[5][6] The fact that this limits accurate coverage of the latest 24-hour news cycle is sometimes the source of ironic humor or notable delays (for instance, the death of Michael Jackson, a frequent butt of late night jokes, on the afternoon of June 25, 2009 came after all but Jimmy Kimmel Live!
(Fox first repurposed the timeslot for reruns in January 1994 to air edited episodes of the HBO horror anthology Tales from the Crypt in place of the cancelled stand-up series Comic Strip Live; this continued until MADtv premiered in the slot in October 1995.
[15]) The Saturday slot previously occupied by Sykes and before that by MADtv—which has lasted for one hour for most of the time since Fox began programming the slot in 1989, with previous extensions to 90 minutes (2006–08 and 2009–13) and two hours (2008–09, during the expanded hour-long format of Talkshow with Spike Feresten)—consisted only of Fox prime time reruns until the July 2013 debut of the adult animation block Animation Domination High-Def, which was canceled in April 2014 citing an inability to reach its intended young adult demographic, an issue aggravated by frequent sports overruns (though reruns continued to air on the network until 2016);[16][17] Fox would last attempt first-run late night programming in any capacity in 2016 with the female-led sketch comedy series Party Over Here, which was cancelled after one season.
[18] There has not been a successful syndicated late night talk show since that time, and outside of the panel-formatted Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen (2006–14) and the 2010s Arsenio revival, the few that have debuted since the 1998 failure of The Magic Hour have lacked full national distribution and/or been limited to weekend timeslots.
Houston NBC affiliate KPRC notably delayed Late Night with Conan O'Brien to 2:40 a.m. when it resumed carrying the program after a two-year absence in 1996, in favor of airing various first-run syndicated shows and a rebroadcast of its 10:00 p.m. newscast between it and Tonight.
[20][21] Several ABC stations continued to run syndicated sitcom reruns and entertainment newsmagazines in the post-local news slot well into the 2000s, and at least three of them (WISN/Milwaukee, KITV/Honolulu and KOAT/Albuquerque) carried hour-long local newscasts for even longer, delaying part or all of the network's late-night lineup as late as one hour behind their intended airtime.
ABC would gradually get its stations on board to airing Kimmel and Nightline in their designated timeslots into the 2010s, even after both shows traded slots in January 2013; Hearst Television was the last of ABC's major affiliate groups to end the practice of delaying its network late-night schedule in January 2019, per the terms of a renewed affiliation agreement that forced them to give up their ability to delay the program for extended local newscasts or syndicated programming.
The traditional late-night talk format has largely been unable to maintain a long-term presence on American Spanish-language television; however a few efforts aimed at Hispanic and Latino audiences have been attempted over the years, including A Oscuras Pero Encendidos ("In the Dark but Turned On"; Galavisión, 1997–2000 and Telemundo, 2000–01), the first to be produced for and longest to air on American Spanish media, which originated in 1995 on independent WJAN-CA/Miami before going national in its third season; Mas Vale Tarde ("It's Better Late"; Telemundo, 2007–08); and Noche de Perros ("Dog Night"; Telefutura, 2011–12).
The block was supplanted in March 1991 by Crimetime After Primetime, a rotating collection of original crime drama series (including several Canadian-originated productions) that lasted until the Late Show with David Letterman premiered in September 1993.
[31] The "All Night" banner was retired in 2008 as repeats of NBC late-night shows were gradually replaced over the next few years by Poker After Dark (which was later canceled after its sponsor was ensnared in a bank fraud and money laundering case), a Saturday overnight block of lifestyle programs produced by sister company LXTV and, in the early 2010s, weeknight rebroadcasts of the fourth hour of Today (which follows a daytime talk format) and the CNBC financial program Mad Money.
Under original anchor Ted Koppel, Nightline (which was based out of Washington, D.C. throughout his tenure) maintained a single-topic format, featuring live interviews related to the subject discussed in the main story segment.
