During the summer of 1976, KPIX in San Francisco, California, a CBS affiliate then owned by Westinghouse (Group W) Broadcasting, premiered a local weeknight television news and entertainment series titled Evening: The MTWTF Show.
KPIX's Evening Magazine was first hosted by San Francisco radio personality Jan Yanehiro, journalist Steve Fox and Detroit news anchor and reporter Erik Smith.
Soon, Group W stations in Baltimore (WJZ-TV), Boston (WBZ-TV), Philadelphia (KYW-TV), and Pittsburgh (KDKA-TV) were all doing their own local versions of the Evening format.
Dick Crew was the National Executive Producer, with the following production staff: Dick Newton, Sally Jewett, Andrew Schorr, Melanie Chilek, Bill Geddie, Diane Heditsian, John Norton, Larry Emsweller, Vanita Cillo, Jim Ziegler, David Baxter, Mellen O'Keefe, Gary Cooper and Joe Tobin.
Matt Lauer, Tom Bergeron, Nancy Glass, Leeza Gibbons, Henry Tenenbaum and Jerry Penacoli were among those who became well-known because of their work with the PM/Evening programs.
In Pittsburgh, KDKA-TV's broadcast of Evening Magazine featured a young Dennis Miller providing a "humorous" closing piece, similar to Andy Rooney's commentary on 60 Minutes.
[citation needed] Some industry insiders have placed a great deal of the blame on Group W Television, which handled distribution of the franchise as well as national advertising sales for the local editions.
The initial arrangements between Westinghouse and stations which subscribed to the PM Magazine format were done so on a "barter" basis, where the local affiliate and the national distributor shared an even split of advertising time and revenue.
With fewer local commercial spots to sell, and increasing production costs on the affiliate end, the PM Magazine format appeared less attractive.
Shows such as A Current Affair, Hard Copy, and Inside Edition, along with the lighter-edged Entertainment Tonight, filled up the prime-time access available spots and ended Evening/PM's run, although KPIX would resurrect its own version of Evening Magazine once again, this time in the mid-1990s.