Prime time

Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television programming.

The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period – for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 (Central and Mountain Time) or 20:00 to 23:00 (Eastern and Pacific Time) (7 p.m. to 10 p.m. or 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.).

Timeslot's relationship to radio and television revenue

Primetime is the daypart (a block of a day's programming schedule) with the most viewers and is generally where television networks and local stations reap much of their advertising revenues. In recent years in the US, for example, advertising expenditure during primetime was highest among drama shows.^[1]

The Nielsen ratings system is explicitly designed for the optimum measurement of audience viewership by dayparts with primetime being of most interest. Most people tend to watch television at primetime, as most often, based on standard working time, the end of the workdday coincides with primetime viewing hours. Most viewers sit down to watch TV after dinner. ^{[citation needed]} This is usually the main reason for the high ratings for television programming at this time, as well as the attraction of the timeslot for advertisers.^{[citation needed]}

The existence of primetime in the United States is largely an artifact of now repealed regulations of the Federal Communications Commission, which limited the number of hours that a network can require its affiliates to broadcast.^{[citation needed]}

Additionally, networks may also choose to provide local affiliates the opportunity to air sporting events or other special events which may fall outside of standard designated network broadcast times.^{[citation needed]} Prime time for radio is called “Drive time” and, in Eastern and Pacific Time, is 6–10 a.m. and 3–7 p.m. and, for Mountain and Central Time, is 5–9 a.m. and 2–6 p.m.

A survey by Nielsen revealed that viewers watched almost two hours worth of TV during primetime.^[2]

Asia

China

Mainland China

In Chinese television, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is known as Golden Time (Traditional Chinese: 黄金時間; Simplified Chinese: 黄金时间; Pinyin: Huángjīn shíjiān). The term also influenced a nickname of a strip of holidays in known as Golden Week.

Hong Kong and Macau

Primetime here usually takes place from 20:00 until 22:00. After that, programs classified as “PG” (Parental Guidance) are allowed to be broadcast. Frontline dramas appear during this time slot in Cantonese, as well as movies in English.

Taiwan

In Taiwan, primetime (called bādiǎn dàng [八點檔 in Mandarin Chinese) starts at 20:00 in the evening. Taiwanese drama series played then are called 8 o'clock series and are expected to have high viewer ratings.

India

In India, primetime occurs between 20:00 and 23:00. The main news programs are broadcast at 20:30, and the highest-rated television program follows at 21:00.

Indonesia

Primetime usually takes place from 18:00 to 23:00 WIB, preceded by a daily newscast at 17:00. After primetime, programs classified as Adult are allowed to be broadcast.

Like another Muslim-majority country, there is also a 'midnight prime time' during sahur time in a month of Ramadan. It takes place from 02:30 and ends at the Fajr prayer call, usually at 04:30. The time slot is usually fills with comedy and religious programming.

Iraq

In Iraq, primetime runs from 20:00 to 23:00. The main news programs are broadcast at 20:00 and the highest-rated television program airs at 21:00.

Japan

In Japanese television, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is also known as Golden Time (ゴールデン・タイム, gōruden taimu, or just Golden). The term also influenced a nickname of a strip of holidays in known as Golden Week.

Malaysia

Malaysian prime time starts with the main news from 20:00 to 20:30 (now 20:00 to 21:00) and ends at 23:00. Usually, programmes during prime time are domestic dramas, foreign drama series (mostly American), movies and entertainment programmes. Programmes that classify as 18 are not allowed to be broadcast before 10:00 p.m. but on RTM, most programmes on this slot are rated U (U means Umum in Malay and literally General Viewing or General Audiences in English) throughout the whole day. However, programmes broadcast after 23:00 are still considered prime time. As of December 2010, NTV7's prime time continues until 12:00 a.m. Programmes during prime time may have longer commercial breaks due to number of viewers.

Some domestic prime time productions may be affected because of certain major sporting events such as FIFA World Cup. However, only FIFA World Cup in the Americas did not affect the domestic prime time programmes.

Philippines

In the Philippines, prime time blocks begin at 20:00 and run until about 23:00 on weekdays, and 18:00 to 23:00 on weekends. The weekday prime time blocks usually consists of local teleseryes (soap operas) and foreign television series. The network's highest-rated programs are usually aired right after the evening newscast at 20:00, while a foreign series usually precedes the late night newscast.

On weekends, non-scripted programming such as talent shows, reality shows and current affairs shows air in prime time. For the minor networks, prime time consists of American television series on weekdays, with encores of those shows on weekends. Prime time originally started earlier at around 19:00, but the evening newscasts were lengthened to 90 minutes and now start at 18:30, instead of the original one-hour newscast that starts at 18:00.

