Birmingham market because of this arrangement (even though WAPI carried selected CBS and NBC network programs in a 4½-hour block preceding its late-evening newscast, which then aired at 11:00 p.m.), and the lack of a third station to carry the remaining programs. One of the more popular CBS shows that WAPI-TV did not air was The Ed Sullivan Show, which resulted in Central Alabama viewers missing The Beatles' debut American performance on the variety series in February 1964, unless they were lucky enough to be able to get reception of CBS' affiliates in the adjacent markets of Atlanta (WAGA-TV, now a Fox owned-and-operated station), Huntsville (WHNT) or Montgomery (WCOV-TV, now a Fox affiliate). On a similar note, one of the NBC shows that channel 13 turned down was The Tonight Show, which WBMG aired instead until WAPI began clearing the program in September 1969; even then, due to the expanded prime time scheduling under the dual-network arrangement with CBS and NBC, it delayed Tonight to 11:30 p.m. WAPI-TV strongly favored NBC for national news programming; as a byproduct of this, when CBS and NBC expanded their early-evening news programs to 30 minutes in 1963, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite did not air in Birmingham for the next two years. This was due, of course, to the fact that both networks fed their newscasts to their affiliates at 5:30 p.m. Central Time (as they continue to do today). Channel 13 aired its local newscast at 6:00 p.m., and prior to the passage of the Prime Time Access Rule by the FCC in 1971, prime time network programming began at 6:30 p.m. Central Time. This left no available room on WAPI's schedule to allow it to air the CBS Evening News, even if station management had wanted to broadcast it, clearing only The Huntley–Brinkley Report in its normal time slot (Huntley–Brinkley was the only network evening newscast that was televised in Birmingham from 1963 to 1965, as WBRC-TV did not carry ABC's evening newscasts during that period). During the 1970s, WAPI ran a distant second to WBRC in local news and general viewership, but was far ahead of WBMG, which was one of the lowest-rated commercial television stations in the U.S. at the time. It was only in western and eastern Alabama that the CBS affiliates, WCFT and WHMA, were competitive against WBRC and WAPI, particularly in local newscasts designed