Season 40 Pre-emptions and Anomalies

Friday's March Madness overran about 23 minutes.

This week, KFSM Fort Smith scheduled #S-7759 and 7760 Saturday at 4:00 and 4:30 PM Central. However, this was immediately following that day's sole March Madness game on CBS. According to my friend who watches on this station, 7759 did not air at all due to 30 minutes of overrun, but 7760 aired in its entirety. The rerun was still scheduled at the normal 6:30, resulting in a very rare instance of an affiliate scheduling three airings of Wheel of Fortune in one day.

Due to severe weather and tornado warnings in parts of the midwest, #S-7765 (WWE tournament finals) was at least partially pre-empted in some areas. On KSDK St. Louis, only Round 3 was pre-empted. On WMBD Peoria, coverage continued past the end of the 6:00 news; they cut to Wheel around 6:35, only to go back to coverage about three minutes later through the rest of the show. Regardless, stay safe if you're in the affected areas!

#S-7466RR is pre-empted on three of the Big Four tonight: ABC by The Ten Commandments (except WTEN Albany, which delays it to 8:00), CBS by the Final Four, and FOX by MLB. Only most NBC airings are unaffected tonight.

WABC has Wheel at 5:00 AM ET Sunday, while KABC doesn't have it at all, which affects two of the contestants on this episode. The third is from the DFW area where Wheel is moved to KTXA as usual. Scheduling on the Pacific Time Zone CBS's is different than last time for two of them: KLAS has Wheel at 10:30 PT and should not be affected by overrun. KVAL also has it at 10:30 which means, since they always slide their newscasts, any overrun will affect Wheel, since it's the last show before the 11:00 news. KBAK has it at 9:30 and will slide with overrun, but will air in its entirety as long as it doesn't run more than an hour over.

Mountain and Pacific CBS airings of #S-7766, except the two 6:00 MT airings, were pre-empted by the championship game. Assuming it overran, Wheel likely did not air in its entirety on KVAL since Wheel was scheduled at 10:30 PT, the last program between their two mandatory newscasts. It also may have been JIP'd or skipped on KBAK since they also had local news and had a rerun of Young Sheldon (presumably offered as West Coast filler from CBS) right after Wheel.

Today's rerun is #S-7480, which got pre-empted in several markets the first time it aired on Black Friday 2021.

All 7:00 ET airings on ABC and CBS affiliates, as well as some 7:30/6:30 CT airings after local newscasts that started late, were JIP'd at R3. A few other airings were pre-empted outright by delayed 6:00 newscasts. East Coast FOX airings were pre-empted outright, as well as WTHR by a holiday parade and WBZ by Pats All Access.

Some affiliates will be pre-empting this episode a second time.

CBS has part of the PGA Masters today, scheduled until 7:00 ET, so there is a decent chance many airings will once again not be seen in their entirety, including WBZ which has Wheel scheduled at the usual 7:00. Affiliates that pre-empt Wheel to accommodate delayed 6:00 newscasts such as WROC and WBNS will be doing so, as they did the first time.

ABC East Coast is fine today, but WABC already aired Wheel at 5:00 AM ET this morning due to a New York International Auto Show special tonight. The original airing was not affected on WABC (but that day's J! was). ABC West Coast is impacted by NHL tonight as usual.

WTHR has Wheel as normal tonight.

FOX is an interesting situation. They have a 30-minute live broadcast of horse racing tonight at 6:00 ET, then an MLS Soccer game starting at 7:30. Most affected airings of Wheel are moving to earlier time slots on Saturday, or in one case, Sunday afternoon. Impacted original airings were forced overnight or didn't air at all. Moved FOX airings for this weekend are as follows:

WXIX Cincinnati - Saturday 12:00 PM ET ("Investigate TV" is scheduled at 7:00)
WDAF Kansas City - Saturday 2:30 PM CT
WLUK Green Bay - Saturday 5:30 PM CT (immediately follows horse racing)
WVUE New Orleans - Saturday 6:00 PM CT (J! moves up to 5:30)
KDVR Denver - Saturday 8:30 PM MT (30 minutes after MLS)
WALA Mobile - Sunday 4:00 PM CT

#S-7778 was pre-empted on WREX in Rockford, IL for a severe weather special. It aired at 1:06 AM CT.

#S-7780 last Friday was pre-empted on ABC West Coast by an NBA Playoffs game.

WLS has removed the "Draft Day Countdown" special from its Thursday schedule and restored Wheel, meaning Wheel is not affected on any of the East O&O's. Not sure if the special was local, or if ABC planned one for the O&O's but cancelled it and WLS didn't update their schedule until the last minute. WABC never had a Thursday pre-emption listed.

Draft Round 1 overran 28 minutes. This may affect some West Coast airings and will definitely slide some overnight East Coast airings on Nexstar stations.