Outside of the traditional overnight slots, various examples of graveyard slots in the United States exist. While the reasons vary, often these time periods are viewed with much lower interest from programmers as opposed to other periods of the day (particularly prime time from Monday to Thursday nights).
Weekdays, noon to 1 p.m. Before the 1970s, the noon hour was often viewed as a popular "lunch slot" where daytime shows such as
Jeopardy! were popular with a larger-than-average audience that included both college and high school students and employees either returning home or eating at a restaurant on their lunch break, in addition to the traditional American daytime audience of stay-at-home housewives. However as the 1970s dawned, many network affiliates began introducing local midday newscasts, which resulted in the time slot becoming a "death slot". Local news in this slot usually consists of stories from the morning newscast repeated with spare updating for newer details to such earlier items and stories that have happened since (including local political meetings and judicial proceedings from high-profile criminal and civil cases), business and consumer news segments (including live
stock market prices),
farm reports in mainly rural markets, and community interest segments where organizations are highlighted in an interview setting, along with paid placement
advertorial segments for businesses. Stations that do not carry news in this slot usually air syndicated fare or an infomercial; in numerous cases,
educational programs can be buried in this slot or any other daytime slot as a form of
malicious compliance with the mandate for such programs. Mainly to accommodate affiliates in the
Central and
Mountain time zones that choose to air local news at noon in their respective markets, CBS still offers an option for affiliates to air
The Young and the Restless at noon Eastern (11:00 a.m. Central), but actual participation in this varies by individual station. (NBC also allowed this option for
Days of Our Lives until September 2022, when the soap moved to co-owned streaming service
Peacock to accommodate the new afternoon newscast
NBC News Daily; ABC, by virtue of the soap's designated 1:00 p.m. ET timeslot, aired
All My Children during the noon hour in the Central and Mountain time zones until its broadcast run ended in September 2011, although some stations opted to air the show and its timeslot successor
The Chew on a one-hour-early, day-behind basis to air local midday newscasts and/or syndicated programming during the slot until the September 2018 premiere of
GMA3: What You Need to Know.) After the 1970s ended, there were very few network programs that had survived for more than a year in the noon timeslot, including ''
Ryan's Hope and Super Password. However, there have been numerous network shows that have aired in the second half-hour of this timeslot; examples include The Young and the Restless
(whose first half-hour has dominated the timeslot since 1988) and its sister CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful'' (which has led out of CBS affiliates' noon newscasts in many markets, particularly in the Central and Mountain time zones),
Loving (and its short-lived spinoff
The City) and
Port Charles on ABC, and
Sunset Beach on NBC. (The latter two were canceled after a few years on the air.) Since the mid-2000s, the 12:30 p.m. timeslot on most ABC and NBC affiliates has been usually filled with local news and lifestyle programs.
Weekdays, 4 to 5 p.m. When the noon time slot became unfavorable in the late 1970s, networks began doubling up airings of their noon shows at 4:00 p.m. However, this time slot had also quickly become unfavorable as many stations chose to preempt network offerings in favor of more lucrative syndicated programs during this time, including nationally syndicated talk shows hosted by
Mike Douglas,
Merv Griffin,
Dinah Shore and
Phil Donahue (all of which were primarily entertainment-focused with the exception of Donahue's which focused on serious subject matters including politics and cultural issues). As a result, the networks were faced with increasingly fewer affiliates airing network programs in this time slot and eventually abandoned this practice: NBC ceded the hour when it moved
The Gong Show to a midday slot in late 1977, eventually followed by ABC canceling the soap opera
Edge of Night at the end of 1984 and CBS ending production on
Press Your Luck in the late summer of 1986; the latter two networks, however, would continue to program occasional
afterschool specials for children during the hour until the mid-1990s (with
ABC being the last Big Three network to end that practice as well as any moribund effort to program the 4:00 hour in January 1997). Currently, the only efforts to program the 4:00 hour is CBS with
UEFA Champions League games, which start at 3:00 Eastern time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. During the 1980s, a slew of newer nationally syndicated talk shows made their debut, with the most prominent example being
The Oprah Winfrey Show. Originally a locally based morning show in Chicago,
Oprah made its debut as a nationally syndicated talk show in 1986 and soon came to dominate the time slot in many markets over the course of its 25-year run. Since the 1990s, the expansion of local television news has led to stations without major syndicated hits choosing to offer
local news in this hour, particularly on stations that did not carry
Oprah. By 2012, most networks' daytime programming had ended at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, and many stations have begun offering up to three hours of local news, interrupted either by a 4:30 p.m. syndicated program or the network news (which networks usually broadcast live at 6:30 p.m Eastern time), with some even going as far as airing local news at 3:00 p.m. Most newscasts that air before 5:00 p.m. are similar to noon newscasts in terms of their local news content (albeit with more details and interviews than earlier) and emphasis on consumer reports and entertainment features (including live shots from local events and concerts), but also include short-range evening weather forecasts as well as traffic reports targeting evening
rush hour commuters; sports coverage is usually not considered part of these newscasts as most weekday sporting events take place in the evenings, and those that do prioritize interviews with local athletes, as well as more specialized coverage of major events. In some cases (primarily baseball), if a team is playing a travel-day game in the early afternoon or a rescheduled doubleheader game or UEFA coverage, the highlights of that game are posted on the 5:00 newscast.