Thailand

In Thailand, prime time dramas (ละคร; la-korn) air from 8:30pm to 10:30 p.m. Most dramas are soap operas. Prime time dramas are popular and influential to Thai society.

Singapore

In Singapore, prime time starts at 6:00pm and ends at 12:00 midnight. preceding daytime programmes consisting of reruns & talkshows.

South Korea

In South Korea, prime time usually runs from 20:00 to 23:00 during the week, while on Saturdays and Sundays, it runs from 19:00 to 23:00. Family-oriented television shows are broadcast before 22:00, and adult-oriented television shows air after 22:00.

Vietnam

In Vietnam, prime time starts at 20:00 in the evening and ends at 23:00.

Europe

Bosnia and Herzegovina

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, prime time starts at 20:00 and finishes at 22:00. It is preceded by a daily newscast ("Dnevnik") at 19:00 and followed by a late night newscast ("Vijesti") at 22:00.

Croatia

In Croatia, prime time starts between 20:00 and 20:15. Croatian public broadcaster HRT broadcasts a daily newscast at 19:30 that ends at 20:15. Also, many private broadcasters have daily newscasts before and after it at around 20:05, followed by the start of prime time. Many broadcasters who do not have daily newscasts start with prime time at 20:00. Prime time generally finishes between 22:00 and 23:00, followed by late night edition of the network newscast and adult-oriented programming.

Denmark

In Denmark, prime time starts at 20:00. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:30.

Germany and Austria

The oldest public national broadcasting network of Germany, Das Erste (The First) airs the Tagesschau (simulcasts on the regional affiliates (The Third) and specialty channels), Germany's most-watched news broadcast, at 8:00 p.m. The Tagesschau is scheduled for 15 minutes; its end marks the beginning of the prime time and has since the 1950s. Most channels therefore chose to start their prime time at 8:15 p.m. In the 1990s, Sat.1 failed, moving the start of prime time to 8 p.m. suffering significant loss of audience share.

Finland

In Finland, prime time starts at 21:00. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 20:30.

France

In France prime time runs from 8:45 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., which usually follows the news.

Greece

In Greece, prime time runs from 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m., which usually follows the news.

Hungary

In Hungary, prime time starts weekdays on the two big commercial stations (RTL Klub and TV2) at 7:00 p.m. with game shows, tabloid and docu-reality programmes. At 9:00 p.m., two popular soap operas air, Barátok közt and Jóban Rosszban, which follows at 9:30 p.m. American and other series, movies, talk-shows and magazines run until 11:30 p.m. The prime time lineup is preceded by daily news programmes at 6:30 p.m. Prime time begins at 7:00 p.m. on weekends with blockbuster movies and television shows.

The public television station M1 starts prime time with a game show at 6:30 p.m., which is followed by the daily news programme Híradó at 7:30 p.m. After the news, the channel begins to broadcast American and other series, talk shows, magazines and news programmes until 10:00 p.m., which is followed by the daily news magazine Este.

Ireland

RTE runs a current affairs programme called “Prime Time” after the 9:00 p.m. news.^[3] As of 2011, it is currently hosted by Miriam O'Callaghan.

Iceland

In Iceland, prime time starts at 19:30. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:00.

Italy

In Italy, prime time is from 9:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. It usually follows news and, on some networks (like Rai Uno and Canale 5), a slot called “access prime time”. Shows, movies, and sport events are usually shown during prime time. The average rating a prime time show can reach is about 15,000,000–20,000,000 viewers.

Netherlands

Much like in Germany, prime time in the Netherlands usually begins at 8:30 p.m. in order to not compete with NOS Journaal's flagship 8:00 p.m. newscast.

Norway

In Norway, prime time starts at 19:45. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:00.

Poland

In Poland, prime time starts around 20:00 (sometimes 20:30). On (TVP 1) It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:30, on (TVN) the newscast is aired at 19:00 followed by the newsmagazine Uwaga at 19:50 (weekdays)/19:45 (weekends) and then the soap Na Wspólnej at 20:05 (Monday to Thursday, from Friday to Sunday (at 20:00) various: movies on Friday, show or movies (Winter and Summer) at Saturday, and programme or movies (Winter and Summer) at Sunday), on (Polsat) the news is aired at 18:50, followed by a sitcom Świat według Kiepskich at 19:30.

Slovakia

Public television in Slovakia consists of two channels, on the main channel (Jednotka) primetime starts at 20:10, and on the second one (Dvojka) primetime programming starts at 20:00. Two biggest private broadcasters set the start of primetime programming at 20:20 (Markíza) and 20:30 (JOJ). Generally, however, primetime is considered from 20:00 to 23:00.

