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U.S. TV dayparting; prime time is in light purple

Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.

The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 (Central and Mountain Time) or 20:00 to 23:00 (Eastern and Pacific Time) (7 p.m. to 10 p.m. or 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.).

Timeslot's relationship to radio and TV revenue [edit]

Prime time is the daypart (block of a day's programming schedule) with the most viewers and is generally where television networks and local stations reap much of their advertising revenues. The Nielsen ratings system is explicitly designed for the optimum measurement of audience viewership by dayparts with prime time being of most interest. Most people tend to watch television at prime time because most people who are usually tired coming home from work or school tend to watch TV, usually right after dinner.^{[citation needed]} This is usually the main reason for the high ratings for TV programming at this time, as well as the attractiveness of the timeslot for advertisers.^{[citation needed]}

The existence of prime time in the United States is largely an artifact of now repealed regulations of the Federal Communications Commission, which limited the number of hours that a network can require its affiliates to broadcast.^{[citation needed]}

Additionally, networks may also choose to provide local affiliates the opportunity to air sporting events or other special events which may fall outside of standard designated network broadcast times.^{[citation needed]}  Prime time for radio is called “Drive time” and, in Eastern and Pacific Time, is 6–10 a.m. and 3–7 p.m. and, for Mountain and Central Time, is 5–9 a.m. and 2–6 p.m..

Asia [edit]

China [edit]

Mainland China [edit]

In Chinese television, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is known as Golden Time (Simplified Chinese: 黄金时间; Pinyin: Huángjīn shíjiān).  The term also influenced a nickname of a strip of holidays in known as Golden Week.

Hong Kong and Macau [edit]

Prime time usually takes place from 20:00 until 22:00.  After prime time, programs classified as “PG” (Parental Guidance) are allowed to be broadcast. Front line dramas appears during this time slot for Cantonese programming and movies on English programming.

Taiwan [edit]

In Taiwan, prime time (called bādiǎn dàng [八點檔 in Mandarin Chinese) starts at 20:00 in the evening.  Taiwanese drama series played at that time are called 8 o'clock series and are expected to have high viewer ratings.

India [edit]

In India, prime time is from 20:00 to 23:00.  The main news programs are broadcast at 20:30 and the highest-rated television program at 21:00.

Indonesia [edit]

Prime time usually takes place from 18:00 until 23:00, preceded by daily news at 17:00. After prime time, programs classified as Adult are allowed to be broadcast.

Iraq [edit]

In Iraq, prime time is from 20:00 to 23:00.  The main news programs are broadcast at 20:00 and the highest-rated television program at 21:00.

Japan [edit]

In Japanese television, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is also known as Golden Time (ゴールデン・タイム, gōruden taimu^?, or just Golden).  The term also influenced a nickname of a strip of holidays in known as Golden Week.

Malaysia [edit]

Malaysian prime time starts with the main news from 20:00 to 20:30 (now 20:00 to 21:00) and ends at 23:00.  Usually, programmes during the prime time are domestic dramas, foreign drama series (mostly American), movies and entertainment programmes.  Programmes that classify as 18 are not allowed to be broadcast before 10:00 p.m. but on RTM, most programmes on this slot are rated U (U means Umum in Malay and literally General Viewing or General Audiences in English) throughout the whole day.  However, programmes broadcast after 23:00 are still considered prime time.  As of December 2010, NTV7's prime time continues until 12:00 a.m..  Programmes during prime time may have longer commercial breaks due to number of viewers.

Some domestic prime time productions may be affected because of certain major sporting events such as FIFA World Cup.  However, only FIFA World Cup in the Americas did not affect the domestic prime time programmes.

Philippines [edit]

In the Philippines, much like in North America, most prime time blocks begin at 20:00 and run until about 23:00 on weekdays, and 18:00 to 23:00 on weekends.  The weekday prime time blocks usually consists of local teleseryes (soap operas) and imported TV series from South Korea.  The network's highest-rating TV series is usually aired right after the evening newscast at 20:00, while a South Korean drama usually precedes the late night newscast.

On weekends, non-scripted programming such as talent shows, reality shows and current affairs shows air on prime time.  For the minor networks, prime time consists of American TV series on weekdays, with encores of those shows on weekends.  Prime time originally started earlier at around 19:00, but the evening newscasts were lengthened to 90 minutes and now start at 18:30, instead of the original one-hour newscast that starts at 18:00.

Thailand [edit]

In Thailand, all prime time drama air at 8:30pm to 10:00pm or to 10:30pm. It depends on what is being shown before the drama airs, such as news and etc. Evening lakorns will air around 6pm or so before the prime time ones are on air. After the prime time drama ends, it's usually followed up by a news report show.