Friday night death slot Perhaps the most infamous example of a graveyard slot, ironically, has been during prime time on Friday nights since the 1990s. Before this decade, several television series during the late 1970s and 1980s (and well into the early 1990s) had become widely popular among viewing audiences, and these programs—including
Dallas and
Falcon Crest on CBS and
Miami Vice on NBC—became so popular that most programs that were scheduled against them were doomed to cancellation because of the competition, which marked the beginning of a phenomenon known as the "Friday night death slot." Other programs also saw success on Friday nights during this period, including ABC's
The Brady Bunch and NBC's
Sanford and Son during the 1970s. However, as the 1990s progressed, fewer viewers (particularly those in the much-sought after 18-49 demographic) stayed home to watch television on Friday nights, in favor of partaking in social gatherings (including recreational activities, dining out and going out on dates) and entertainment offerings (such as sporting events, concerts and movies) outside the house, leading to a revival of the phrase in a new context in that a series on Friday was still more likely to lose money and lag in viewership compared to shows on other nights, regardless of its direct competition. More importantly, with
media conglomerates now owning both television networks and film studios (e.g.,
Comcast's ownership of
NBC and
Universal Pictures under its
NBCUniversal umbrella), the former now especially tends to downplay programming by corporate demand to attract moviegoers to theaters on the traditional opening night for major films. Because of this trend, networks have since programmed inexpensive
reality programming or
news magazines on this night instead of scripted programs. Consequently, scripted programs that do end up airing on Friday night have often been moved there from more lucrative Monday-Thursday evening time slots due to poor performance, and this is often an indication that the series is facing cancellation, with its fate set in some cases either by extenuating circumstances or by certain goals for the producer or distributor in mind. The former was the case in the 2004–05 season with the ABC family sitcom
8 Simple Rules, whose ratings declined following the death of lead actor and protagonist
John Ritter, while the latter pertained to the Fox sitcom ''
'Til Death'', which despite mediocre ratings was kept alive on Friday nights well into the 2009–10 season to garner enough episodes for an ultimately short-lived
syndication deal. Since 2005, CBS is the only major network that continues to air a full lineup of first-run scripted programming on Fridays, and has been a strong performer on this night for the better part of the past three decades with a number of successful (if older-skewing) serials and
police procedurals featuring veteran actors, with former
Miami Vice lead actor
Don Johnson (in the titular role for
Nash Bridges from 1996 to 2001) and former
Magnum, P.I. lead
Tom Selleck (playing the lead character in
Blue Bloods from 2010 to 2024, then its spinoff
Boston Blue in 2025, based on the popularity of Blue Bloods) among the more prominent examples; other programs that CBS has slotted on Fridays during this period to decent viewership have included
Ghost Whisperer,
CSI: NY and
Fire Country. Historically, its former semi-sister network,
The CW (previously co-owned by CBS parent
Paramount Global and
Warner Bros. Discovery and their respective predecessors until
Nexstar Media Group, its largest affiliate operator, bought a majority stake in the network from the former two conglomerates in 2021) also maintained a lineup of younger-skewing scripted fantasy and action dramas from 2010 to 2022, with similar success. Despite the aforementioned challenges of the 1990s,
ABC also had notable success on Friday evenings with its
TGIF lineup of sitcoms aimed at family and teenage audiences beginning in 1989 (including
Full House, Family Matters, Boy Meets World, and
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch), with its popular newsmagazine
20/20 (which moved to Fridays as the closing show for that night's lineup in 1987) serving as a lead-out, but the programming block's ratings began to wane in the late 1990s, in part also influenced by a botched attempt by CBS (called the
CBS Block Party) to compete full-force with ABC during the 1997–98 season (even picking up
Family Matters and
Step by Step from ABC), before it eventually abandoned this strategy in 2000, first in favor of more adult-targeted comedies (e.g.
Two Guys and a Girl) and later the aforementioned primetime serials. Since the 2010s, ABC has maintained stability on the night with the aforementioned
20/20 (which permanently expanded to two hours in 2019, and had shifted focus a few years earlier toward primarily true-crime stories not unlike its longtime competitor on NBC,
Dateline NBC) as well as the business-oriented reality series
Shark Tank, which has played a major role in the growth of various entrepreneurs' ventures since the show's launch. Despite being a known graveyard slot, there have been notable exceptions to this rule, including the aforementioned CBS serials as well as NBC's
Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and
Providence during the 1990s and early 2000s. Family-oriented sitcoms, including the aforementioned sitcoms during ABC's
TGIF years (as well as
Reba on
The WB during the 2000s and
Last Man Standing on ABC and Fox in the 2010s), have also been modestly successful on Friday nights, and
WWE SmackDown has also experienced success on broadcast and cable television since its launch on
UPN in 1999. In addition, a handful of cable channels have also had success with Friday night programming; prominent examples have included the
Disney Channel, which throughout the 2000s and 2010s aired a number of made-for-TV movies and scripted sitcoms that appealed to a pre-teen audience including
Wizards of Waverly Place,
Phineas and Ferb,
The Suite Life on Deck,
Jessie and
Girl Meets World (largely serving as somewhat of a successor to sister network ABC's original
TGIF lineup, albeit with a younger audience in comparison), and
Hallmark Channel, which then as now premieres original made-for-TV movies on Friday and Saturday nights several times per year as an attempt to keep potential moviegoers at home.
