I have this vague and strange memory of a dream I had once: That at one time, NBC and CBS did a straight swap of all of their shows. Or most of them. They retained a few news shows and late-night shows and stuff. But for the most part, if, say, Seinfeld and Friends were on NBC, they got moved to CBS. If Frasier was on CBS, it was moved to NBC.
Was that just a dream? Or did it really happen? If so, what was the deal with it?
Are you from the Boston area? About ten years ago, the local NBC and CBS affiliates (Channels 4 and 7) switched networks. I still get confused and look for “Sixty Minutes” on Channel 7.
Wicked pissah guess. Yeah, Boston.
It was just a local thing? And just local affiliates? So what you’re saying is that NBC, with Seinfeld, stayed NBC with Seinfeld, but they switched from channel 7 to channel 4? I remember that some shows stayed where they were. Channel 7 news stayed on channel 7, for instance.
From what I remember, the news and sports affiliates changed overnight…Jack Williams and Bob Lobel of Channel 4, for example would lead into the CBS news and Dan Rather, while the gang at Channel 7 segued into Tom Brokaw. IIRC, it happened around the Christmas holidays, so it was a bitch keping straight who was carrying which football game.
Something similar just happened on my cable system.
What used to be the NBC affiliate changed into the ABC affiliate, but stayed on the same channel. Couldn’t have two ABC affiliates, so the cable system dropped the old ABC affiliate and picked up a new NBC affiliate, putting them into the channel slot that the old ABC affiliate occupied.
Slightly confusing, that.
My local NBC & ABC affiliates swapped networks for 2 years and then swapped back in the mid 80s.
For my whole life, Channel 20 was NBC and Channel 17 was ABC. Then, just a couple of months ago, they swapped, and it feels like the Order of Nature has been overturned, as though gravity now works sideways or something.
yep, it started in the boston area, and then the phila, pa area went over a few weeks later. the local news was the only thing that didn’t switch. that was really odd.
it was very confusing for a while. every now and then shadows of: is that on “3” or “10” will happen. mostly during football season.
the switch was in the middle of football season and just confused everything.
It was all a dream. And then you woke up and found Bobby Ewing in your shower.
Not to be confused with the great coup by Fox about 15 years ago when they bought their way into better affiliates in the major market. Suddenly 40-year affiliates of NBC and CBS and 30-year ABC affiliates were showing “Married With Children” while the other networks were hunting for UHF stations.
Also not to be confused with CBS Radio’s great talent raid of the 1940s, when William Paley picked off some of NVC’s best talent, notably Jack Benny.
In the mid 1990’s, we had something similar with our ABC and CBS affiliates. Ch. 10 went from CBS to ABC, and Ch. 13 from ABC to CBS.
I was working in TV in Vancouver when we went through the Great Affiliate Swap. Four privately owned stations changed affiliations. It was madness…
Easier to live in LA or NY where the networks own the affiliates. Such things don’t happen here.
A few years ago in Philly, NBC affiliate KYW Ch3 Became CBS, While CBS affiliate WCAU ch10 became NBC