WheelWarrior

Last Wednesday, due to the tragedy in Uvalde, NBC Nightly News did an hour-long edition with the second half-hour optional, depending on the affiliate. I remember in the 2010's, any time something really big happened, all of the Big Three evening news programs would do optional hour editions. I specifically remember Sandy Hook, the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma tornadoes, the 2016 San Bernardino shooting, and the death of Nelson Mandela all being covered in special hour-long editions. However, I don't recall any of the three doing this since the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Was this the first time any of them did an hour edition since then?

Ryan Field was supposed to go skydiving on a segment for WABC's annual "summer kickoff" special (airs every Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend), but the plane couldn't take off due to weather. They ended up sending him to iFly in Paramus instead.

^ That 7:00 newscast must have been a fluke or maybe a trial for a potential permanent 7:00 newscast next fall when college football starts. CBS once again had PGA scheduled until 7:00 today, but this time WCBS ran "New York by Design", a localized version of "America by Design", a program syndicated to some of the CBS O&O's. Just like what KYW does with its 7:00 news, WCBS ran NYBD in its entirety following PGA overrun then JIP'd Inside Edition shortly after 7:30. Listings for next Saturday also show NYBD at 7:00.

Noticed yesterday that following PGA, which was scheduled to end at 7:00 (but ran until about 7:25), WCBS scheduled a 7:00 newscast and Inside Edition Weekend, instead of the usual Entertainment Tonight Weekend for the full hour. This is what KYW always does when CBS has a sporting event scheduled until 7:00 that pre-empts the 6:00 news, but this is only the first time I've seen WCBS do this. And like KYW, WCBS runs this 7:00 newscast for a full half hour even if the sporting events runs long, then joins IE in progress if there's time left, which I don't believe there was last night. Is KTVT the only O&O that truncates its 6:00/7:00 post-sports newscasts if there's overrun, rather than running it in its entirety and JIP'ing programming afterwards?

Could be. For the previous two seasons, any time Wheel of Fortune was pre-empted by a planned special (which the O&O's have been churning out a lot more of lately), it would either air on 7.2 Localish or be delayed by a day for the rest of the week, but the TV guides would never list it, so I would always have to call WABC and confirm it would indeed air on Localish and manually schedule that network to record at 7:30. When they slide the eps by a day, it results in a new ep airing on Saturday instead of a rerun, but the guides would often list it as the rerun still, so fans who automatically DVR new eps only would be missing one. This season, Wheel has been pre-empted several times by specials or local debates, and it would always air overnight instead of a day late or on Localish (and it often started a few minutes earlier than when the guide said it would). I was told by WABC that they no longer use Localish for WABC programming makeups because they no longer want to sacrifice the Localish programming and its ad revenue for ABC. I was surprised to know that WABC waited for Wheel to finish airing, credits and all, before reporting the NYPD shooting. I don't think anyone would have complained if they flipped the switch the moment the Bonus Round was declared a win or loss. By the way, Bill and Sade will be making an appearance in the intro of today's (1/31) episode of Wheel. All five episodes this week are saluting a particular city with all local contestants and intros with the affiliates' anchors. Monday is NYC. Promos for this have been airing since last Friday.

Here's a video of a Puerto Rican family watching on WFTV in Orlando and their reaction. O&O WPVI cut it off about two seconds after them to a commercial break. wpvinyeprcutoff.mp4

Olympic Zone is actually carried on the majority of NBC affiliates, not just the O&O's. It is mandatory for the O&O's, but optional for everyone else.

My YouTube channel got suspended just for posting clips of Wheel of Fortune, sometimes with edits such as onscreen text or arrows to point out an editing error or the like. Even my gameplay of the WOF Xbox One video game got blocked by Sony. Granted, I did post multiple full episodes without putting the full show title in the info, but they got caught anyway. One WOF fan has been screen recording every episode of the 2020-21 season off various Locast feeds and has been posting them on YouTube unlisted and without the show name (or "wheel" or "wof") in the info or tags. They used to be public without incident, but the episode that aired Election Day (which many fans were flocking to because of most markets pre-empting it) got blocked, so they are now all unlisted, but all 185 episodes of Season 38 to date are readily available if you know where to go.

Yep, WCBS filled it with Judge Judy reruns on Mondays and repeats of the previous day's Inside Edition from Tuesday-Friday. WABC did only do 30 minutes up until the early 2010's. They used to air the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? at 12:30. It later moved to 2:00 PM before the show was cancelled in 2019.