Saturday nights Until the 1990s, many popular series also aired on Saturdays, with more notable examples including
Gunsmoke,
Have Gun – Will Travel,
All in the Family,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show,
The Bob Newhart Show and
The Carol Burnett Show during the 1960s and 1970s on CBS;
The Facts of Life,
Hunter,
Amen,
227, and
The Golden Girls and its spin-offs (most notably
Empty Nest) during the 1980s and early 1990s on NBC; and
T. J. Hooker,
The Love Boat and
Fantasy Island during the late 1970s and 1980s on ABC. Most networks maintained a full schedule, though the night was also often used for airing movies and select sporting events. Many programs aired on Saturdays during the 1990s as well to sizable success including
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,
Early Edition and
Walker, Texas Ranger on CBS;
Sisters,
The Pretender and
Profiler on NBC; and
Cops and ''
America's Most Wanted'' on Fox. Since then however, a similar situation to Friday nights emerged, with the same issue of fewer viewers available to watch television on Friday nights now extending to Saturday nights as well, although to a more pronounced degree as Saturday nights are a particularly popular night for social gatherings outside the house. For that reason, the mainstream U.S. networks have largely abandoned original programming on Saturday nights in favor of reruns or reality programming, as well as to air episodes of programs that either have failing ratings or have been canceled and therefore are being burned off to
finish airing their original episodes. Otherwise, outside of popular sporting events (see below), the night is used by the networks to air encore presentations of their weekday primetime series' most recent episodes or occasional broadcasts of more recent theatrical movies. Local stations also use the night to carry specialized local news programs, including documentaries and political debates, where it would otherwise air their affiliate network's encore repeats (which in this case are usually relegated to graveyard slots following their already-scheduled regular network and syndicated offerings for the night). ABC was the first of the Big Three networks to cease offering original first-run programming (outside of newsmagazines and sports) on Saturdays; the network had lost ground on that night to NBC, CBS and later Fox after
The Love Boat ended in 1986 (with only the 1991–96 police procedural dramedy
The Commish lasting more than three seasons on that night in the time since), and largely failed in subsequent years to buoy its standing against its Saturday competition. One notable example was the
TGIF-inspired sitcom block
I Love Saturday Night, which saw some of its older stalwart sitcoms, including ''
Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains, move from their previous Tuesday and Wednesday slots in September 1991, with both later being joined by fellow veteran and Friday tentpole Perfect Strangers to help form the block. The block only lasted for five weeks in February 1992; after experiencing sharp ratings declines following their move to Saturdays, Boss
and Pains
ended after that season while Strangers
got an abbreviated eighth season, burned off in the Summer of 1993, to properly close out the series. ABC tried again in the 1998–99 season with a lineup initially consisting of America's Funniest Home Videos (which had seen its ratings drop following the departure and replacement of original host Bob Saget with co-successors Daisy Fuentes and John Fugelsang, and its displacement from its original Sunday slot to make room for The Wonderful World of Disney the previous season), a revival of Fantasy Island
and Cupid; neither survived past that season (with AFV'' being relegated to occasional specials before it was revived as a regular series in 2001), prompting ABC to give up and run movies in the slot instead starting with the 1999–2000 season. Around the same time, CBS and NBC also ended all valiant attempts to compete on Saturday nights, particularly as the former's efforts to offer family-oriented dramas and the latter's at more action- and crime-oriented shows began to fade out. Both networks ceased any serious competition on this night in 2001 when CBS
canceled Walker, Texas Ranger and NBC—which ended its primetime scripted programming efforts on that night following the 2000 cancellations of
The Pretender and
Profiler—failed with the original incarnation of the
XFL. Aside from repackaged, one-hour vintage episodes and retrospectives of its popular late night sketch comedy/
variety program
Saturday Night Live that air in the 10:00 p.m. slot, most if not all of NBC's Saturday evening lineup today consists of sports and encore programming, as well as broadcasts of the aforementioned
Dateline NBC. (Since 2021,
SNL—which, for most of its run, aired live in the Eastern and Central time zones and was rebroadcast with minor edits for any indecent material in the rest of the country—has aired newer episodes live coast-to-coast, resulting in them being shown during prime time in the
Mountain, Pacific and
Alaska time zones.) CBS, however, continued to offer first-run shows on Saturdays until the 2003–04 season (when
crime dramas
Hack and
The District ended their runs due to declining viewership) before switching to a lineup consisting of mainly
crime drama reruns and
48 Hours, which was transitioning to a
true crime documentary format the following season (2004–05) and represents perhaps the only source of original, non-sports, non-encore programming on the night. CBS has also used the night to air the Canadian–French co-production
Ransom on that night during the middle of the television season between 2017 and 2019, and the final episodes of each week of the American version of
Love Island (which aired its episodes over multiple nights in a similar manner to fellow reality series
