It includes a mix of mainstream and alternative music videos, artist interviews, B movies, documentaries, short films, stand-up comedy and animation.

A new series that defied conventional formats and easy categorization was an acceptable risk to USA, and it aired the first episode of Night Flight on June 5, 1981.

The timing was a deliberate move to exploit the 1981 Writers Guild of America strike, which had halted production on NBC's highly popular program Saturday Night Live.

A subscription service called Night Flight Plus launched in March 2016 which allows viewers to pay a monthly or annual fee for access to full segments of the show.

Night Flight was also one of the first American television shows to present the music video as a serious visual art form rather than a mere promotional tool for musicians.

Night Flight's Director of Programming, Stuart Samuels, was a former professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania who also taught seminars at the annual Cannes Film Festival.

In an interview in issue #77 of Boston Rock, Samuels said the concept of airing films centered around a single theme was intended to have the effect that "the videos were saying something to each other and were letting the audience make conclusions from them."

The eventual backlash against the repetition of rock videos inspired Night Flight to program even more public domain animation (especially those from the Fleischer Studios, Ub Iwerks, etc.