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Hard to believe. But it is true. From 1970-95 ABC scheduled Monday Night Football in the 9pm slot, which would be 6pm PT. The Management at ABC affilliates in Portland [KATU] and Seattle [KOMO] did not like the idea of their local newscasts being preempted for football. So the local news ran as scheduled, and MNF was tape delayed to run at 7pm. The only time news would be preempted would be the few occasions where the Seahawks were playing.
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Thursday Night Football should be removed from the CTV2 schedule and stay on TSN. Most people complain that in markets like Barrie, London and Windsor takes almost forever to finish a game and causes the 11PM news to come on later after the game is done. So yeah I agree with you mace Local News is more important then the NFL.
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But it’s far less profitable which is the only thing that matters to Bell.
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Tomas Barlow wrote:
But it’s far less profitable which is the only thing that matters to Bell.
Sure. In a world where the viewers are all OTA.
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Don't get me started! I really resent having the Sunday evening 6PM local (CTV Kitchener) newscast pre-empted every week of the NFL football season by American football. It is our only reliable source of local news at that hour. The K-W news radio station is all sports on weekends and our local radio station does not have the staff to cover the local area and most of the weekend news comes from Canadian Press. CTV K-W does do an online only news cast at 6PM but that is not the same and we spend enough time on our computers that we do not need to use it for our newscast and while I can navigate the computer pretty well, our smart tv is way smarter than me.
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My beef is similar and yet different. I happen to like watching local Toronto news and then switching to one of the U.S. network nightly news shows to see what they're reporting. On Saturday, for the second or third time this season, every single American network - NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and The CW - were all showing College Football at the exact same time.
All of the games ran over and not one of those first three listed even bothered with a network news show, even with the world on pins and needles over what's going on overseas. Yes, I'm aware the ratings for football is bound to be higher than their rapidly fading newscasts and there are cable all-news networks, but really, not one of them could make room for it? Pretty shameful.
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Football = Jesus in most U.S markets and it's huge in Canada as well...it's not at all surprising to see this shift with local tv news being trumped/pre-empted/cancelled more and more often...the ratings are one important thing but the ad dollars, licensing rights/agreements and the increased proficiency of online betting ads and sportsbooks are all very lucrative...never mind the allure of a live sporting event on tv and the the fact most people find the news they want online nowadays...