Big Brother, which also offered first-run Saturday episodes from 2000 to 2005) aired on Saturdays during its second season in 2020. Fox continued to air
Cops and ''America's Most Wanted
on Saturday nights until both programs ended their network runs between 2011 and 2013 (with Cops
moving to Spike (now Paramount Network, where it remained until its 2020 cancellation in the wake of the fallout from the George Floyd protests) and America's Most Wanted'' moving to
Lifetime, where it remained until its cancellation in 2013; Fox would revive the latter series in 2021). The CW initially broke from the modern-day sports/newsmagazines/reruns concept when it began programming Saturday nights for the first time during the 2021–22 season, offering a lineup of original first-run programs in the form of unscripted comedy, magic and reality competition series; these efforts largely ended two seasons later (2023–24), when the network began airing selected primetime
Atlantic Coast Conference football and basketball games under a sublicensing agreement with
Raycom Sports, with movies and documentaries otherwise filling the Saturday night timeslot, and starting in 2025, the
NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series second-tier series often overruns into the evening hours. More recently, Saturday night has also become particularly popular for live sports programming, which (despite their sometimes excessive broadcast rights bidding prices) provide a reliable and critical base of live viewers that is sometimes carried over from afternoon sports telecasts earlier in the day. ABC became the first such network to make this move in 2006, when its occasional Saturday night college football broadcasts became a regular part of its fall schedule under the
Saturday Night Football umbrella. While initially more the exception than the rule, the weekly showcase's success—which also coincided with the rise of college football to become, in some respects, the second most popular television sports property in the United States behind the
National Football League (NFL)—has also resulted in the night being used to also air other sports properties, including college football on the other major networks as well as The CW,
NBA and
NHL broadcasts on ABC (and
previously on NBC in the case of the latter league), various events including
American qualifying championships for
Olympic sports on NBC, and
Major League Baseball games on Fox (under the
Baseball Night in America umbrella).
UFC fights also aired on Fox until 2019 and starting in 2026, CBS, playing a major role in the once-financially challenged
mixed martial arts promotion becoming a popular sports property, with ratings and revenues often exceeding those of traditional boxing and WWE wrestling cards. Despite being a known graveyard time period, some channels have gained or maintained success on Saturday nights. Perhaps (and arguably) the most famous example has been NBC's late night
sketch comedy variety program
Saturday Night Live, which has been a staple of that network (and also that of the American pop culture conscience) since its 1975 debut, and has gone on to launch the careers of dozens of comedians and other actors; Fox would provide a formidable competitor to
SNL in 1995 with
Mad TV, a taped satirical sketch program that lasted for 14 seasons (until its initial cancellation in 2009) and was that network's only successful late-night offering. Other notable exceptions have included
Nickelodeon, which successfully aired a Saturday evening lineup of first-run programs aimed at pre-teens and teenagers—originally branded as
SNICK for its first 12 years, and then as
TEENick from 2005 to 2009—from August 1992 to November 2021 (including such popular series as
Clarissa Explains It All,
All That,
Are You Afraid of the Dark?,
Kenan & Kel,
iCarly and
Victorious) as well as
Lifetime and
Syfy, both of which have had respectable success with made-for-TV movies that regularly aired in Saturday primetime (Syfy during the 2000s up through the mid-2010s, and Lifetime since the early 2000s).
Premium cable networks have typically used Saturday nights to showcase pay-cable premieres of theatrical and made-for-cable films, first-run
specials (including
concerts and
stand-up comedy performances), and/or
combat sports events.
HBO began running all of its movie premieres exclusively on Saturdays in June 1992, marketing the promise of "a new movie every Saturday night" throughout the year; the frequency of movie premieres in the designated slot substantially declined in the early 2020s largely due to most of HBO's distribution partners (outside of sister studio
Warner Bros.) migrating their pay-TV release windows to streaming competitors of co-owned
Max (particularly services operated by their
parent studios like
Hulu and Peacock), an issue that has also affected rivals
Showtime,
Starz and
MGM+ in recent years as streaming platforms have proliferated (including those with corporate ties to major studios) and consolidation has taken place in the
studio business. Albeit with some exceptions,
boxing and
mixed martial arts matches (including events shown on pay-cable and
pay-per-view) also have typically been held on Saturdays; HBO and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Showtime aired most of their
fight cards (including events produced by their respective pay-per-view units) during the latter part of Saturday primetime starting in the early 1990s until both networks discontinued their live sports offerings. (HBO, which began airing boxing events exclusively on that night in 1992, ended its boxing telecasts in 2018; Showtime, which continued to air some of its boxing and post-2007 MMA events on Friday nights, shut down its sports division amid cutbacks instituted by parent Paramount Global in 2023, which brands their sports division only with CBS (US), Network 10 (Australia), and 5 (UK).)
