Graveyard slot

A graveyard slot (or death slot) is a time period in which a television audience is very small compared to other times of the day, and therefore broadcast programming is considered far less important. Graveyard slots usually displayed in the early morning hours of each day, when most people are asleep.

With little likelihood of a substantial viewing audience during this daypart, providing useful television programming during this time is usually considered unimportant; some broadcast stations go off the air during these hours, and some audience measurement systems do not collect measurements for these periods. Some broadcasters may do engineering work at this time. Others use broadcast automation to pass-through network feeds unattended, with only broadcasting authority-mandated personnel and emergency anchors/reporters present at the local station overnight. A few stations use "we're always on" or a variant to promote their 24-hour operation as a selling point, though as this is now the rule rather than the exception it was in the past, it has now mainly become a selling point for a station's website instead.

Overnight slot
The most well-known graveyard slot in most parts of the world is the overnight slot, the daypart bridging the late night and breakfast television/early morning slots (between 2:00 and 6:00 a.m.). During this time slot, most people are asleep. Because of the small number of people awake at these times, the overnight shift was historically ignored as a revenue opportunity, although increases in irregular shifts have made overnight programming more viable than it had been in the past. In the United States, for example, research has shown that the number of televisions in use at 4:30 a.m. doubled from 1995 to 2010 (8% to 16%).

Since the advent of home video recording, some programs in this slot may be transmitted mainly with time-shifting in mind; in the past, the BBC offered specialized overnight strands such as BBC Select (an often-encrypted block providing airtime for specialized professional programmes), and the BBC Learning Zone (which broadcast academic programmes, such as from the Open University). The BBC's current "Sign Zone" strand broadcasts repeat programmes with in-vision interpretation in British Sign Language. Some channels may carry adult-oriented content in the graveyard slot, depending on local regulations. Live events from other time zones (most often sports) may sometimes fall in overnight slots, such as daytime events from the Asia-Pacific region on channels in the Americas, and prime-time events from the Americas on channels in Europe for example. Some anime-oriented streaming services (such as Crunchyroll) have arrangements with Japanese networks to premiere episodes at the same time as their domestic television airings, often falling within the overnight hours in the Americas.

Since the 1980s, graveyard slots, once populated by broadcasts of syndicated reruns and old movies, have increasingly been used for program-length infomercials or simulcasting of home shopping channels, which provide a media outlet with revenue and a source of programming without any programming expenses or the possible malfunctions which might come with going off-the-air. In addition, the graveyard slots can also be used as dumping grounds for government-mandated public affairs programming, as well as in-house programming a station group is mandated by their parent company to carry that would otherwise be unpalatable in prime timeslots. One example of the latter mandated by Sinclair Broadcast Group in the United States is The Right Side, a public affairs program hosted by political commentator Armstrong Williams (who has business interests with Sinclair) that is typically aired by Sinclair-affiliated stations, and is intended to air in weekend late morning slots as a complement to the national networks' Sunday morning talk shows. However, The Right Side is often programmed in graveyard slots on most Sinclair stations who locally choose to instead fill the weekend morning slots with educational shows, paid programming (including religious programs and real estate presentation shows), weekend morning newscasts and local public affairs programming, or have no scheduling room due to network sports telecasts.

Graveyard slots are also used by U.S. television stations as a de facto "death slot" for syndicated programs that either failed to find an audience or which a station acquired but otherwise has no room to air in a more appropriate time slot where the program would otherwise benefit. In previous years, the most often seen original programming in the overnight period were low-rated daytime talk shows and game shows being burned off. In many cases where a television station carries an irregularly-scheduled special event, breaking news or severe weather coverage that preempts a network or syndicated program, the station may elect to air the preempted programming in a graveyard slot during the same broadcast day to fulfill their contractual obligations. In markets with sports teams whose coaches' and team highlights shows preempt programs in the prime access hour before primetime, the overnight period also allows a preempted program to air in some form on a station without penalty to the syndicator, or for stations to air network programming preempted for local-interest programming, breaking news or weather, or sporting events.

Local news programming has also aired in the overnight slot in various forms; between the 1960s and the mid-1980s, many American television stations ran abbreviated "sign-off editions" providing brief summaries of local (and more prominently), national and international headlines, sports scores and a short- to medium-range weather forecast. (One such station, Chicago independent station WFLD (now a Fox owned-and-operated station), utilized the KeyFax teletext system to provide an overnight news service, known as Nite-Owl, that aired until the resumption of regular programming each day from 1981 to 1982.) Beginning in the early 1980s, many news-producing stations rebroadcast their late-evening newscasts (updated sparingly during severe weather events to incorporate live cut-ins providing current radar data and active alerts in place of the newscast's original weather segment), primarily for the convenience of late-shift workers who were not awake hours earlier for the broadcast's initial airing; this practice went into decline during the 2000s in favor of syndicated programs, extended feeds of overnight network newscasts and infomercials (some NBC affiliates that abandoned the practice years earlier, however, would bring back late news rebroadcasts to their late-night schedules after the network ceded the 1:35 a.m. ET timeslot following the 2021 cancellation of A Little Late with Lilly Singh). Since the late 2000s in the United States many stations have offered an increasingly early local newscast, which now begins as early as 4:00 a.m. in some major and mid-sized markets, targeting those who work early shifts or are returning from late shifts; this early newscast would fit into the overnight daypart rather than the early morning slot.

