http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/C...ndustryid=47169

According to this article, WNBC will be replacing the second run of Merv Griffin's Crosswords with a second play of Access Hollywood.
Not a good sign for this new game show.

Not even a first run of Access Hollywood - it's the previous day's show, I would assume. We have a station in our market that airs the previous day's Insider at 12:30, which is slightly more palatable.

But a second run of AH only a few hours out of prime access in the #1 market? Yuck.

It's not even an O&O-wide change (yet...) nor is it happening at KNBC. Just WNBC in an overall shuffle of that station's schedule in that time period. Not a good sign overall, but not doom and gloom.

It seems to me that if "ET" feeds around 3 p.m. ET, so would "Access," so it may be the same show that airs at 7:30 p.m.

In Chicago, for the first couple of years WCIU was running "Insider," the two runs were at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Granted, WCIU's the small-string indie in the market, but it could still be possible in a Top 5 market. (The runs are now at 5 and 11 p.m.)

/Pat O'Brien
//what a guy

Looks like this might not be an isolated change after all - Starting this week the San Francisco NBC O&O is *also* replacing the secondary Crosswords with Access Hollywood.

"Access" feeds at 4pm ET, with refeeds for "breaking news" (or, more often, technical difficulties) at 5pm. And turning around a 4pm feed for a 4:30 broadcast is no problem--we bumped our airing of "Access" back from 7pm to 4:30pm a few weeks ago, and if a station in market #116 can do it...

What do you do in the event those technical difficulties are major?

I had to chuckle when I saw who the male co-anchor of WNBC's new 5:30 newscast is...the former director of Pyramid got into journalism?? LOL

Chuck Donegan (The Amused "Chuckie Baby")