Slovenia

In Slovenia, prime time, the period in which the most-watched shows are broadcast, is from 8:00pm to 11:00pm. It is preceded by daily newscasts; Dnevnik RTV SLO (7:00pm-8:00pm) on TV SLO 1, 24ur (6:55pm-8:00pm) on POP TV, Svet na Kanalu A (6:00pm-7:00pm; 7:50pm-8:00pm), and Danes (7:30pm-8:00pm) on Planet TV.

Sweden

In Sweden, prime time starts at 20:00. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:30 and local news at 19:50.

Spain

In Spain, prime time refers to the time period in which the most-watched shows are broadcast. Prime time in Spain starts quite late when compared to most nations as it runs from 22:30 till 01:00. Most news programmes in Spain air at 21:00 for an hour and prime time follows. However, due to fierce competition, especially among the private stations prime time has even been delayed until 23:00. Most channels are delaying prime time in order to protect their top shows from sporting events.

In the 1990s, prime time in Spain began at 21:00, moving to 21:30 in the latter half of the 1990s and 22:00 in the early 2000s. Commercial broadcaster laSexta and the second channel from the Public broadcasting La 2 have attempted to shift prime time back to 21:30 in 2006 and Spring 2007, but these attempts have been unsuccessful.

The lateness in the start of prime time in Spain is also due to Spanish culture. Spanish people generally work from 09:00-14:00 and then from 17:00-20:00 as opposed to the standard 09:00-17:00. The popular late night show Crónicas Marcianas during the late 1990s–2000 also helped to extend prime time well into the early hours with the show being watched by a share of 40%, despite finishing at 02:00.

Spain might also be unique in that it has a second prime time, running from 14:30-17:00 which coincides with the extended Spanish lunch break. Shows airing in the secondary prime time period on many occasions beat those prime time shows at night on a daily basis. The second prime time only occurs on weekdays, though and the slot is usually filled with The Simpsons, news, soap operas and talk shows.

United Kingdom

In the U.K., prime time refers to the hours between 6 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. – which is the period in which the most popular shows are broadcast and the highest ratings are achieved, yet there are numerous exceptions like BBC1's Pointless at 5:15PM which consistently gets at least 4 million viewers. An estimate of how many people watch TV at certain times of the day. 10PM-11PM weekdays = 17,000,000

9PM-10PM weekdays = 23,000,000
8PM-9PM weekdays = 24,000,000
7PM-8PM weekdays = 18,000,000
6PM-7PM weekdays = 18,000,000

North America

In North America, television networks feed their prime time programming in two blocks: one for the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones, and one for the Pacific, Alaskan, and Hawaiian time zones, to their local network affiliates. In Atlantic Canada (including Newfoundland) as well as Alaska and Hawaii, there is no change in the interpretation or usage of “prime time” as the concept is not attached to time zones in any way. Affiliates in the Mountain, Alaskan, and Hawaii-Aleutian zones are either on their own to broadcast delay by an hour or two, or collectively form a small, regional network feed with others in the same time zone.

The hours traditionally taken as constituting prime time in North America are 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. Central and Mountain Time Monday–Saturday. On Sundays, prime time begins an hour earlier, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and 6:00 p.m. Central and Mountain, ending at the same time as on the other six days of the week. For cable networks (such as USA Network, TBS, and ABC Family), prime time is 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. all seven days of the week. Some networks such as Fox, The CW, and MyNetworkTV only broadcast from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m., a time period known as "common prime". Since September 2009, The CW and MyNetworkTV do not program Saturday or Sunday prime time at all, as The CW turned over its Sunday night schedule and MyNetworkTV its Saturday night schedule over to their affiliates. Also, over the past decade, the major American networks have come to consider Saturday prime time as a graveyard slot and as such have largely abandoned scheduling of new scripted programming on that night; although the networks still maintain a prime time programming schedule on that night, generally featuring rebroadcasts of programs aired earlier in the week, movies, non-scripted reality programs and, occasionally, remnant episodes of cancelled series.

Prime time can be extended or truncated if coverage of sporting events run past their allotted end time. Since the "Heidi Game" incident in 1968, in which NBC cut away on the East Coast from a New York Jets/Oakland Raiders football game in its final minute of play in order to show a movie (and, in the process, missing an unexpected comeback by the Raiders to win the game), the National Football League began to mandate that all games be broadcast in their entirety. Due to this rule, game telecasts may sometimes overrun into the 7:00 p.m. ET hour. Fox previously scheduled repeats of its animated series in the 7:00 hour, allowing themselves to simply pre-empt the reruns if a game ran long. This was later replaced by a half-hour-long wrap-up show, The OT. In contrast, CBS does not, as its weekly newsmagazine 60 Minutes has traditionally aired as close to 7:00 p.m. ET as possible. If a game runs long, 60 Minutes is shown in its entirety at the conclusion of coverage, and the rest of the prime time schedule on the East Coast is shifted to compensate. For example, if game coverage were to end at 7:30 p.m., prime time would end at 11:30 p.m.