In a number of larger and middle markets in the United States, MyNetworkTV, which started as a general broadcast network in 2006 meant for primetime clearance, but due to the failure of its original programming schedule, eventually became a syndication service carrying nightly rerun blocks of syndicated programming from broadcast networks and cable channels, has seen its timeslot downgraded to the graveyard slot, sometimes sharing secondary affiliations with digital multicast television networks carried on digital subchannels. Generally, this is done as the stations of MyNetworkTV have become part of duopolies with major network affiliate stations (and even those owned by its parent company, Fox Television Stations) and those stations have used the MyNetworkTV affiliates to carry extended primetime local newscasts and local sports which provide steadier ratings and revenue than MyNetworkTV's non-original schedule.

The overnight period is also noted for the prevalence of cheaply produced local advertisements which allow an advertiser to purchase time on the station for a low cost, advertisements for services of a sexual nature (such as premium-rate adult rate entertainment services, adult entertainment venues, and adult products from companies such as Adam & Eve), direct response advertising for products and services (often marketed "As Seen On TV") otherwise seen during infomercials, and public service announcements (such as those commissioned by the Ad Council) airing in these time slots due to the reduced importance of advertising revenue.

Network overnight programming
The Big Three television networks in the United States all offer regular programming in the overnight slot. Both ABC and CBS carry overnight newscasts with some repackaged content from the day's previous network news broadcasts, with an emphasis on sports scores from West Coast games that typically conclude after 1:00 a.m. ET and international financial markets with the ending of the Australasian and beginning of the European trading day, all of which takes place between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m. ET, while NBC (which dropped its overnight news after an eight-year run in September 1998) replays the NBC News Now streaming news program Top Story with Tom Llamas (previously occupied by a replay of the fourth hour of Today from 2011 to 2022). Each network also produces its early morning newscast at 4:00 a.m. ET (with the exception of NBC's Early Today, which since 2017, has started at 3:00 a.m. ET, acting as a de facto overnight newscast in parlance) so that it may be tape-delayed to air as a lead-in to local news.

The graveyard slots' lack of importance sometimes benefits programs; producers and program-makers can afford to take more risks, as there is less advertising revenue at stake. For example, an unusual or niche program may find a chance for an audience in a graveyard slot (a current day example is Adult Swim's FishCenter Live, which features games projected onto the video image of an aquarium), or a formerly popular program that no longer merits an important time slot may be allowed to run in a graveyard slot instead of being removed from the schedule completely. However, abusing this practice may lead to channel drift if the demoted programs were presented as channel stars at some time.

From 1988 to 2014 in the United States, some cable networks (such as Nickelodeon, the Discovery Channel and The Weather Channel) aired educational programs during these hours as part of the Cable in the Classroom initiative, intended for educators to tape for later presentation to their students.

Japan
Japanese over-the-air stations broadcast late night anime almost exclusively, starting in the late night slot at 11:00 p.m., but bridging the graveyard slot and running until 4:00 a.m.. Because advertising revenue is scant in these time slots, the broadcasts primarily promote DVD versions of their series, which may be longer, uncensored, and/or have added features like commentary tracks, side stories and epilogues.

United Kingdom
In the UK, overnight is defined as 12.30 to 6.00 a.m.; full-time overnight broadcasting began on ITV in 1987 and 1988 and on Channel 4 at the start of 1997, although into-the-night programming has been a regular fixture on Channel 4 since 1988. The main BBC channels have never broadcast through the night - BBC One has simulcasted the BBC News Channel overnight with BBC Two's only foray into continuous television being BBC Learning Zone. From 2000 to 2013, BBC One repeated recent programmes during this time period with in-vision signing as part of a strand called Sign Zone before simulcasting with BBC News (in a simulcast between BBC One, UK feed and international feed of BBC News Channel for the second part). Since then, the BBC News simulcast has generally begin between midnight and 1.00 a.m.. BBC Two shows Sign Zone and repeats for the first part and the rest of the high is given over to "This is BBC Two" which broadcasts excerpt from forthcoming BBC Two programmes. Notable examples of digital channels are BBC Three and BBC Four, which stay on the air until 4.00 a.m. and then close down, marked in schedules are This is BBC Three and This is BBC Four respectively.

