Graveyard 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 12:30 a.m.

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.

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, including overnight breaking news stories that may have occurred after the station's late newscast earlier in the evening.

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 lead 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.

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).

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

In addition, a handful of cable channels have also had success with Friday night programming; prominent examples have included the Disney Channel, which between 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 this night several times per year as an attempt to keep potential movie-goers at home.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[12][13][14] 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.

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.

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!

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).

[17] 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; and cable television and eventually streaming platforms emerging as key players in distributing theatrical films.

To account for the football overruns, the network aired occasional 90-minute editions of 60 Minutes on certain weeks following 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.

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.

ET time period was occupied by The Wonderful World of Disney; the anthology movie showcase was moved to Saturday nights in 2003–04, partly to accommodate the return of AFV to the Sunday early slot (it had previously aired on Fridays since resuming weekly episodes in 2001).

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.

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.