In late 1935, apparently due in part to a push from the morning *Chicago Tribune, *Chicago’s city council passed an ordinance changing the city to Eastern Standard Time year-round. This would, of course, prevent the evening Chicago Daily News from printing the closing stock prices.
The Daily News fought back, and an advisory referendum was placed on the November 1936 ballot. Chicagoans voted 2-to-1 to retain Central time, so the city council passed a new ordinance.
When I was a kid the Republicans got the Evening Star delivered. It was Washington’s conservative paper. The part about the Republicans is the way it was explained to me as a kid. Democrats got the Post.
Somewhat similarly, when I was a child in Toronto, we had two afternoon/evening papers: the Toronto Star and the Toronto Telegram (aka “the Telly”). Our house took the morning Globe and Mail, and the afternoon Telegram. The Star was typically liberal, and the Telly was typically conservative. The morning Globe was typically neutral.
Owing to a labour dispute, the Telly died in about 1971, and the Sun–a morning tabloid–rose from its ashes. As opposed to the moderate (if conservative) Telly, the Sun was unabashedly right-wing. The Star responded with a morning edition to meet the Sun, and from then on, there were no more afternoon papers in Toronto.
I have never heard that story before…fascinating! 
When my blue collar hometown still had two newspapers, the evening paper was far more popular than the morning paper, even though the morning paper was considered a more beloved institution. When the city became a one-paper town, it was the morning paper that stopped publishing. It was only in 2006 that the remaining evening paper shifted distribution to the mornings. Part of it was attributed to the switch from paperboys that delivered the paper after school to adults that usually worked in the early morning.
From what I understand, the evening paper managed to prosper because of the city’s blue collar nature. It was the first paper of the day for shift workers. After the city deindustrialized, the evening paper remained dominant out of habit and tradition.
Growing up in the 1970s, I remember the evening paper having a very late sports edition. I also remember seeing “racing edition” papers from NYC.
One thing I don’t see much anymore are regional editions for newspapers in smaller cities. The dominant newspaper in my hometown had several regional editions; city, northern suburbs, eastern suburbs, southern suburbs, Niagara Falls, upstate New York, and Ontario.
That’s very similar to what happened in Montreal. When I was a kid there in the 70s, there were two English dailies: The Montreal Star came in the afternoon, and the Gazette in the morning. The Star was the more popular paper. I was a delivery boy for it, doing the rounds after school.
The Star went on a long strike, and when it was over it could never recover. It was out of business within a few months, leaving the Gazette as the sole remaining English daily to this day.