ITV broadcasts the home shopping programme Shop Direct, repeats of daytime programming and the ambient sound strand Unwind with ITV/STV until 5.05 a.m. weekdays (with Tipping Point following it) and 6.00 a.m. weekends. Channel 4 shows repeats and films during the overnight hours, while Channel 5 airs Supercasino, some repeats and Teleshopping. Most digital channels during this time either go off air or simulcast shopping channels, while some stay on the air.

7.30 p.m. weeknights
The 7.30 p.m. half-hour is traditionally the first primetime slot of the evening in the UK. In 1989, ITV began broadcasting a third weekly showing of its highly-rated soap opera, Coronation Street, in this slot on Friday evenings, adding to existing episodes in that slot on Mondays and Wednesdays. As ITV's biggest rival, the BBC, broadcast its own biggest soap opera, EastEnders, in the same slot on Tuesdays and Thursdays, this created a situation where the 7.30 slot was effectively "owned" by ITV for three days a week and the BBC for two. With little chance of beating their biggest rival in the ratings, neither network would schedule valuable content in their "off" nights, creating a graveyard slot for that network by default, even though the slot itself was extremely valuable in across-the-board ratings terms. ITV would often use the slot for regional programming, or consumer affairs shows not expected to rate highly, whilst BBC1 would often air repeats. Only on rare occasions did either network break the unwritten agreement not to schedule one show against the other.

During the 2010s and 2020s, the growth of streaming and catch-up TV services made this scheduling pattern less important, and while ITV would still only very rarely schedule Coronation Street against EastEnders, it began scheduling its second highest rating soap opera, Emmerdale, against EastEnders on some occasions (for example, one-hour specials for major storylines). In January 2022, the status quo around the "ownership" of the 7.30 p.m. slot essentially came to an end, with ITV opting to move Coronation Street to 8.00 p.m. and Emmerdale to 7.30 on a permanent basis, in order to broadcast an hour-long evening news bulletin. The BBC typically continues to air EastEnders at 7.30 p.m.

United States
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), 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), Loving (and its short-lived spinoff The City), Sunset Beach and Port Charles. (The latter two were canceled after a few years on the air.) Since the mid-2000s, the 12:30 p.m. timeslot on most NBC and ABC 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, with 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, though the two networks 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).

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. By 2012, most networks' daytime programming had ended at 3:00 p.m. ET, and many stations have begun offering up to three hours of local news, interrupted either by a 4:30 syndicated program or the 6:30 network news.

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." 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, 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 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 line-up 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 since 2010) among the more prominent examples. 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. Historically, ABC had notable success on Friday evenings with its TGIF lineup of sitcoms aimed at family and teenage audiences beginning in 1989, with its popular newsmagazine 20/20 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 before it eventually abandoned this strategy in 2000, first in favor of more adult-targeted comedies and later the aforementioned primetime serials.

Despite being a known graveyard slot, there have been notable exceptions to this rule, with The Brady Bunch; Sanford and Son; Full House; Family Matters; Boy Meets World; Homicide: Life on the Street; Sabrina, the Teenage Witch; Reba; Ghost Whisperer; CSI: NY; WWE SmackDown; Last Man Standing; Shark Tank; Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and the aforementioned Blue Bloods among the more notable examples. In addition, a handful of cable channels have also had success with Friday night programming, with the most prominent being Disney Channel which since 2006 has aired a number of scripted sitcoms that appeal to a pre-teen audience including Wizards of Waverly Place, Phineas and Ferb, The Suite Life on Deck, Jessie and Girl Meets World, and has largely served as somewhat of a successor to sister network ABC's original TGIF lineup (albeit with a younger audience in comparison). Many cable networks, including Disney Channel as well as Hallmark Channel, also premiere original made-for-TV movies on this night several times per year as an attempt to keep potential movie-goers 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 successful programs aired on Saturdays during the 1990s as well 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. For that reason, the mainstream U.S. networks have largely abandoned original programming on Saturday nights in favor of reruns, with only CBS maintaining a limited presence anchored by its newsmagazine 48 Hours. 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 (such as with its move of stalwarts Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains 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 TGIF-inspired sitcom block I Love Saturday Night, which 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). Its last attempt was 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 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.

The last major efforts by the Big Three networks to program Saturday nights ended 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. 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), becoming the last legacy broadcast network to give up on any meaningful efforts to program the Saturday primetime slot; it would, however, later 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) 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.

