Casting Couch and Casting Cosby Evening Magazine, Rambo Murders on Eyewitness News KYW-TV – Feb 1987

Casting Couch and Casting Cosby Evening Magazine, Rambo Murders on Eyewitness News KYW-TV 3 Philadelphia

KYW-TV (channel 3), branded CBS Philadelphia, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is owned and operated by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division alongside WPSG (channel 57), an independent station. The two outlets share studios on Hamilton Street north of Center City, Philadelphia; KYW-TV’s transmitter is located in the city’s Roxborough section.

KYW-TV, along with sister station KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, are the only CBS-affiliated stations east of the Mississippi River with “K” call signs.

Channel 3 dominated the ratings for the rest of the 1960s, but faced a new challenger after WFIL-TV introduced Action News to Philadelphia. For most of the 1970s, KYW-TV traded first place with WFIL/WPVI. In 1972, KYW-TV hired Philadelphia-area native Jessica Savitch as a reporter, and later co-anchor alongside Leonard. Mort Crim also joined as an anchor during that period, forming what native Philadelphians called the “Camelot of television news”. Leonard, Crim and Savitch were joined at the anchor desk in 1976 by native Philadelphian Jack Jones, who at WCAU-TV had become the city’s first African-American news anchor. However, in 1977, WPVI beat KYW-TV in most timeslots by a wide margin during a sweeps period. In a case of especially bad timing, Crim left for WBBM-TV in Chicago in May, and Savitch left for NBC News three months later. Channel 3’s ratings went into rapid decline. The station tried to stop the decline by adopting a new format called “Direct Connection”, with reporters assigned to “beats” such as medical, consumer, entertainment and gossip, among others. While this concept was at least a decade ahead of its time, it was not enough to stop the ratings slide. By the time Jones departed for WLS-TV in Chicago in 1979 and Leonard left for KPNX in Phoenix in 1980, Eyewitness News had crashed into last place.

Having seen its quartet of top-rated anchors move on, KYW-TV attempted a reformat of its newscasts, hiring new talent from outside the Philadelphia market to take center stage. Despite the presence of personalities such as Maria Shriver, Maury Povich, Ron Hunter, Stan Bohrman, and Patrick Emory, Eyewitness News stayed in the ratings basement. For most of the next 20 years, KYW-TV was a very distant third behind WPVI-TV and WCAU-TV. In the late 1980s, the station also produced news updates for USA Network, titled the USA Update; these were anchored by Steve Bell, who came to channel 3 in 1986 from ABC News, and other KYW staffers. In 1993, production was moved over to Hubbard Broadcasting’s All News Channel, where they were produced until 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KYW-TV

Video preservation by DDVF.com for educational purposes. Original airdate was Feb 1987.