AM. Starting this week, Wheel will be airing at 9:30PM MT, paired with an infomercial at 9:00. However, listings have Wheel listed twice, at 4:00 PM (in place of Daytime J!) and at 9:30. KKCO is aware of the error. They confirmed to me in an Email that the 9:30 slot is correct and they are trying to get the 4:00 listing reverted to Daytime J!

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Second, KCWY Casper...


So here's a story for y'all. I contacted KCWY's station manager asking why they always opt for the Dateline repeats and never accommodate Jeopardy! or Wheel when pre-empted, unlike how mostly everyone else airs them in the 9:00 hour. His reply:

Two days later, he sent a follow-up with some good news:

You're welcome, Casper. The game shows are now listed in the 9:00 hour on TitanTV, although all other listings still have Dateline NBC.

Respect for this affiliate has gone way up. Just goes to show you that if you feel someone isn't treating your favorite show fairly, raise your voice (in a respectful way, of course). They don't have to know that you don't live in their viewing area.


With these two changes, Wheel will now be airing in sensible time slots in all affected West Coast markets on game days! (Although KSDK St. Louis is still skipping affected episodes altogether due to pregame)

There will be at least a Game 5 since the Warriors and Raptors have won one game each so far.


Anyway, a couple updates on West Coast ABC scheduling for Wheel starting tonight...

KGO San Francisco has moved Wheel slightly earlier, though still overnight. Wednesday 6/5 will air at 2:12AM PT, and the season finale on Friday will air at 1:37. The rerun on 6/10 and 6/14 if necessary will both air at 2:12.

KXTV Sacramento is unfortunately not airing Wheel at all on NBA Finals days, meaning they will not be airing the Season 36 finale. The 10:30 PM listing last Thursday was a mistake. They are instead opting to air a repeat of Nightline from 10-11. Jeopardy! is airing at 1:06 AM, as they claim that was their only time slot they could work with and it came down to a choice between J! or Wheel (and of course, we all know which one 95% of America would choose).

Here was their official response...

These excuses are honestly laughable. First, they claim that Wheel will post the affected episodes on their YouTube, even though they don't and they never have, and fan uploads are either extremely poor quality (one user uploads episodes playing from a tiny hospital room TV), or they get removed soon afterwards. Second, they claim that the Nightline airing is mandatory for the 10 PM hour, even though two other ABC affiliates, KOLO Reno and KFSN Fresno (an ABC O&O, no less!) are airing Jeopardy! and Wheel in that hour without issue. Third, they suggest checking for the show On Demand, even though it's a syndicated program. No cable company offers Wheel or any other syndie (other than perhaps the package of J! episodes available on Netflix and Hulu) On Demand.

KXTV also has a ton of Paid Programming slots on both Saturday and Sunday they could easily air the affected Wheel episodes in, and yes, they are still airing the Saturday rerun on Saturday despite them pre-empting the season finale.

It was indeed a mistake: imgur.com/a/kvAW6jc

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Back to the topic of the Stanley Cup, we will be getting the maximum Game 7 thanks to Boston tying things up 3-3, meaning there will be one more day of Wheel airing in alternate time slots on the West Coast and not at all in St. Louis.

Note that the West Coast scheduling will probably be slightly different come Wednesday due to conflicts with NBC's new Wednesday primetime series The InBetween (this will be the only game to air on NBC on a Wednesday), so this suggests the West Coast has one less hour to use for local or syndicated programming after the game. Most markets still have primetime listed as TBA as of Monday morning.

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And on the subject of the NBA Finals, Game 5 is tonight, and all ABC affiliates' schedules are prepared for Game 6 on Thursday should it be necessary. Here is Wheel scheduling for affected affiliates on both days, assuming we get a Game 6. Note that this is slightly different from last week.



*9:01PM PT airings will be joined in progress or start late if game runs over


Unsurprisingly, KABC Los Angeles and KXTV Sacramento are still finding overnight time slots for Jeopardy!, despite not airing Wheel at all.

Tonight's Wheel is a repeat of October 15, 2018 (Great Outdoors Day 1, Asha/Jeffrey/Lisa). This episode has the misfortune of getting pre-empted twice in the San Francisco market. Its original airing was pre-empted by a 49ers game and did not air at all. At least its repeat will be airing in some form the second time around.

The Stanley Cup is finally over, but we have other events to worry about.


ABC (WEST COAST):
Today is the final weekday game of NBA Finals no matter what happens. Wheel is pre-empted on all ABC affiliates airing the show at 6:30PM MT or later. Scroll up two posts for specific scheduling. LA and Sacramento are skipping the show completely.

PROVIDENCE, RI:
WPRI (CBS) will be pre-empting Wheel tonight with a special on the CVS Health Downtown 5K marathon (which doesn't even happen until September). Wheel will air on its MyTV .2 subchannel in place of Access, although listings have Wheel on both stations. Jeopardy! is unaffected, because of course it is (and because they still have new episodes, I guess...).

BAY CITY, MI:
WNEM (CBS) will be pre-empting both Jeopardy! and Wheel tonight with local shopping show Better Deals Summer Special. The shows will air respectively at 2:37 and 3:07AM ET.


ALL FOX AFFILIATES:
From Thursday through Saturday, FOX will be airing the 2019 U.S. Open. Guess what time the coverage starts on the weekdays? Yep, 7:30 ET/6:30 CT. It's football season all over again. As usual, Wheel is not affected on KHON Hawaii due to the huge time difference. Saturday's broadcast lasts all day from 12-10PM ET.