However, in the rare case where the NFL game runs excessively late (8 p.m. or later), an episode of a series scheduled for later in the evening may be pre-empted (for example, Cold Case in October 2009 after the Bills-Jets game ran excessively late). In an extreme case, CBS's prime time can be extended past midnight during broadcasts of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. This does not necessarily apply universally; in 2001, after an XFL game went into overtime, forcing the delay of a highly promoted episode of Saturday Night Live, NBC made a decision to cut off all future XFL broadcasts at 11:00 p.m. NBC backed out of the XFL after the end of that season, leading to its failure.

Until the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulated time slots prior to prime time with the now-defunct Prime Time Access Rule in 1971–1972, networks began programming at 7:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific/6:30 p.m. Central and Mountain on weeknights (that is, the 1970–1971 season was the last season in which the networks began prime time at 7:30).^[4] The change helped instigate what is colloquially known as the ”rural purge”, in which rural-themed and older-skewing programs were disproportionately canceled.^{[citation needed]} In the 1987-1988 season, NBC-owned stations in several cities experimented with airing a schedule of syndicated first-run sitcoms at 7:30/6:30 p.m. (known as Prime Time Begins at 7:30) to compete against syndicated reruns or game shows such as Wheel of Fortune on rival stations.^[5]

The vast majority of prime time programming in English-speaking North America comes from the United States, with only a limited amount produced in Canada (most of which consists of local adaptations of worldwide reality television franchises, such as Canadian Idol and So You Think You Can Dance Canada). The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission mandates quotas for Canadian content in prime time; these quotas indicate at least half of Canadian prime time programs must be Canadian in origin, but the majority of this is served by national and local news.

Likewise, the vast majority of Spanish-language programming in North America comes from Mexico. Televisa, a Mexican network, provides the majority of programming to the dominant U.S.-based Spanish broadcaster, Univision. Univision does produce a fairly large amount of unscripted Spanish-language programming, the best known being the long-running variety show Sábado Gigante, hosted and created by Chilean national Don Francisco. Univision's distant second-place competitor, Telemundo, produces a much greater share of in-house content, including a long line of telenovelas.

In Quebec, the largest Francophone area of North America, French language programming consists of originally produced programs (most of which are produced in Montreal, with a few produced in Quebec City) and French-language dubs of English language programs.

Oceania

Prime time in Australia is officially from 6:00 p.m. to midnight, following Australian Eastern Standard Time, with the highest ratings normally achieved between 6:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Prime time in New Zealand is considered to be 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. (Four's prime time ends at 11 p.m. on Tuesdays to Fridays), but can be extended to cover the entire evening of television (6 to 11 p.m.).

Latin America

In a great part of Latin American countries, prime time is considered to be from 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. The time slot is usually used for news, telenovelas and television series, and special time slots are used for reality shows, with great popularity, especially in Mexico and Brazil. In Brazil, it is called horário nobre (“noble time”), which is the time the three most famous telenovelas in the country are shown each weekday and on Saturdays. There are also news programs, reality shows, and sitcoms.

Argentina

In Argentina, prime time is considered to be from 9.00 p.m. until 01.00 a.m.; with the most successful series and telenovelas in the country (such as WAGs: Love for the Game and Valientes), and entertainment shows, like CQC.

Chile

In Chile, prime time is considered to be from 10.30 p.m. until 01.00 a.m.; with the most successful series and telenovelas in the country (such as Socias and Las Vega's). Investigation entertainment shows (like Informe Especial, Contacto, Apuesto por tí) also air.

See also

• Drive time (similar concept in radio)
• International broadcasting
• Late night
• Market share
• Deion Sanders
• Graveyard slot – the opposite of prime time
• Bob Ranft
• Saturday Night Live cast members/"Not Ready For Prime Time Players"
• History of Saturday Night Live (1975–1980)#Season 1 (1975–1976)
• The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946–Present
• List of long-running prime time series

References

Preceded by Daytime television	Television dayparts 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM	Succeeded by Late night television

v t e Dayparting Graveyard slot (2:00 AM–6:00 AM) Breakfast television (6:00 AM–10:00 AM) Daytime television (10:00 AM–7:00 PM) Prime time (7:00 PM–11:00 PM) Late night television (11:00 PM–2:00 AM)