THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 8, 1995 TAG: 9508080052
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
SO, THE DISNEY folks bought ABC for $19 billion, and the Westinghouse folks put in a $5.4 billion bid to purchase CBS.
What effect will this high-voltage merging have on you, the couch potatoes in the 40th largest TV market in the United States?
Not much. Not now.
For the immediate future, Tim Allen of ``Home Improvement'' will go on working for ABC, Dan Rather will continue to anchor the ``CBS Evening News,'' and not even a potential buyer with billions to spend will be able to bring back the National Football League to CBS any time soon.
Be it Westinghouse or whomever, the new CBS owner will again be faced with outbidding Fox when the rights to the National Football Conference NFL games come up for grabs later in the 1990s.
The corporate melding that took place in broadcasting recently grabbed Page 1 headlines. However, something reported back there on Page 10 could have a greater impact on what you see on TV than than any ol' $19 billion stock swap.
The Federal Communications Commission has decided to kill the primetime access rule, which has been around for decades. The rule prevented networks from putting on more than three hours of primetime programming Monday through Saturday. The limit was four hours on Sunday.
The rule also prohibited affiliates in the 50 largest markets - including Hampton Roads - from buying re-runs of series that aired on their networks. This year, both NBC's ``Seinfeld'' and ABC's ``Home Improvement'' slipped into syndication, but you won't be seeing the re-runs on NBC or ABC stations here.
The buzz is that WTKR, a CBS affiliate, bought re-runs of both shows.
The FCC restraints come off in 1996. The primetime access rule (PTAR) has been swamped by the wave of de-regulation rolling out of a Republican-controlled Congress. PTAR never became what the FCC wanted it to be - an hour or two used by stations to put on locally produced programming.
Back in the 1970s, the stations gave it a go with such local shows as ``P.M. Magazine,'' which brought Joe Flanagan of WVEC to this market. But before long, local stations gave up the costly business of trying to fill primetime access.
Syndicators moved in to capture time slots vacant before 8 p.m.
Among those seizing the opportunity was Merv Griffin, whose company created the two hottest shows in syndication (``Wheel of Fortune'' and ``Jeopardy!''), and whose distributor, KingWorld, handles the No. 3 most-watched syndicated series, ``Oprah.''
With the end of PTAR, these shows will have strong competition for the audience watching TV before 8 p.m. It might also be twilight for ``Entertainment Tonight,'' ``Extra,'' ``Inside Edition,'' ``Hard Copy,'' ``A Current Affair'' and ``American Journal.''
Wouldn't NBC affiliate WAVY prefer adding re-runs of ``Seinfeld'' at 7:30 instead of ``Stories of the Highway Patrol''? The FCC opened the door to that possibility.
Game shows and TV magazines may lose some of that early primetime audience, said Steve Marx, who runs Fox affiliate WTVZ in Norfolk for Sinclair Broadcasting of Baltimore. But it will not happen soon because stations have long-term deals with syndicators such as Paramount and KingWorld, said Marx.
(He also announced that Sinclair is still thinking about a 10 p.m. weeknight local news strip for Channel 33).
By the end of 1990s, you may see a totally new look on TV in the hours between the time local news signs off and primetime shows begin at 8 p.m. Don't be surprised if later in this decade, Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings with the news have been bumped for re-runs of ``Friends,'' ``Frasier'' or ``Grace Under Fire,'' the hot shows on TV today. by CNB