Here’s a brief promotional spot for a special broadcast of the first episode of M*A*S*H on WNEW-TV (Channel 5) in New York City. It aired at 11PM ET on Monday, February 28th, 1983–the night of the series finale on CBS.
WNEW-TV devoted quite a bit of its schedule to M*A*S*H that night. The station aired the series from 7-7:30PM ET on weeknights followed by All in the Family at 7:30PM. The night of the finale, All in the Family was pre-empted so WNEW-TV could show “Our Finest Hour” from 7-8PM. At 8PM, a special installment of PM Magazine looked back at M*A*S*H.
[This will be my last Video Rarities post for a while because I’m running out of easily accessible videos and need to dig into my collection to find more. Hopefully I’ll have more to share in a few months.]
Nashville’s ABC affiliate, WNGE-TV (changing its call letters to WKRN-TV later in 1983), had local rights to M*A*S*H reruns in 1983 (and may still have now), so it preempted whatever ABC programmed for 7 PM on Feb. 28, 1983, and reran the pilot episode. The announcer promoted this rerun by saying “Before you watch the last episode of M*A*S*H, watch the first one.”. I watched this episode instead of the CBS ALICE episode aired this night, so this was the first time I ever saw the pilot episode, at least in my memory, right before watching the finale.