Early prime time
Under strong pressure by NBC, KCRA and KRON abandoned early prime in September 1993, while KPIX continued the practice until 1998; it was credited for raising ratings for The Late Show with David Letterman.
[4] Throughout the 1980s, NBC's West Coast affiliates, led by Amy McCombs of KRON-TV in San Francisco, agitated for an earlier prime time start to take advantage of the larger use of televisions at 10 p.m. as opposed to 11 p.m. and increase ratings for their late local newscasts and therefore station revenues.
[6] Meanwhile, KRON got to try out early prime time for a week in October 1989, in the wake of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; the network approved the station to move its late news up to 10 p.m. as a "public service" to commuters affected by earthquake-induced traffic snarls.
[3] For KCRA, the November 1991 sweeps period bore out the strategy; the station was competitive against syndicated programming in the 7 p.m. hour, and its news at 10 attracted more viewers than the 11 p.m. newscasts in the market.
[15] KPIX began analyzing the prospects of an early prime switch,[16] even as CBS president Howard Stringer generally resisted the idea.
King World was estimated to generate one-sixth of its revenue in access hours from stations on the West Coast, making it particularly sensitive to early prime-induced time slot changes.
KXTV, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento, continued to contemplate switching to early prime;[24] its general manager, Jim Saunders, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "In my opinion, 7 to 10 works better everywhere except in one city, and that's New York, where decisions get made.
"[25] The remaining NBC affiliate in the three markets was KSBW in Salinas, which announced it would switch to early prime beginning February 8, 1992, the same day as KMST.
[26] Two weeks later, however, the station changed its mind and announced it would continue with traditional prime time, having originally guessed that ABC would follow suit.
[28] This decision proved beneficial for KGO, as it found itself the only local newscast at 11 p.m. with ratings described as "impressive" by Al Morch of the San Francisco Examiner.
KPIX decided in late 1992 to instead purchase equipment to delay the East Coast feed of network programming and reair it at appropriate times, which was prohibitively expensive for the smaller Monterey station.
[34] NBC then began to apply pressure on KRON and KCRA to force them to unwind their early prime time scheduling practices.
On July 21, company president Bob Wright told a press event in Los Angeles that he expected KRON to return to traditional prime time.
McCombs said the station did not want to switch, even after acquiring rights to Oakland Athletics baseball, but did so because Wright apparently hated early prime.
[38] Days later, KCRA announced that it would switch back to traditional prime time as part of a three-year affiliation renewal with NBC, again as a result of pressure from the network.
While prime time ratings had remained steady, the local newscast had not met station expectations, and KCRA lost between $7 and $12 million in revenue.
[40] KSCH began airing the KCRA-produced newscast on September 12, 1993;[41] this started a relationship between the two stations that culminated in KCRA taking over programming under a local marketing agreement in 1994.
