Season 36 Pre-emptions Thread

Jeopardy! and Wheel were both pre-empted in Chicago yesterday due to news coverage on the Mercy Hospital shooting. According to their ABC O&O affiliate WLS, they were moved to 1:35 (Wheel) and 2:05AM CT (J!), replacing Millionaire and Right This Minute.

Can any LA viewers confirm that KABC aired Monday’s episode (Gennelle/Dallan/Molly) last night? They promoted Ryanne from Tuesday’s episode on Twitter yesterday, even though they’re supposedly airing the episode a day behind.

Yesterday, most if not all ABC affiliates that had news scheduled for 7:00 ET/6:00 CT and Wheel at 7:30/6:30 pre-empted Wheel with the news due to football running so long. This included O&O's WLS in Chicago and WPVI in Philadelphia. Both of these stations had already bumped Jeopardy! overnight, but Wheel likely did not air at all on either.














Wheel was also pre-empted yesterday on CBS O&O KTVT in Dallas with a local Christmas tree lighting, although Wheel was still listed. Wheel was instead moved to independent sister station KTXA half an hour later than its usual time at 7:00PM CT, replacing How I Met Your Mother.

Luckily for game show fans, this alternative scheduling resulted in straight block of Funny You Should Ask, Jeopardy! (double run), Millionaire, and Wheel all on the same station from 5:00-7:30.

^ Portland and Seattle both air Wheel and Jeopardy! on ABC affiliates (KATU and KOMO, respectively). The first-run episodes this week were not affected in those areas, or on any other West Coast ABC stations (aside from KABC Los Angeles pre-empting Monday's episodes with the Rams game). ABC didn't air any sports on Thanksgiving, and Friday's Virginia @ Virginia Tech game was the only game for that day, and that went off just after 4:30PM PT, well before the Wheel/J! game show hour.


The Saturday reruns, however, are a different story. ABC routinely airs a nighttime game of College Football on Saturdays scheduled for 5:00-8:30PM PT, which pre-empts the game show hour on the West Coast. Most stations air one or both game shows sometime after the game in primetime hours.

On Saturdays during football season, KATU Portland schedules J! for 8:30PM PT after the game and Wheel airs at 9:00. However, J! is at risk of getting partially or fully pre-empted by football overrun (tonight's last game went off at 8:39, so they likely joined the show in progress near the end of the Jeopardy! round). KOMO Seattle airs Saturday J! at 9:30PM PT but they do not air the Saturday edition of Wheel at all during the season.

A lot of pre-emptions this week, including one nationwide for FOX besides Thursday. Every day this week, Wheel will be pre-empted somewhere.


MONDAY
WKRN Nashville by the Titans @ Texans game. Wheel is not airing at all.


TUESDAY
WBZ Boston by Jeopardy! to make room for a local Christmas tree lighting. Wheel will air at 1:37AM ET.



Come on, Boston. Wheel made you a Great American City last season and this is the thanks they get?


WEDNESDAY
WPVI Philadelphia by a local city holiday special. Wheel will air at 1:07AM ET, replacing the second airing of Millionaire. Yet another network O&O in a top market showing no regard for Wheel...


THURSDAY
Most FOX affiliates by Thursday Night Football and its 7:30PM ET pregame with the usual scheduling. See here.


FRIDAY (Immani Brown-Turner's reappearance) AND SATURDAY (rerun of 03/02/18)
All FOX affiliates by College Football. This time, pregame starts at 7:00PM ET, so Wheel is affected everywhere, including Hawaii. Here are all the affiliates' alternate scheduling, if any. As with other pre-emptions, Syracuse and Green Bay show high regard for Wheel by not being afraid to air it before 7:00.


*Note: Listings for WDAF Kansas City still show the 6:00 news and Wheel at their normal times on Friday with no pregame, but this may be a mistake.


Maryland sure dislikes Wheel, but Salisbury sure has no problem carrying first-run Jeopardy! on two co-owned stations at different times (WBOC/CBS at 4:30 and WBOC-DT2/FOX at 7:30) while only showing Wheel on one, the one more prone to pre-emptions with no desire to reschedule syndies. 


Also, WXIX Cincinatti's listings strangely list Wheel twice on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week: one at 7:00PM ET as usual, and another at 1:00AM, its most common time slot when pre-empted and the usual time slot for Friends reruns. This suggests that Wheel might be pre-empted on that station on those days. Despite this, their own website lists only the 7:00 airing for Wheel and Friends at 1:00.


With two pre-emptions in key markets and O&O's this week (Boston and Philly), Wheel's ratings will undoubtedly take a dive. Unsurprisingly, since both cities' holiday specials are just half an hour, neither of the two pre-emptions affect Jeopardy!

I contacted WBZ Boston yesterday letting them know I was unhappy about how they play favorites with Jeopardy! compared to Wheel, and asking why they don't move at least one of the shows to sister station WSBK (former home of both). I already knew the reason was likely the fact that J! has continuity and Wheel doesn't, but I just wanted an official response from someone, after my complaints to WBFF Baltimore and WXIX Cincinnati were ignored. Today, I got a response from the station:


So apparently it's not because of J!'s continuity, but because it gets higher ratings in the market. It should be noted that WBZ has been giving Wheel the "Replace it with J!" treatment for a few years now, even back when Wheel was consistently beating J! in overall ratings.


For future reference, here is my hit list a list of stations that are known to replace Wheel with Jeopardy! when the latter's time slot is pre-empted, and this is not counting stations like WBFF that reschedule J! but don't air Wheel at all when both are pre-empted.

CBS affiliate WNEM in Bay City, Michigan is pre-empting both Jeopardy! and Wheel tonight with a local annual holiday shopping show called Better Deals. They will air at 2:37 and 3:07AM ET.

According to tenpoundhammer who watches on this station, this is the first time WNEM is moving Wheel overnight when pre-empted. Usually, they either drop both game shows altogether, or they only move J!

Normal programming was suspended that night on my local station KATU because of George HW Bush passed away. I don't know about anybody else. MarioGS, Do you have any information?

Bush's service is scheduled for 11AM ET Wednesday. Also, Wheel did not have any major pre-emptions on Christmas Day 2006 because ABC only aired one NBA game that year in the afternoon, instead of the usual two or three, the second of which traditionally pre-empts Wheel on the East Coast.


WBBH does not have Wheel listed at all on Saturdays for now. They probably need the room for at least one Paid Programming slot due to sports throughout Saturday afternoon. Several other stations do not air Saturday Wheel also because of sports either pre-empting its time slot or the stations putting higher-priority local shows or newscasts in Wheel's slot.

This weekend, WABC New York strangely slotted Wheel for 4:30AM Sunday morning and J! at 5:00AM Saturday morning, instead of putting the two together. Wheel's usual Saturday at 7:30 slot was replaced with an annual local special titled Broadway Backstage, but it got pre-empted thanks to College Football running over and causing the local news to run straight to 8:00 yet again. However, the later game also ran over, so Wheel started around 4:42 from the beginning, so my DVR recording has half of Celebrity Page and Wheel gets cut off during the break between Round 3 and the $3K Toss-Up.


If that happened on Saturday night, that was probably on KATU's part. Bush reportedly passed Friday night at 10:10PM CT/8:10PM PT, so Wheel would have just finished on the West Coast before any networks cut in with breaking news. KATU still had Wheel's rerun listed for last night at 9:00PM PT.