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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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lost--or at least, I would guess, in most of them--most of the people get the program by cable rather than over the air. As far as you're concerned, you don't care which cable channel it's on. So that if CBS gets the signal to Omaha and there's a low-powered station, as against the one we had, it makes little difference, because the station is plugged into cable in that area anyway.

Now the people who suffer are the lower third, roughly, of the market economically--in some cases more than economically, because there are some people who don't have cable who were in the upper income group. But let's, for shorthand purposes, say that the two-thirds of the people who have cable represent the most affluent part of the community. So they'll get their programming, and as far as the advertiser's concerned, he will be satisfied with that circulation. Up to a point.

The lower third will either get the football on a lower-powered station or just not get it. And while that's not a pleasant thing to contemplate, it's not anything like losing eight percent of the total circulation of the network--because my guess is it would be less than one-half of one percent. And maybe not that, by the time the whole thing comes into play. Because in many of the markets that were “stolen,” so to speak, there are other stations who are eager to have the CBS schedule, and you could make substitutions. Not ideal, but with clever promotion and just smart programming you can get by. That's one factor.

The other thing is that the loss of the NFL--forget the station problem--will impact “Sixty Minutes,” and that, in turn, will impact “Murder, She Wrote,” and until the big movie comes on, the network circulation could be sagging at that point. “Sixty Minutes” always, in the football season, benefited, because if an exciting game ran over, we didn't start “Sixty





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