Weekend prime access and late nights To this day, and also throughout most of the history of American television, local stations have often filled their weekend late night slots with off-network syndicated reruns of prime time sitcom and drama series; as of 2025, the most prominent distributors in weekend off-network syndication are
CBS Media Ventures and
Disney–ABC Domestic Television, which each presently offer a selection of drama reruns, distributed primarily to their respective CBS and ABC affiliates. NBC affiliates, because of the presence of
Saturday Night Live, have typically aired off-network syndicated reruns either leading out of
SNL—and in some cases, the network's Saturday overnight programming—or relegated them exclusively to Sunday nights in recent years (compared to such legacy serials as
Quincy, M.E.,
Highway to Heaven and
ER), with
NBCUniversal Syndication Studios' reruns of their popular
Law & Order and
Chicago franchises largely being sold to affiliates of other networks (including owned-and-operated affiliates of Fox), and often outside of weekend late nights including on the aforementioned MyNetworkTV programming service; since 2008, the network has offered a 90-minute block of lifestyle programs from its sister production unit,
LXTV, to air as a lead-out to
SNL. Outside of off-network primetime drama reruns, other programs that usually air during this time period include long-form interview programs (including
Entertainers with Byron Allen and
In Depth with Graham Bensinger), movie showcases (including horror-themed
Svengoolie and B-movie showcase
Off Beat Cinema, both staples of the Saturday late-night slot), and weekend editions of infotainment news programs (often with curated segments repackaged from earlier in the week or, in the case of
Entertainment Tonight, special retrospect editions focused on a single topic). Co-distributors
Sony Pictures Television and CBS Media Ventures also offer a selection of episodes from the previous season's runs of their popular weekday game shows
Wheel of Fortune and
Jeopardy! to air on weekends (most commonly in the Saturday early fringe slot), usually airing in their traditional weekday slots or during the early evening period where a local newscast would usually air on weekdays. Historically, music and variety shows were mainstays of late-night syndication throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s. These included the big band-oriented
The Lawrence Welk Show (which entered syndication in 1971 after being canceled by ABC), the country music-oriented
Hee Haw and
Pop! Goes the Country, the mostly rock- and comedy-oriented ''
Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, the pop/dance-oriented Solid Gold, and the soul/R&B-oriented Soul Train (which lasted well into the 2000s). Weekly competition programs, including the athletically oriented American Gladiators, and the talent competition shows Star Search and Showtime at the Apollo (the latter of which also aired live performances from popular soul and R&B musicians and comedians, but also became particularly known for its popular "Amateur Night" competitions similar in scope to Star Search
), also often filled weekend late night time slots. In many cases, these programs either complemented Saturday Night Live'' on NBC affiliates (with NBC's New York City flagship,
WNBC, historically having aired
Rock Concert and
Showtime at the Apollo as lead-outs to
SNL in the past) or even competed against it on many CBS, ABC and Fox affiliates as well as independent stations. During the weekends (particularly on Saturdays), the prime access hour also featured popular first-run weekly syndicated series including
The Muppet Show during the 1970s, the lifestyle/interview program
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous during the 1980s to mid-1990s, and the movie review program
At the Movies (most well known under its original title of
Siskel & Ebert) during the 1980s up to the 2000s. The syndicated sports highlight program
The George Michael Sports Machine—which originated out of NBC's
owned-and-operated station in Washington, D.C.,
WRC-TV (whose
namesake sports director at the time was the titular host), and was primarily distributed to local NBC affiliates—was a staple of the Sunday late access period from the 1980s to the 2000s, serving as a popular lead-out to or even being replaced by locally produced weekend sports wrap-up shows or sports wrap-up extensions of local Sunday night newscasts in many markets.
Weekend mornings and afternoons Because people generally stay out later on Friday and Saturday nights than other nights of the week, people also tend to sleep in longer on weekend mornings. The weekend morning 5:00–7:00 a.m. time slot is most commonly used by stations to air public affairs and (on Sundays)
televangelism programs, although some air local morning newscasts within the time period. Nationally syndicated specialty news programs, including
Matter of Fact (hosted by former NBC News and CNN anchor
Soledad O'Brien and mandated to air on stations owned by its production company,
Hearst Television) and
Full Measure (hosted by former CBS News anchor
Sharyl Attkisson and mandated to air on stations owned by its production company, Sinclair Broadcast Group), also air during weekend morning timeslots in many markets, often complementing their affiliate networks' and local stations' morning news programs and
Sunday morning talk shows. Until the 2000s, Saturday mornings on broadcast television were dominated by
animated and, in some cases, live-action programs widely watched by children. Children's programming on commercial broadcast television entered into broader decline during that decade, as the more conventional formats became increasingly unprofitable for networks and syndication distributors because of restrictions on children's advertising under the
Children's Television Act (which limit advertising during children's programs to 12 minutes per hour on weekdays and 10½ minutes on weekends, and prohibit promotion of tie-in products associated with the program); audience erosion caused by viewer preferences shifting to children's cable networks like Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network; and attempts by the "Big Three" networks to pair the youth-targeted Saturday morning programs with local and national weekend morning newscasts (dating to the 1992 launch of
Saturday Today and the teen-oriented
TNBC block on NBC) creating clashing audience demographics that did not lend themselves to them adequately
leading in and out of each other (such as the aforementioned TNBC block registering an average demographic above age 40 toward the end of its 1992–2002 run). Since the early 2010s, beginning with the September 2011 debut of ABC's
Weekend Adventure (produced under contract with Litton Entertainment, now
Hearst Media Production Group), the cartoons and live-action comedies once found on Saturday mornings on the networks and in syndication have been replaced by educational documentary series (most prominently in the form of time-leased blocks such as NBC's
The More You Know,
CBS WKND and The CW's