Here's the scheduling for all mainland FOX affiliates. Kansas City is skipping the show completely on the weekdays, Green Bay is airing it early, and everyone else bumps it overnight.


Note that FOX is also pre-empting most of daytime programming with the FIFA Women's World Cup. Apparently, WDAF Kansas City would rather save overnight slots for Rachael Ray and The Wendy Williams Show than for Wheel (they don't carry Jeopardy!).

WXIX Cincinnati can be taken off the hit list. During other FOX sports pre-emptions earlier this season taking over the 7:30 slot, they would move Jeopardy! to 7:00 and bump Wheel overnight. Somebody there got the very bright idea that they could simply move first-run Jeopardy! to the time slot normally used for Daytime Jeopardy! at 6:00 (since apparently they would need special permission to move Wheel that early, oh no!), and bump that airing to overnight instead, so Wheel can stay where it is. Finally, they got some common sense kicked into them. Hopefully they do this come next football season.

KDVR Denver continues to surprisingly treat Wheel better than Jeopardy! Normally, their 4:00 AM hour is a repeat of TMZ followed by the start of the local morning news (Mon-Fri only). 4:00 is their only time slot to work with Friday morning since the other overnight slots are taken by make-goods of other pre-empted shows like Live with Kelly and Ryan, so Thursday's Wheel got that slot and Thursday's J!, despite being a new episode while Wheel isn't, is not on the schedule at all. On Saturday morning, Friday's J! gets the 4:00 slot since KDVR doesn't have a morning newscast on Saturdays, allowing Wheel to slide back to 4:30 to make room for J!

This means that the October 18, 2018 episode will have been pre-empted twice on FOX affiliates.

WBZ Boston is pre-empting Wheel again with a half-hour edition of Patriots All Access (in June??). Wheel will air at 2:07AM ET. Since this is a Friday episode, tonight's episode was also pre-empted on this station the first time it aired since PAA is a weekly series airing on Fridays during football season.


Here are all the first-run days WBZ Boston pre-empted Wheel:


Total: 29 episodes, about 15% of the season. Most Friday episodes of Jeopardy! were affected through February 1 as well as the March Madness shows since the regular edition of PAA is an hour show. Any days Wheel was pre-empted for something other than PAA in that timespan (or anything afterwards), J! was unaffected.


And here are all the days WKRN Nashville pre-empted Wheel, mostly thanks to its Monday Titans show, or any weekday NFL game involving the Titans that wasn't on a Thursday:


Total: 25 episodes, about 13% of the season, a bit behind Boston thanks to their football show lasting a few more weeks. Nashville does beat Boston and everyone else in terms of non-sports-related local specials, though. Jeopardy! is carried on FOX affiliate WZTV in Nashville and airs at 5:00PM CT, a time slot rarely, if ever, affected by sporting events.

Tonight, CBS affiliate WVNS in Lewisberg, West Virginia, as well as its FOX subchannel, are airing a one-hour special on the three-year anniversary of the deadly 2016 West Virginia "1000-Year" Flood that killed 23 people. It will air from 7-8 PM Eastern, pre-empting Wheel and Jeopardy! on CBS and a double-run of The Big Bang Theory on FOX. While BBT is being moved to 3:00/3:30 AM, Wheel and Jeopardy! are not airing at all, despite the J! Teen Tournament still going on.

Tonight is the MLB All-Star Game, which unfortunately starts with pregame in Wheel's most common time slot of 7:30 Eastern/6:30 Central. This will pre-empt tonight's Wheel repeat (John/Tilita/Colleen from April 16) on 6 of the 10 FOX affiliates carrying Wheel, except for those that air it at 7:00 Eastern and KHON Hawaii. Thankfully, all of them are airing Wheel in some form tonight or tomorrow.



^[1] Listings for WLUK Green Bay do not have tonight's Wheel listed at all. However, they confirmed to me via Email that they will be airing Wheel an hour early at 5:30PM CT as they always do during pre-emptions. In order to DVR tonight's Wheel off WLUK, one will have to schedule a recording of the 5:00 newscast, which listings still have as the usual hour length.

^[2] Listings for WVUE New Orleans have a generic placeholder for tonight's Wheel with no episode info. Also, tomorrow's episode is erroneously listed twice - once on Wednesday at its usual time, and on Saturday at 5:30PM CT in place of the Season 35 rerun (most FOX affiliates have been airing Saturday Wheel early on days with evening MLB games).

^[3] While Jeopardy! and Wheel appear in listings in the 3:00AM MT hour on KDVR Denver, the station's website still has that hour listed as the regularly-scheduled secondary airing of The Wendy Williams Show.

Nashville is at it again.

Tonight's show (repeat of April 18) is being pre-empted on WKRN for a local special discussing the local job market. Wheel will air at 12:07AM CT.

NFL Preseason Football is starting soon. KABC Los Angeles has announced that they will be airing three of the four Chargers preseason games on Thursday 8/8, Saturday 8/24, and Thursday 8/29. Pregame will start at 6:30PM PT with the games scheduled until 11:00. This will affect Wheel, Jeopardy!, and ABC's primetime lineup. Their schedule for 8/8 shows that day's Wheel and Jeopardy! (both repeats) will not be airing at all, as overnight is taken up by make-goods of Holey Moley and Family Food Fight.

KGO San Francisco will also likely be broadcasting the 49ers preseason games, which are on Saturday 8/10, Monday 8/19, Saturday 8/24, and Thursday 8/29. All game times will conflict with Wheel.