Declining interest from affiliates (stemming in part from the presence of 24-hour cable news channels such as CNN) and low viewership (mainly resulting from fewer affiliates airing them in their intended late fringe timeslots) resulted in both networks discontinuing their weekend late newscasts during the 1990s: ABC's Weekend Report ended in September 1991,[34] while CBS's Sunday Night News aired its final broadcast in September 1997.
[43][44][note 5] Other large- and mid-market independents (such as WNEW's New York-area rivals WPIX and WWOR-TV; KTTV, KTLA and KCOP-TV in Los Angeles; WGN-TV in Chicago; and WTCN-TV and KMSP-TV in Minneapolis–St.
Since they commonly air at the start of the watershed slot, late-night newscasts have more editorial freedom to cover stories of a more violent, profane or sexual nature compared to those in earlier timeslots.
The idiom "film at 11" comes from the now-archaic term once used to close promotions for the upcoming newscast that are shown during prime time programs, promising shots from a breaking story during the 11:00 p.m. newscast; the phrase—dating to when news footage was shot on film and had to be transported back to the station to be edited before broadcast—has since been substituted by similar idioms like "story at 11" or "details at 11" as the advent of videotape and later digital video, and technological advances in remote broadcasting saw these become the chosen mediums for packaging televised reports more efficiently and instantaneously.
American television stations have used the late-night timeslot to feature syndicated programming designed for the time period, such as late-night talk shows intended to compete with their network counterparts and series (such as dating game shows) that incorporate more mature material; however, the daypart has also acted as a de facto "death slot" for syndicated programs that either were placed there involuntarily due to low ratings in their original daytime slots, a lack of room on their station's schedule to fit them in an appropriate timeslot where the program would otherwise benefit from a higher available audience, or to fill time that would otherwise be taken up by infomercials or reruns of current and past network shows (including sitcoms and drama series) distributed in off-network syndication.
Many public television stations (like WYIN/Gary, Indiana, the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA), KCET/Los Angeles and WNET/Newark–New York City) have long aired packages of older mainstream theatrical films—syndicated mainly by American Public Television—on weekends (usually Saturday nights) in late prime time and late night; these presentations, however, are regularly suspended during pledge drives held two to four times per year in favor of health and financial advice, and music specials normally shown in place of regular programming (except in daytime slots reserved for children's programming) during pledge periods.
Movie packages sold through the commercial syndication market have steadily declined in volume since the late 1990s due largely to cable television cornering the film market, and the prime time expansions of The WB and UPN (and before that, Fox) during that decade reducing available airtime on their affiliates, and more substantially amid the proliferation of streaming platforms (like Netflix, Hulu and Prime Video) in the mid-2010s, as film studios increasingly resorted to licensing their library titles to that medium; syndicated reruns and paid programming primarily now occupy late-night schedules on most stations outside or in lieu of network offerings made for the broader daypart, although some of the stations (along with The CW's national small-market feed) that carry the few film packages remaining in syndication continue to run movies in that daypart on weekends.
The concept of the program-length advertisement dates to the early years of modern commercial television: the first filmed half-hour infomercial for a commercial product was produced in 1949 by Ohio-based Cinécraft Productions for a Vitamix blender; first airing on New York City independent station WOR-TV (now Secaucus, New Jersey-licensed MyNetworkTV O&O WWOR-TV) in a Sunday 12:30 a.m. slot, an estimated 130 orders for the blender were made within 10 minutes of the infomercial's conclusion, and more than $41,400 in sales (equivalent to $530,000 in 2023) were generated after 12 airings of the broadcast.
ET), it evolved into a hybrid format as the Home Shopping Spree in 1989, broadcasting 24 hours a day on various low-power stations (which offered it on a full-time or part-time basis) alongside the existing overnight syndication package, a structure that continued until what became America's Store shut down in April 2007.