One Magnificent Morning) intended for older children and teenagers to meet federal educational programming mandates; however because these programs are less likely to clash with local morning newscasts and network morning shows audience-wise, and the viewing habits of their intended audience largely have migrated to cable and streaming services, viewership for the educational documentary blocks tend to skew mainly towards older adults. As has been the case since the beginning of television, the major networks have also generally programmed weekend afternoons with sporting events. That being the case, particularly when no sporting events are airing (either from the networks or from syndicated distributors such as Raycom Sports), there is very little incentive to watch television after news and educational programs (on Saturday mornings) or political talk shows (on Sunday mornings) end, especially when a local team—particularly an
NFL or college football team of either local or regional interest, or a local team from another sport in their leagues' respective postseasons—is airing on one station, prompting other stations to outright refuse to put on competitive programming. Consequently, most stations in this situation air little-watched syndicated fare (often with pre-sold barter advertising), higher-profile syndicated reruns (occasionally airing as filler outside of their regular weekend slots), and paid programming in this slot, and often use this time period to air educational and public affairs programming mandated either by station groups or federal broadcast regulations. Many stations also use this time period to broadcast specialty news and advertorial programs including local lifestyle and real estate presentation shows, as well as regional lifestyle programs (such as
Texas Country Reporter, which has been a weekend staple on most television stations serving the U.S. state of Texas since the 1970s). For parts of the 1990s after losing NFL rights,
CBS and
NBC aired movies in the late afternoons if they did not carry sports content. Prior to 2016, when it was not carrying content from sister network
ESPN,
ABC aired reality programming reruns in the late afternoon slot (such as
Million Dollar Mind Game). Some stations also preempt such network programs to air on tape delay episodes of syndicated programs affected by special news coverage or TV specials from earlier in the week. Many stations have also used the weekend afternoon slot to broadcast movies. Although largely a staple of independent stations during this timeframe, until the 1990s, some stations affiliated with the Big Three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) aired movies during certain weekend afternoon slots without any scheduled sports events; this practice gradually ended as syndicators began selling their film packages mainly to Fox and independent stations (including stations that eventually affiliated with The WB and UPN as early as 1995). The number of movie packages sold through commercial syndication has steadily declined since the late 1990s, largely as a result of available local airtime being reduced on stations carrying Fox, The WB and UPN as those networks expanded their prime time schedules during that decade (most of those stations, dating to when they were independents, prominently showcased movies in prime time); and cable television and eventually streaming platforms emerging as key players in distributing theatrical films. Distributors of the remaining movie packages are presently able to select from Fox, CW, MyNetworkTV and certain independent stations; however, the launches of Fox and The CW's sports divisions (in 1994 and 2023, respectively) have also reduced the availability for their stations to air movies on weekend afternoons as their sports offerings have expanded.
Sunday nights (7–8 p.m. and 10–11 p.m. during the NFL season) Because of overruns from Sunday afternoon National Football League (NFL) games, Fox (in the earlier 7:00 slot) and, to a lesser extent, CBS (in the latter 10:00 slot) have had difficulty launching shows in these Sunday evening time slots. To handle overruns, Fox and CBS both use different strategies to handle prime time programming, with other networks attempting various means of
counterprogramming to meet parity on the night.
Fox Fox, which has
primarily carried Sunday afternoon
National Football Conference (NFC) road games since acquiring rights to these games from CBS beginning with the
1994 NFL season, originally preempted scheduled programming during the 7:00 hour if an NFL game overran its time slot, often to the frustration of fans of series such as
King of the Hill and
Malcolm in the Middle, which often had episodes joined in progress or unseen in the Eastern or Central time zones until they aired again during summer reruns (months after the preceding NFL season ended). The network has since addressed the issue by clearing out the time slot completely for an NFL
post-game show titled
The OT during the league's regular season and setting aside a portion for short-run animated series under its
Animation Domination (or, from 2014 to 2019,
Sunday Funday) block, though mid-season replacement series have still had problems finding an audience in the time slot.
CBS CBS, which
has held the rights to most Sunday afternoon
American Football Conference (AFC) road games since the 1998 NFL season and previously did the same for the NFC from 1956 to 1993, protects its acclaimed newsmagazine
60 Minutes by delaying its entire prime time schedule if a game overruns (a practice adopted by the network in
2012), resulting in the show scheduled for the 10:00 p.m. ET slot being pushed well past its original start time and occasionally being bumped to allow local CBS affiliates to air their local newscasts as close to 11:00 p.m. ET as possible. After a series of new programs failed in that timeslot, beginning in 2010, CBS attempted to stabilize it by moving an established series (usually one co-owned CBS Media Ventures already offers to stations in off-network syndication) there, starting with
CSI: Miami which moved from its original Monday night slot to Sunday nights but was nonetheless canceled after two seasons in its Sunday time slot. For the 2019–20 season, CBS used the 10:00 p.m. slot to wrap up two of its veteran series with the final season of
Madam Secretary airing in the fall followed by the final CBS season of
Criminal Minds (which once served as a lead-out to
Super Bowl XLI in 2007, and has since been revived on
Paramount+) in the winter and spring, while for the 2020–21 season it aired what ultimately turned out to be the final season of
NCIS: New Orleans. Starting in 2024–25, CBS chose to forego airing first-run dramas in the 10:00 p.m. slot until after the conclusion of the NFL season in mid-February. (For the 2024–25 midseason,
The Equalizer was moved into the hour to accommodate the new medical crime drama
Watson in its former 9:00 p.m. ET slot.) To account for the football overruns, the network aired occasional 90-minute editions of
60 Minutes on certain weeks following choice late-afternoon games, and began filling the 10:00 hour with selected prime time drama and sitcom repeats for the duration of the NFL season.
