Late-night television is one of the dayparts in television broadcast programming . It follows prime time and precedes the overnight television show graveyard slot . The slot generally runs from about 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., with variations according to the time zone and broadcaster.

In the United States and Canada, the term is synonymous with the late-night talk show , a type of television comedy talk show and variety show . Thus, the late-night programming block is considered more important in North America. ^[1] On most major-network stations, a late-night news bulletin airs at the beginning of the block.

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.

In the United Kingdom , the late-night spot is from 11:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. and not seen as a priority; ITV , Channel 4 and Channel 5 air repeat programs in the time slot, and the BBC 's channels ( BBC One , Two , Three and Four ) primarily show BBC News , air movies, or repeats. ^[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. Two examples are the children's channels Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon , which changes over to Adult Swim and Nick at Nite , respectively, at an hour when most pre-adolescent children go to sleep. Adult Swim and Nick at Nite typically airs series programming, such as reruns of sitcom , that may have coarser language and more adult themes than Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. ^[3]

After 11:00 p.m., Japan airs adult talk or variety shows as well as late-night anime . ^[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. ^[5]

See also [ edit ]

• Late-night news
• Late-night talk show
• Late night television in the United States
• List of late-night American network TV programs

References [ edit ]