Although typically associated with the Sunday morning timeslot, primarily as a means to allow those who cannot attend church services in-person due to illness or disability to participate from home, some time-brokered televangelist programs (such as The Shepherd's Chapel, Inspiration Ministries Campmeeting and In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley) are also carried by some commercial stations during the overnight graveyard slot, particularly during the pre-dawn hours on weekends.
Stations that transitioned to 24-hour broadcasts instead air many of the aforementioned programming formats during the overnight slot, although a scant few, particularly those that previously continued to sign-off overnight on weekends long after switching to 24-hour programming the rest of the week (such as Green Bay, Wisconsin ABC affiliate WBAY-TV, which ended this practice after a transmitter malfunction during one of its weekend sign-off periods kept it off the air for several days in January 2010[66]), chose to fill their former off-hours with a "nightlight" feed of live radar imagery (displaying data sourced from National Weather Service- or station-operated radars) or, if applicable, a simulcast of a locally programmed weather channel (normally distributed by the station on an over-the-air subchannel, local cable providers, and/or an online livestream).
Because of interregional time differences, live national and regional telecasts of professional and collegiate sporting events played at venues in the Western United States during the early evening (between 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. PT/MT) typically bleed—extending deeper in overtime situations—into the late and/or post-late fringe slots (between 11:30 p.m. and 2:00 a.m.
Nick at Nite debuted over the channel space of parent network Nickelodeon in July 1985, as a collection of primarily reruns of older sitcoms and a limited selection of half-hour drama series from the 1950s and 1960s, along with nightly pre-1960s classic film presentations.
Night Tracks (TBS, 1983–92) was a music video program—also airing on Fridays and Saturdays, originally in two three-hour blocks for most of its run—developed to capitalize on the medium's emergence into the mainstream through the growing popularity of MTV in the early 1980s, which spun off several themed video countdown blocks (focusing on top-charting, dance, country, hard and alternative rock videos at various points) and served as the basis for one of the shortest-lived networks in American cable television history, Cable Music Channel, Turner Broadcasting System's unsuccessful attempt at an MTV competitor that operated for 35 days from October to November 1984; an overnight movie offshoot, Night Flicks (converted into a standalone showcase using the modified title Nite Flix in 1991), debuted in August 1989 and served as the lead-out for Night Tracks during the final three years of the music program's run.
The softcore programming featured on "After Hours" would disappear from the main channel's schedule by 2004; however, while scheduled far less often in the present day, softcore adult films have continued to air in early overnight slots on most of Showtime's companion multiplex channels (except for Showtime Family Zone and SHO×BET as well as its predecessor Showtime Beyond), sister service The Movie Channel (which had begun incorporating adult films into its late-night schedule in the early 1990s, starting with the introduction of exploitation and softcore genre movies into the film selections featured on Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater) and their respective linear and on-demand services, serving as the genre's sole remaining presence on mainstream premium cable as of 2024.
Cinemax, which is mainly dedicated to mainstream theatrical films, was heavily associated with softcore adult programming, despite that content being contained entirely within a late-night block on the network.
HDOSN and its networks would shut down in March 1990, after several C-band providers dropped American Exxxtasy and its softcore sister service Tuxxedo to avoid further criminal liability, and company founders Paul Klein and Jeffrey Younger reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice agreeing to plead guilty to obscenity charges and pay a $150,000 fine, cease satellite transmissions and turn over their film library to the government.
[107][108][109][110][111] Additional services debuted during the 1990s; Spice launched in 1992, offering hardcore pornographic films reedited to incorporate "softcore" versions of sex scenes omitting more graphic material (including clear depictions of male genitalia, penetration and ejaculation).
Section 505 of the Act, which was enacted based on a handful of complaints without a prior congressional hearing, was struck down in a 5-4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group (2000), holding that it constituted a broad content-based restriction in violation of the First Amendment as the provision singled out specific types of programming and programmers, and that a separate provision (Section 504) allowing subscribers to request the scrambling or complete blocking of an adult channel was sufficient.