how do stations handle late night when sports run long

how do stations handle late night shows when a sporting event or a news event on the network runs long?(and I am not talking about a local game) do they show everything in full and start the morning news late? I remember one case in 1990 when ABC delayed China Beach for the State of the Union Address and that made everything start late causing my ABC station(WLOS in Asheville) sign off to be delayed I guess it is not a big deal now that you have 24 hour a day broadcasting in most markets

I know here in OKC KFOR would delay their Sunday Night 10pm Newscast during Football season and would delay the weekday 10pm Newscast if something like the Stanley Cup Final or the Olympics that airs on NBC preempts the local news.

KOCO doesn't have to worry about it too much as ESPN pretty much have taken Sports from ABC (BTW Roone Arledge would roll in his grave seeing what has happened to ABC in the last 9-10 years with Monday Night Football moving to ESPN, etc. but that's another topic for another day) the only thing KOCO has to worry about preemptions due to Sports is the NBA Finals in June and Saturday Night College Football in the Fall.

KWTV only things that'll preempt their Local News (which they should be airing on KSBI but again another topic for another day) are the 4:25pm ET NFL Games on Sundays Thursday Night NFL Football until Week 9 when it shifts exclusively to the NFL Network and then in March the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

KOKH the only Newscast that really gets preempted is their 9pm Newscast sometimes the 10pm Newscast on Weeknights also gets preempted but not that often.

As for KOCB the only Sporting event that preempts CW Programing is for Dallas Cowboys Preseason Football, other than that that's it although they will every once in a while air KOKH's "Fox Primetime News at Nine" if Fox Sports preempts the 9pm Newscast on KOKH.

As for KSBI the only thing that'll preempt any programing Sporting event wise is for High School Football on Friday Nights otherwise KSBI just preempts MNT Programing for CBS Programing in the event KWTV has to run long on Breaking News or Severe Weather Coverage (especially in the Spring on days where you have a big Outbreak of Tornadoes in Oklahoma then that's when they'll shift CBS to KSBI, again another topic for another day)

as for KAUT they don't show any Sports on that station.

Usually the rule I've seen is that weeknight sports events are usually big business and those newscasts always air live no matter what in Milwaukee and Green Bay. Sunday/Monday nights too, especially on Packer SNF/MNF nights, where all the stations go to 11:05pm at the earliest and the NBC affiliates will start no matter what for that big news number.

Saturday nights and lower sports always depend on how late they go and the prestige of the sport; if something goes past 12:30am, it just depends on the station and how far their morning newscast is. When the first NASCAR race on NBC this year got delayed to a post-primetime slot and ended at 3:05am E/2:05am Central, WTMJ in Milwaukee was two hours away from the morning show, but also out two hours of infomercial airtime (remember, WTMJ has very little syndication inventory); they just went right to infomercials to get that money, while their Green Bay station WGBA did a full 35-minute show because all the race was killing was Blue Bloods and Sanctuary repeats few watch in the first place and I suppose the staff was raring to still do a show. To do that of course, they dumped NBC All Night with the Meet the Press and Dateline repeats.

College football primetime broadcasts on Saturday nights usually end at 11pm CT so stations know in advance that they'll be delayed and plan out for that. I do remember a Cubs game from last year that just wouldn't end, yet there were the poor anchors at WGN, starting a full 30-minute show at 2am. However one college football game from the west coast used to air live every year on CBS, the WAC Championship at 10pm ET, where most news ops west of the Rockies called it a night off and didn't even schedule it out.

And just now the World Series game ended; WITI didn't bother with a newscast at all; like I said, 12:30am is usually the no-go line. Like mentioned below, I noticed in Springfield, Mass. when I was there two weeks ago where WGGB/WSHM has a duopoly, along with the Fox subchannel on WGGB-DT2 under "Western Mass News", you could see the same show three times on CBS, ABC and Fox under various scheduling on that Saturday, and usually for Thursday Night Football WSHM just rolled the WGGB 11pm show with only the bug changing for "CBS 3".

Morning news is never delayed; local curfews for sports around 2am/3am local time would eventually kick in, but that has not happened in eons for a major sport, at least in the age where cable usually gets the delayed regular season games and the only things getting whacked are Scott & Ami house-flipping infomercials or taped poker (or with hockey on NBCSN, Time/Life infomercials).

The latest I've see a newscast go on LIVE was 1:30-1:45 on WBAL was during NHL playoffs on a weekday. When a NASCAR race had a two-three hour rain delay the broadcast ended around 1:50AM and they just rolled into regularly scheduled programming. If I recall correctly that race occurred on a Sunday night so chances are most people wouldn't be watching.

WMAR doesn't really have any issues as they only have a weekend newscast at 11PM and ESPN games are regularly scheduled.

WJZ has the luxury because CBS is kind enough to provide an extra half hour of padding on Sunday's so they usually go on when ever it ends. The latest start time I believe was 12:15.

