Late-night television

It follows prime time and precedes the overnight television show graveyard slot.

Due to the complications of effects of time zones on North American broadcasting, live professional sporting matches such as baseball, hockey, and basketball played in Pacific and Mountain Time Zone cities, such as Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle, are often played in the primetime of the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones but late night in the Central and Eastern time zones, and their lateness often contributes to a perceived East Coast bias in sports media.

[2] Similarly, Australian and New Zealand television primarily air American late shows, lower-priority imported series, late movies or overflows of sports programming in the late-night time slot.

On cable television, programming strategies in this time slot include timeshift channel of prime time programs and, in the case of children's television series channels, sign-on and sign-off and allowing more adult-oriented fare for the overnight hours under another brand.

[4] This is also true of the United States–based cable channel Cartoon Network, which targets children and young teens during daytime and primetime hours, but changes over to its Adult Swim brand in late-night slots, which targets young adults with its content.