In recent years, a new trend has emerged where a show that is considered to be a ratings failure (or is already canceled) is moved to Saturday nights to finish airing its original episodes, with the CBS miniseries Harper's Island in 2008–09, NBC's The Firm in 2011–12, and ABC's The Alec Baldwin Show and CBS's Million Dollar Mile in 2018–19 being some of the most notable examples. Otherwise, the night is used by the networks to air encore presentations of their weekday primetime series' most recent episode, or in ABC's case (until the 2015–16 season and more sporadically thereafter) occasional broadcasts of more recent theatrical movies, as well as to air sports programming including college football (e.g., ABC's Saturday Night Football) on all of the major networks, NBA basketball on ABC, NHL hockey on NBC (until its NHL rights were transferred to TNT under a broader deal with parent company WarnerMedia (now Warner Bros. Discovery) in 2021), and UFC mixed martial arts fights on Fox (until 2019, moving to ESPN+ thereafter with occasional preliminary matches airing on either ESPN or ABC). 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.

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 [ Saturday Night ]  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), and 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.)

Weekend prime access and late nights
To this day, many television stations in the United States have often filled their weekend late night slots with off-network syndicated reruns of primetime drama series, 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, for instance, 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.

Historically, music and variety shows such as Hee Haw, The Lawrence Welk Show, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, Solid Gold, Showtime at the Apollo and Soul Train, as well as weekly competition programs including American Gladiators and Star Search, also often filled weekend late night time slots (in many cases either complementing or even competing against Saturday Night Live). During the weekends (particularly on Saturdays), the prime access hour also featured popular weekly syndicated series including The Muppet Show during the 1970s, 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.

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.

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—is airing on one station, prompting other stations to outright refuse to put on competitive programming. Most stations in this situation air infomercials, movies, or little-watched syndicated fare 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, 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). 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).

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, which primarily carries Sunday afternoon National Football Conference (NFC) road games, 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 were seen 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, which holds the rights to most Sunday afternoon American Football Conference (AFC) road games, 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 season of Criminal Minds (which once served as a lead-out to Super Bowl XLI in 2007) 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. To account for the football overruns, starting in 2024–25, the network plans to forego airing first-run dramas in the 10:00 p.m. slot for the duration of the NFL season; the hour will instead be filled with selected prime time drama repeats until after the Super Bowl (regardless of whether CBS maintains telecast rights for the game in a given year) in mid-February.
 * 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. When the network 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 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, 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 history since the show premiered in 1990 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. 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 (a noted exception being 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 the MNF games.
 * The CW and co-predecessor UPN never regularly programmed Sunday nights until 2006, 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. The CW mainly filled the 7:00 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.
 * The WB, which merged with UPN to form The CW in September 2006, have 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 p.m. 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.) Its de jure successor MyNetworkTV has never programmed the night since it launched in 2006.

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, 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.

Australia and New Zealand
In Australia and New Zealand, the overnight daypart runs from midnight until 6:00 a.m. This slot is generally filled by American sitcoms and dramas that failed in their home market but are required to air in some form to justify the network's investment, or archived content, along with teleshopping programmes, and other American programs (mainly lower-tier syndicated newsmagazines, and delayed broadcasts of breakfast television programmes).

Content requirements
In Canada, federal regulations require television channels and radio stations to carry a certain percentage of programs that are produced in Canada or have some contribution by Canadians. It is common for most privately owned television channels to air the bulk of their mandatory Canadian content in such graveyard slots (especially weekday mornings and Saturday nights), ensuring they can meet their required percentages of Canadian programming while leaving room for more popular foreign programming in other time periods. For over-the-air terrestrial stations, the overnight hours are generally not subject to Canadian content requirements, allowing some opportunity for niche or experimental programming during those hours, although most commonly infomercials air instead. Canadian radio stations have similar practices regarding broadcasts of Canadian music, known pejoratively as the "beaver hour". For the most part in modern times however, Canadian content requirements are filled easily by television stations throughout the week through local newscasts and magazine programming, along with licensed versions of American programs such as the now-defunct ET Canada.

Likewise, in the United States, some stations attempt to bury mandated educational programming in graveyard slots, though under current regulations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), children's television series must air during times when children are awake (current standards as of 2019 state between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.). Thus, these channels will "bury" E/I-compliant programs in the middle of a block of infomercials during the daytime hours, when most children are either at school or (on weekends) asleep or participating in youth sports, scouting or other activities, and are unlikely to ever see them, though a loophole allowing more advertising for shows targeted to teenage audiences means that most E/I programming since the 2010s has been generic documentary, game show, dramatic, or profile programming unlikely to be of interest to most children. Recent changes to E/I standards by the FCC on July 10, 2019 will also result in individual stations being given the option to carry up to 52 hours of E/I content that consists of either specials or short-form content, as well as digital subchannels no longer being required to carry E/I programming (although many networks that are designed for placement on subchannels continue to offer educational programming voluntarily) and individual stations being allowed to shift up to 13 hours of E/I programming per quarter (52 hours annually) over to a digital subchannel, which will likely result in further attrition of the already low audience shares for E/I programming in the United States.