As of right now WBFF appears to be recorded. When they rerun their 11PM newscast around 12:35AM it doesn't include the logo bug or the ticker. Well because of the extra innings on game one tonight there are no live bugs and the logo/ticker is non existent.

Edit: It looks like WBFF recorded their newscast around 12 because the radar maps all stop around 12:13 AM.

Naturally if it's a championship game most stations will wait until it's all said and done.

Here's an extreme example on a night like tonight when baseball is going to run over on Fox and obviously delay the late news. In some markets, the ABC/NBC/CBS affiliate in the market also does the 9pm on Fox, but still has to do their 10pm. What they do is RECORD the Fox 9pm and play that back whenever the game ends and run their 10pm as normal... That way at 10:35 everyone goes home happy. And then the news can air on Fox whenever it needs to. I've also heard of stations on the big 3 recording their late news for playback after a network delay, but that's in smaller markets and in extraordinary circumstances.

In our market the sporting event has to run past 1:30 eastern in order for us to record.

The only time I have seen this happen is the NASCAR race a few months back that made our late newscast run at 3:05 or something like that.

I was thinking back when NBC did postseason baseball(both LCS's) they would bump Johnny Carson if the game ran past 11:35 they did not have a similar rule with the NBA in the 90s too(but Leno didn't have that in his contract unlike Johnny)

It's not often a problem in Phoenix because of the time zone situation. Instead, normally stations find themselves having to produce an additional postgame newscast.

KNXV is particularly eager to do this when it gets its hands on a sporting event, like it did on Monday with the Cardinals, and KSAZ will do it too if there's enough time to fill (e.g. a game that ends at 8 or 8:30 Arizona time).

KPNX, on the other hand, is more prone to do a sports wrap or filler programming instead of a newscast. This is a regular event for them during Sunday Night Football season, especially before DST ends and Arizona is in the Pacific Time Zone, though they have time to fill year-round. This weekend, even with the time change, they will not do an early newscast. KPHO will do a sports wrap; there's no need for them to produce extra news because they have KTVK (even though the two stations run different newscasts).

On Saturdays during CFB season KNXV shoehorns in its early evening news between whatever offerings ABC has, at 4pm or 5pm after DST ends.

Even the Spanish-language stations have to perform schedule-juggling. On November 7 KTVW will apparently air its early weekend newscast at 3pm and Noticiero Univisión right after (possibly live with the rest of the network) in order to air a Mexican soccer match with a 5pm CST start.

The timing of this is funny because the World Series went into 14 innings and Fox newscasts didn't start until 1:35am/12:35am CT.

KTVI ran a live newscast at that time and I know a few others that did (WFTX/WVUE). In fact the meterologist on WVUE was joking about how late it is and how the new day messed up the forecast graphics.

I've never seen a circumstance in which KTVI decided to abandon a newscast due to a sporting event running over. Same goes for KMOV and KSDK.

The timing of this is funny because the World Series went into 14 innings and Fox newscasts didn't start until 1:35am/12:35am CT.

 

KTVI ran a live newscast at that time and I know a few others that did (WFTX/WVUE). In fact the meterologist on WVUE was joking about how late it is and how the new day messed up the forecast graphics.

 

I've never seen a circumstance in which KTVI decided to abandon a newscast due to a sporting event running over. Same goes for KMOV and KSDK.

.I noticed that I have never seen a game delayed just because the network lost power before.. maybe the Super Bowl a few years ago

I'm not sure about WFOR because clearly, I don't watch WFOR. However, they do go live after TNF (whenever it ends) until next week when it moves to NFL Network. WFOR doesn't produce a late newscast when this NCAA Football conference champ. game from the west starts at 10pm and WFOR usually doesn't do one at that point. Other than that, LIVE.

I've seen WTVJ ditch a newscast because of a sporting event that went waaaay too long. It was around after 3am when the NASCAR event ended and WTVJ just ditched it for Datelline NBC as it was a Sunday night, turned Monday morning.

WSVN loves to go LIVE after any sporting event, no matter what. Even if for baseball or college football or any other sporting event, WSVN just goes LIVE.

WPLG is one that I believe that doesn't do too much pre-emptions due to not much sporting events on ABC compared to other networks. Maybe only for Saturday Night Football, but that's around it.

when I was younger(and this applied to syndicated shows IMHO) WYFF my NBC station would show On Scene: Emergency Response in its entritey following Notre Dame telecasts(if the game ran faster than expected then NBC would have Enberg and Walsh fill to the top/bottom and then On Scene would start) WLOS would simply have their newscast after the game until the bottom of the hour then Wheel Of Fortune WSPA didn't have college football back then but would preempt whatever aired at 7 for NFL if game ran late if it was a Saturday telecast the procedure that WYFF used back then also applied to late season NFL games too and maybe the NBA? my question is: if a syndicated show gets preempted, how does the syndicator offer a make good to the stations?

