Past programming preemptions and deferrals
Despite being one of ABC's stronger affiliates during the 1960s and 1970s (a sales video made in 1964 billed the station as the third most-watched ABC affiliate in the United States), WHBQ-TV often did not air some ABC programs in pattern, particularly those on the network's daytime lineup. Many of these programs were preempted outright or aired on a delay during the overnight hours. As with many southern and conservative markets, RKO General had to balance the network's programming with the rural and suburban audience surrounding Memphis, and its program director, Lance Russell, programmed the station conservatively, preempting shows based on his own tastes.[15] For example, it was one of several ABC affiliates that did not clear Hot l Baltimore, which featured one of the first openly gay couples featured on American television, with Russell personally stating why the program would not be seen before leading into WHBQ's replacement programming. In September 1977, WHBQ-TV was one of eight ABC affiliates that refused to carry the controversial sitcom Soap, replacing it with repeats of My Three Sons.[16] When Soap proved to be a runaway hit for the network, channel 13 and Russell acquiesced and allowed the series' summer reruns to air in late night, leading to it airing in its regular prime time slot from the start of the 1978–79 television season.
Other preemptions of the ABC schedule were more driven by the lure of local advertising revenue for an entire time slot, rather than content. For instance, in 1972, WHBQ-TV (whose AM sister was a Top 40 powerhouse at the time) stunned viewers in the Mid-South by dropping American Bandstand (and, with it, weaker and low-rated cartoons that aired in the 11 a.m. slot; the ABC Weekend Special, which took that spot in 1977, would not be cleared until 1980, along with portions of ABC's Wide World of Sports) in favor of airing a 90-minute live professional wrestling program from the Continental Wrestling Association circuit, hosted by Russell, that was previously a fixture on late Saturday afternoons when it first premiered in 1958, until it moved to the Saturday 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. slot. While that program moved to WMC-TV in 1977, channel 13 continued to preempt Bandstand until 1984, three years before ABC canceled the long-running series. The preemption kept Memphians from seeing homegrown talent perform on the show, such as The Sylvers, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Anita Ward, The Staple Singers, and even WHBQ radio's own Rick Dees, who was hired as the station's new morning host during his "Disco Duck" days in late 1976; that song failed to garner any airplay on any of the radio stations in Memphis, including WHBQ-AM, because Dees was still employed at rival WMPS (then at 680 AM) at the time.
Channel 13 made up for the preemption by airing Bandstand's syndicated rival, Soul Train, on Saturday nights until independent station WPTY-TV purchased the local rights to that program in 1983. It was one of the largest ABC affiliates to decline to air AM America when it debuted in 1975 and the station also initially didn't clear its successor Good Morning America; the latter program would not air on the station until 1977, initially for only an hour, and only when it proved to be at ratings parity nationally with Today. Other popular shows that WHBQ-TV held out until later (when they became major out-of-the-box hits on ABC) included Dark Shadows (which featured actor Don Briscoe, who would later reside and died in Memphis), S.W.A.T., Kids Are People Too, and The Bionic Woman. In 1980, the station was criticized for carrying paid religious programming instead of ABC's coverage of the United States men's hockey team's gold medal victory over Finland in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.[17]
Locally, the station had a rivalry with WREC/WREG-TV over bragging rights for the largest movie library in the market. Through its ownership by RKO General, channel 13 had rights to the entire RKO Pictures film catalog. The station's reliance on classic and public domain films during the 1960s and 1970s was evidenced in its daily noon to 2 p.m. airing of RKO General's Million Dollar Movie franchise (and later, the 9–11 a.m. airing of Dialing for Dollars), which the station ran instead of popular daytime soap operas All My Children and Ryan's Hope, or in some cases, reruns of ABC prime time sitcoms that aired in the late morning hours. In September 1978, channel 13 finally began clearing the full ABC daytime lineup, though until its ABC affiliation ended, All My Children aired in the morning on a one-day delay due to its noontime newscast.
Local programming
On September 29, 1962, WHBQ-TV premiered Fantastic Features, a showcase of classic horror films from the RKO Pictures library. The series was hosted by a Transylvanian-styled vampire named Sivad, played by Watson Davis. The show's opening sequence, which included film footage of Sivad riding through a misty forest in a horse-drawn hearse (filmed at Overton Park), proved so unsettling to some children that the series was moved from its original 6 p.m. timeslot on Saturdays to 10:30 p.m. At the height of its popularity, Fantastic Features aired on both Friday and Saturday nights. The program ended on February 5, 1972, after 623 episodes (although the final two years reran older films as the station was receiving more raunchier horror films whose content Davis did not feel comfortable airing and wanted the show to remain family-friendly), though Sivad has remained a well-remembered local personality. There were several attempts to resurrect the character, though a retired Watson Davis refused all offers, the sole exception being promos for the syndicated run of Dark Shadows, when it was acquired by WHBQ in April 1982. Davis died on May 23, 2005, and was buried in Monroe County, Arkansas.[18]
During the 1960s and 1970s, WHBQ produced several local programs featuring local personalities. Disc jockey George Klein hosted Talent Party, an afternoon rock-and-roll series aimed at Memphis' teenage audience, and gave many garage bands their first television appearances; Talent Party was very successful, with ratings that were so high that it regularly beat the nationally top-rated CBS soap opera The Edge of Night on WREC/WREG.
Two other WHBQ programming staples were Happy Hal's Funhouse and Cartoon Time, hosted by Hal Miller.
News operation
WHBQ-TV presently broadcasts 531/2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with nine hours each weekday, four hours on Saturdays and 41/2 hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output of any television station in both the Memphis market and the state of Tennessee. As is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts, WHBQ's Saturday and Sunday 5 p.m. newscasts are subject to preemption due to network sports telecasts that are scheduled to overlap into the timeslot. WHBQ was one of four Fox O&Os to air a 5 p.m. newscast, but not a 6 p.m. newscast – along with Austin's KTBC, Houston's KRIV and Minneapolis' KMSP-TV (the network's Boston O&O WFXT was included in this distinction until September 2009, when the reverse became true after the station "moved" its 5 p.m. newscast to 6 p.m.; WFXT restored a 5 p.m. newscast in September 2013).
WHBQ's newscasts, for many years, had been branded as Eyewitness News and stayed true to that format's element of including casual banter between anchors and reporters, along with using the "Cool Hand Luke" music package that was used by ABC's owned-and-operated stations. WHBQ had a number of highly visible anchors and reporters during the 1970s and 1980s, including Ed Craig, Tom Bearden, Marge Thrasher, Fran Fawcett, Jim Jaggers and Charlie B. Watson. After Fox acquired the station in 1995, the station expanded its newscasts: its weekday morning newscast expanded from one hour to three, with the addition of a two-hour block from 7 to 9 a.m., the 6 p.m. newscast was removed in favor of expanding the 5 p.m. news to one hour, and the late evening newscast was moved from 10 to 9 p.m. and expanded to one hour. The newscasts were also briefly retitled Fox 13 Eyewitness News, before the title was truncated to Fox 13 News in 1997.
