Season 36 Pre-emptions Thread

This week's pre-emptions:


MONDAY 1/14

• None

TUESDAY 1/15

• WBZ Boston (CBS O&O) sabotages Wheel yet again thanks to the mayor of Boston's State of the City address airing at 7:30PM ET, Jeopardy!'s time slot, and we all know what this station likes to do with Jeopardy! in this scenario. Wheel will air at 1:37AM ET after James Corden, in place of Paid Programming. As of this week, WBZ has pre-empted 22% of Season 36.
• WANE in Fort Wayne, Indiana (CBS) is airing Indiana's State of the State address in Wheel's time slot. Wheel will also air at 1:37AM ET in place of ES.TV.
  
• Possible pre-emption on WPRI in Providence, Rhode Island (CBS). On Tuesday, Wheel is listed in its usual 7:00PM ET time slot on said station as well as its MyTV-affiliated subchannel in place of Access, which is usually where Wheel is moved when WPRI needs to pre-empt it.

SATURDAY 1/19 (repeat of 01/12/18)

• All ABC affiliates in the Mountain, Pacific, and Alaska Time Zones by the Lakers @ Rockets NBA game, scheduled for 5:00-8:00PM PT. Check your local listings. Most stations will be airing Wheel in the local 9:00PM hour, except for KGO San Francisco and all Alaskan stations which are not airing it at all, KOHD in Bend, Oregon which is airing it on Sunday at 6:30PM PT, and KAEF in Eureka, California which is airing it at 8:00PM PT and is at risk of getting pre-empted by overrun from the game.

WTHR in Indianapolis (NBC) also aired the address, pre-empting Wheel. Wheel was moved to MeTV affiliate WALV, although the listings still said M*A*S*H was on. Also, there was slight overrun on the speech, cutting off the first few minutes of Jeopardy! on both stations. Wheel lucked out in the end.









Also, WBZ Boston is apparently aware that they are receiving complaints for pulling the "replace Wheel with J!" maneuver yet again, so much that an anchor from the station tweeted an admittedly-clever joke about the situation.

It's weird because I did the research and there are zero markets where Wheel regularly airs on MyTV or CW (although a few markets do air the weekend run on there like Syracuse, Atlanta, and Baltimore), and there are only two markets that opt to air Wheel on an independent station (Phoenix and Salt Lake City). I haven't done full research on Jeopardy!'s affiliates yet (though I plan to in the future), but from what I've seen while researching Wheel's, there are a few MyTV's that carry first-run J! (don't know about CW; I know there's at least one that carries only Daytime J!). The other syndie game shows have way more variance across the country. In any area, chances are you'll see at least one of Millionaire, Feud, or Funny You Should Ask on MyTV or CW. In NYC, Feud airs four times a day Mon-Sat on the local MyTV affiliate (it moved over from FOX shortly before Richard Karn's departure).


I recently finished composing a master list of all affiliates that air Wheel in North America and the times that it airs. I plan to post it soon once I figure out how to best organize it for display on this forum. It looks like a mess in Excel.

In the meantime, here's another tidbit: in Upper Michigan, Wheel airs on FOX only on Mondays. On Tue-Sat, it airs on NBC. Comparatively, Jeopardy! airs on FOX Mon-Fri and NBC only on Saturdays.

According to a viewer in a now-deleted post in the Official WOF Facebook Group, last night's show was pre-empted in an unknown East Coast market by an award ceremony. Listings still showed Wheel at its normal time on all Eastern and Central Time Zone affiliates except for WVIR Charlottesville.




A Detroit viewer confirmed that WDIV did indeed air Wheel last night at 7:00. They have also updated their listings and have some odd scheduling on Saturday. In primetime, a nationally-scheduled repeat of this week's America's Got Talent, a two-hour episode, is being cut in half. The 7:00 hour still has Wheel and J! replaced with infomercials, but they are now opting to pre-empt the first half of AGT with Wheel at 8:00 and another infomercial at 8:30. It explicitly says on WDIV's website that AGT will be joined in progress at 9:00.



Wheel's 8:00PM Saturday airing is still listed as this week's Saturday rerun (S35 E90, Disney Sea & Shore), but since Wheel is pre-empted on Friday, there is a possibility that this might be a make-up airing for Friday's episode. Again, this airing was not on the schedule at all earlier this week.

It seems WDIV no longer opts to give Jeopardy! priority over Wheel; they are only airing three out of six episodes this week (Wed, Fri, and Sat are all pre-empted), and next Friday's J! (but not Wheel) will also be pre-empted by a local special on the US Figure Skating Championships.

A viewer confirmed that this airing was still the S35 rerun and not a make-up of last Friday's show.

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Tonight, WROC in Rochester, New York (CBS) is airing Race in Rochester, a local special discussing racism, from 7-8PM ET. Wheel and Jeopardy! will air at 1:37AM and 2:07AM, in place of Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen and Paid Programming.

Most listings still have Wheel and Jeopardy! at their normal times, so if you need to DVR tonight's Wheel, you'll have to set a recording for Comics Unleashed.

West Coast airings of Wheel on Tuesday were originally scheduled to be pre-empted by the State of the Union address. However, it has been cancelled, so the show is no longer affected. Some listings have already been updated to move Wheel back to its regular time slot, though others like KABC Los Angeles still have SOTU and a primetime airing of Wheel listed (9:30PM in most cases) as of Monday morning.


Strangely, while KNSD San Diego has updated their schedule (they originally had Wheel slotted for 10:00PM PT), they now have two airings of Tuesday's Wheel scheduled at 7:00 and 7:30 with Jeopardy! not listed at all that day. I doubt this will actually happen.

EDIT: This was corrected soon after I posted this.

The State of the Union has been rescheduled to February 5, so the contingencies listed above will likely go into effect that night.

I checked WABC but actually, it was not pre-empted. Jeopardy! was airing when I checked.

The State of the Union on Tuesday will affect Wheel in all Pacific and Alaska Time Zone markets as well as independent station KTVK in Phoenix since they air Wheel in primetime at 7:00PM MT.

Here are all the alternate times. Almost all stations will be airing Wheel in primetime, except for two one NBC affiliate that is not showing it at all and is opting to air a rerun of Dateline NBC instead. A few affiliates' schedules conflict between different sources and are marked with an asterisk and detailed below the table.



*KTVK Phoenix: Station website has Wheel and Jeopardy! at their normal times with no SOTU at all. Other listings have SOTU at 7:00PM MT and Wheel and J! in the 3:00AM hour.
*KTVQ Billings: Station website has Wheel and Jeopardy! at their normal times with CBS primetime show The World's Best at 9:00PM MT after SOTU. Other listings have the two hours swapped, with TWB airing early at 6:00PM MT (in sync with the East Coast) and Wheel and J! in the 9:00 hour.
*KOLO Reno: Station website has Wheel and Jeopardy! in the 9:00PM PT hour. Other listings still have those time slots listed as TBA.


EDIT: KNVN Chico added Wheel to their schedule after previously not having it at all.