We usually have a "midnight cutoff" for news at FOX 4. Obviously for the World Series we've suspended that rule. We slide our late fringe programming and usually collapse/delete whatever we had scheduled at 2:00 or 3:00.

I was thinking back when NBC did postseason baseball(both LCS's) they would bump Johnny Carson if the game ran past 11:35 they did not have a similar rule with the NBA in the 90s too(but Leno didn't have that in his contract unlike Johnny)

they've done SNL on tape delay after game 6 of the 86 WS and the XFL, but they've started live after the NFL wild card and Notre Dame games

so what is the cutoff for late night? id think it would be a infomercial? or maybe reruns?

In Market #31; WSYX depending on ABC schedule will have some of The OSU football games. They have a pre-game show and the 10pm News is on WTTE/FOX 28, Usually when big games come on specially in prime-time they will bump their late news on WSYX for the post-game show.

when you have a sports event and a syndicated show following does a station dead roll the show or could they show it in full?

I'm sandwiched in between the DC and Richmond markets, so along with the entire DC slate of affiliates, we also get FOX, CBS, and My out of Richmond. Last night after game 1, FOX5 went to infomercials (Tony Perkins tweeted 1am was their cut off that night) and FOX35 Richmond (whose newscasts are produced by NBC12/WWBT) aired a pre-recorded show from 10pm (as that's when the doppler was airing).

During the never ending NASCAR race earlier this year, NBC4 just went to infomercials joined in progress.

When I lived in Raleigh, I never recall any games ending extremely late, so most newscasts just aired as scheduled after the conclusion of the game.

I'm sandwiched in between the DC and Richmond markets, so along with the entire DC slate of affiliates, we also get FOX, CBS, and My out of Richmond. Last night after game 1, FOX5 went to infomercials (Tony Perkins tweeted 1am was their cut off that night) and FOX35 Richmond (whose newscasts are produced by NBC12/WWBT) aired a pre-recorded show from 10pm (as that's when the doppler was airing).

 

During the never ending NASCAR race earlier this year, NBC4 just went to infomercials joined in progress.

 

When I lived in Raleigh, I never recall any games ending extremely late, so most newscasts just aired as scheduled after the conclusion of the game.

WLOS does that when CFB runs late-they join Wheel Of Fortune or Jeopardy in progress. depends on when the game ends

at KTXL FOX 40 they have to air at 10PM Still (Sometimes at 8:30 depending how early the game is.)

KCRA 3 airs their news on their Sister station KQCA at 10PM during Sunday Night Football.

KXTV used to air Kings NBA Games but when they do they would air right after at 8:30 or 9PM.

KOVR/KMAX handles it a very odd way. when KOVR airs Thursday Night Football they have to fade to CBS13 News for a news brief and then fades back to the game. When KMAX shows Giants they show a green ticker telling viewers that they can watch Delayed CW network shows following the Giants Baseball game.

Outside of Saturday nights, it's pretty easy for most ABC, NBC, and CBS stations to push everything back and join in progress. On weeknights, they have a 35 minute window after sports they have to fill before network late night starts. They also have network overnight programming they can join in progress. Most ABC stations already do join World News Now in progress whether they're sliding after sports or not.

Fox stations have it easy in a different way in that most of them have old syndicated reruns of Modern Family or Cops filled with Revshares they can dump or join in progress and not lose much. There's certainly nothing that is going to trump the ad revenue of a newscast.

When you have a duopoly where the Fox station goes long in sports, that makes it more difficult. I know of at least one that is paired with a big 3 station that prerecords their newscast. They have one set of talent and one control room and they can't simulcast. They tape it and play it back so if a game goes ridiculously long like last night, the anchors are long gone by the time the game is over.

One thing I've noticed WITI do lately for late running sports (both late-nights and during weekend football/baseball) is that they schedule more infomercials and barter "cushion" programming like The Bullwinkle Show and Who's the Boss? that usually tend to be the first to get pre-empted or joined in progress it runs long.

Something I've seen WTMJ do in the past (though not much anymore) is on Saturdays they would follow long running golf/NASCAR/Notre Dame football with previously scheduled infomercial blocks, run that into network programming then simply join NBC in progress even as late as 7:40c. I don't think it's happened since the Scripps merger

One thing I've noticed WITI do lately for late running sports (both late-nights and during weekend football/baseball) is that they schedule more infomercials and barter "cushion" programming like The Bullwinkle Show and Who's the Boss? that usually tend to be the first to get pre-empted or joined in progress it runs long.

 

Something I've seen WTMJ do in the past (though not much anymore) is on Saturdays they would follow long running golf/NASCAR/Notre Dame football with previously scheduled infomercial blocks, run that into network programming then simply join NBC in progress even as late as 7:40c. I don't think it's happened since the Scripps merger

I wonder.. how does a station know how much to cut out of a late night show when there is a delay?

I wonder.. how does a station know how much to cut out of a late night show when there is a delay?

A good master control operator is a good thing to have. They can do that math on the fly and it will look like it was always supposed to happen that way.