NBC NBC holds the contractual rights to the NFL's
Sunday Night Football package, which occupies the entire evening schedule during the fall and early winter; the pre-game show
Football Night in America generally leads off the night in the 7:00 p.m. hour. Per NFL broadcast rules, the pre-game show utilizes a carousel reporting format to cover early games (approximately 1:00 p.m. ET) before the conclusion of late (4:00 p.m. ET) NFL games (including most games on the West Coast), and then transitions to a quick rundown before focusing on the upcoming game within the last 20 minutes before kickoff. After their NFL coverage ends in mid-January, NBC usually airs some limited first-run and encore programming for the rest of the season. Beginning with the 2025–26 season, NBC (which previously held NBA broadcast rights from 1954 to 1962 and again from 1990 to 2002) will carry a
package of NBA basketball games to fill the Sunday prime time slot during the late winter and spring after
Sunday Night Football concludes for the season. When NBC
held the rights to air Sunday afternoon AFC games from 1965 (when it acquired the television rights to the AFC's predecessor, the
American Football League, from
ABC) until losing those rights to CBS in 1998, the latter-day issues with regards to CBS were virtually nonexistent since most of the programs that NBC aired in the 7:00 p.m. ET slot usually trailed
60 Minutes (following its CBS debut in September 1968) in the ratings.
Dateline NBC, the longest-lasting effort among a string of otherwise unsuccessful hard newsmagazines launched by the network during the 1990s, expanded to Sundays to compete full-force with
60 Minutes—offering lighter or true crime-focused fare in contrast to its more
hard news-oriented CBS counterpart—in March 1996; the Sunday edition of
Dateline aired in the 7:00 p.m. slot for much of the time thereafter until the 2017–18 season (often subject to delay by late-afternoon games during NBC's last two years as the AFC broadcaster, and usually placed on hiatus during the NFL season following the 2006 transfer of the
Sunday Night Football package from previous rightsholder
ESPN), before briefly returning in a two-hour
Weekend Mystery format for the latter half of the 2022–23 season (occasional episodes of varying airtime and length have also aired during the midseason and Summer months when it was not on that season's regular Sunday schedule). The most significant programming controversy during NBC's tenure as the AFC broadcaster came in 1968 during a high-profile
West Coast game that had its broadcast end prematurely in the Eastern and Central time zones to accommodate a
made-for-TV adaptation of
Heidi, the fallout from which prompted the network (and the NFL) to permanently change its procedures to allow games to finish before regular programming begins.
ABC ABC, which has simulcast
Monday Night Football games carried by sister network ESPN (which assumed the rights to the package from ABC in 2006) since 2022 and had last aired
Sunday afternoon NFL games in 1951, has for most of its recent history carried ''America's Funniest Home Videos
, a relatively low-cost and low-risk program popular for family viewing, in the early time slot on Sunday nights since the show premiered in 1990. From 1997 to 2003, however, the 7:00–9:00 p.m. ET time period was occupied by The Wonderful World of Disney; the anthology movie showcase was moved to Saturday nights in 2003–04 then later back to Sundays in the 9–11 p.m. ET slot in 2023-24, partly to accommodate the return of AFV'' to the Sunday early slot (it had previously aired on Fridays since resuming weekly episodes in 2001). After the network stopped airing
weekly movie presentations in the 9:00–11:00 p.m. ET slot in the 1998–99 television season, ABC had somewhat greater success later in the evening with scripted dramas (such as
The Practice,
Desperate Housewives and
Brothers & Sisters); since the 2017–18 season, however, the final three hours of the network's Sunday lineup have been occupied primarily by reality competition and game shows (such as
American Idol,
The $100,000 Pyramid and
Celebrity Family Feud), and since 2022–23, a revived
Wonderful World of Disney during parts of the season—mainly from late August through late February—without any regularly scheduled unscripted programming leading out of
AFV. (A noted exception was police procedural
The Rookie, which aired in the 10:00 slot from 2019 to 2022, before moving to Tuesdays for the 2022–23 season.) The NFL's preference in 2005 for a marquee Sunday night game as opposed to Mondays, which became difficult to envision due to the success of such aforementioned scripted dramas (at the time, ''
Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives
) as well as the then-recently launched Dancing with the Stars, played a factor in Monday Night Football'' moving to ESPN in 2006. While some ABC affiliates occasionally simulcast
Monday Night Football if a local team is playing (due to NFL rules requiring broadcast stations in team markets to simulcast national games not carried on network television), many others (including ABC's
owned-and-operated stations) have deferred to rival stations in their market due to conflicts involving the live performance stages of
Dancing with the Stars which aired on Monday nights for much of that show's history.
Dancing moved from ABC to sister streaming service
Disney+ in 2022, in order to allow the network to air occasional simulcasts of
Monday Night Football, and was replaced on ABC's 2022–23 fall lineup by the reality dating series
Bachelor in Paradise once the simulcasts ended; the network returned
Dancing to its lineup in 2023 (with Disney+ continuing to carry it as a simulcast), but placed it on Tuesday nights to accommodate
MNF games, which grew to a near-simulcast of the entire slate of
MNF games due to
labor disputes involving actors and writers in Hollywood that delayed the start of the season for many scripted network programs.
Other networks The CW, which was launched in September 2006 through the de facto merger of predecessor networks UPN and The WB, mainly filled the 7:00 p.m. early slot with various primetime reruns for its inaugural 2006–07 season, although new episodes of WB holdover
Reba (airing its shortened sixth and final season) ran during the second half-hour between November 2006 and February 2007; for the 2007–08 season, the network ran
advertorial entertainment programs (
CW Now and
Online Nation) that were widely considered a failure, with repeats of other shows taking over the slot by midseason. The CW chose to lease out its Sunday timeslot to production company Media Rights Capital (now
MRC) for 2008–09, and placed the reality series ''
In Harm's Way'', also considered a failure, into the hour; the network's struggles to program Sunday evenings led it to turn the five-hour timeslot over to its affiliates following that season. The CW would resume programming Sundays after a ten-year hiatus in the 2018–19 season; however it bucked the convention of programming the 7:00 p.m. hour (which American broadcast networks have programmed regularly since 1948–49, outside of a four-year period between the 1971 enactment and the 1975
revision of the since-repealed
Prime Time Access Rule, when that responsibility was delegated to their affiliates), opting for its Sunday lineup to maintain the same 8:00–10:00 p.m. window it programs during the rest of the week before finally expanding into the 7:00 hour (filled mainly by drama reruns) in October 2023.
MyNetworkTV, which also launched in September 2006 as a
de jure successor of The WB and UPN intended to fill evening airtime on affiliates passed over by The CW, has never programmed the night since it launched, although it did program on Saturday nights when it operated as a broadcast network during its first 3 years. In contrast,
The WB had varied scheduling strategies on Sunday evenings since the forerunner network (which launched nine months prior) began programming that night in September 1995. The WB aired first-run programming, usually sitcoms, during the 7:00 hour for all but four seasons—only two being consecutive—thereafter; for the seasons that did not have first-run shows fill the hour, the early slot was repurposed to showcase earlier-season reruns of popular WB series (
7th Heaven from 1998 to 2000,
Gilmore Girls in the 2002–03 season,
Smallville in 2003–04, and
Reba in 2005–06), under the umbrella subtitle
Beginnings. (The WB built on this concept when the Sunday lineup was extended to 5:00 p.m. ET in September 2002, with the two extra hours being occupied by the
EasyView block, which offered same-week encores of selected WB primetime shows; this block would carry over, without any branding, to The CW for the successor's first two seasons.)
UPN never regularly programmed Sunday nights, with its only contribution to the night being in early 2001, when it aired lower-tier
XFL football games on Sunday evenings during the league's only season in its first iteration. Many of the network's affiliates however, chose to air its weekend encore block (which was conceptually identical to the aforementioned
EasyView, debuting in September 2000 in the slot previously held by its
UPN Movie Trailer film package) on Sundays, commonly in the prime time or late fringe slots, until the network's closure.
Opposite popular annual programming specials Programs such as the
Academy Awards (on ABC since 1976), the
Super Bowl and the
Olympic Games (on NBC at least partially since 1988) have been known to draw so many viewers that almost all efforts to
counterprogram against them have failed. As such, broadcasters have traditionally countered these events with either reruns or movies. In past years, seasonal airings of popular classic films such as
Gone with the Wind,
The Wizard of Oz and
The Ten Commandments have also been known to draw sizable audiences. The
Super Bowl has historically attracted more unusual fare (such as
Animal Planet's
Puppy Bowl, a football-themed special featuring
puppies at play), with most aiming to counter the halftime show to emulate Fox's success with its live
In Living Color special in 1992. However, as all four major commercial networks now have some tie to the National Football League's television deals (current through Super Bowl LXVIII in 2034, with ABC's addition to the rotation under the eleven-year contract agreements signed in 2021 also granting all four networks alternating rights to the championship), major networks have aired little to no new original programming on the night of the Super Bowl under an unsaid
gentleman's agreement.
Opposite dominant television series On occasion, a regularly scheduled program may have this kind of dominant drawing power. Notable examples have included NBC's
Thursday primetime schedule in the 1980s and 1990s that featured
The Cosby Show,
Seinfeld and
ER,
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and
American Idol during its original run's peak on Fox from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s (simultaneous with the peak of
reality television in the U.S. during that period) – each of which was dubbed a "Death Star" by the other networks because of their prolonged dominance in the ratings, consistently ranking among the
most watched broadcasts in U.S. television history. Many programs that competed against such shows often either flopped or (in the case of an existing series) saw their ratings decline significantly to the brink of cancellation. ==Examples in other countries==