South Korea [edit]

In South Korea, traditionally, prime time usually lasts from about 19:00 to 23:00 (for evening programming that are targeted family audiences and usually 19:00 to 23:00 programs are variety programs and 19:00 to 23:00 is news or drama) and 9 p.m. to 12 midnight (for night time programming that are targeted older age groups).

Vietnam [edit]

In Vietnam, prime time starts at 20:00 in the evening and ends at 23:00.

Europe [edit]

Bosnia & Herzegovina [edit]

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, prime time starts at 20:00 and finishes at 22:00. It is preceded by daily news ("Dnevnik") at 19:00 and followed by late night news ("Vijesti") at 22:00.

Croatia [edit]

In Croatia, prime time starts between 20:00 and 20:15. Croatian public broadcaster HRT broadcasts daily newscast at 19:30 that is finished at 20:15. But many private broadcasters have daily newscasts before and finish with it at 20:05, than prime time starts. But many broadcasters that do not have a daily newscasts start with prime time at 20:00.
Prime time generally finishes between 22:00 and 23:00. Then is scheduled the late night edition of newscast on public television.

Denmark [edit]

In Denmark prime time starts at 20:00. It is preceded by daily news at 19:30.

Germany & Austria [edit]

The oldest public national broadcasting network of Germany, Das Erste (The First) airs the Tagesschau (simulcasts on the regional affiliates (The Third) and specialty channels), Germany's most watched news broadcast, at 8:00 p.m..  The Tagesschau is scheduled for 15 minutes; its end marks the beginning of the prime time and has since the 1950s.  Most channels therefore chose to start their prime time at 8:15 p.m.. In the 1990s Sat.1 failed, moving the prime time start to 8 p.m. suffering significant loss of audience share.

Finland [edit]

In Finland prime time starts at 21:00. It is preceded by daily news at 20:30.

France [edit]

In France prime time is from 8:35 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. which usually follows the news.

Greece [edit]

In Greece prime time is from 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. which usually follows the news.

Hungary [edit]

In Hungary prime time starts weekdays by the two big commercial stations (RTL Klub and TV2) at 7:00 p.m. with game shows, tabloid and docu-reality programmes. At 9:00 p.m. starts the two popular soap operas, Barátok közt and Jóban Rosszban, which follows at 9:30 p.m. American and other series, movies, talk-shows and magazines to 11:30 p.m. The prime time preceded by daily news programmes at 6:30 p.m.

Weekends begins the prime time at 7:00 p.m. with blockbuster movies and television shows.

The public television station M1 starts the prime time with a game show at 6:30 p.m., which followed by the daily news programme Híradó at 7:30 p.m. After the news begins to broadcast American and other series, talk-shows, magazines and news programmes to 10:00 p.m., which followed by the daily news magazine Este.

Ireland [edit]

RTE runs a current affairs programme called “Prime Time” after the 9:00 p.m. news.^[1]  It is currently (2011) hosted by Miriam O'Callaghan.

Iceland [edit]

In Iceland prime time starts at 19:30. It is preceded by daily news at 19:00.

Italy [edit]

In Italy, prime time is from 9:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m..  It usually follows news and, on some networks (like Rai Uno and Canale 5), a slot called “access prime time”.  Shows, movies, and sport events are usually shown during prime time.  The average rating a prime time show can reach is about 15,000,000–20,000,000 viewers.

Netherlands [edit]

Much like in Germany, prime time in the Netherlands usually begins at 8:30 p.m. in order to not compete with NOS Journaal's flagship 8:00 p.m. newscast.

Norway [edit]

In Norway prime time starts at 19:45. It is preceded by daily news at 19:00.

Slovakia [edit]

Public television in Slovakia consists of two channels, on the main channel (Jednotka) primetime starts at 20:10, and on the second one (Dvojka) primetime programming starts at 20:00. Two biggest private broadcasters set the start of primetime programming at 20:20 (Markíza) and 20:30 (JOJ). Generally however primetime is considered from 20:00 to 23:00.

Slovenia [edit]

In Slovenia, prime time refers to the period in which the most watched shows are screened. It starts at 8:00 pm. It is like this since 1980s. Although TV SLO 1 does experiment with it, in late 2000s they set prime time at 7:55 pm, and nowadays during workdays prime time starts at 8:05 pm.

Earliest prime time news start at 6:00 on Kanal A (SVET na Kanalu A / en. World on Channel A). But most watched prime time news start at 6:55 pm on POP TV (24ur / en. 24 h). The national television start with prime time news at 7:00 pm (Dnevnik / en. Journal).

Prior to 1997, only TV SLO 1 had news broadcast at 7:30 pm. But in 1997 POP TV started prime time news program 24ur at 7:15 pm. Due to declining viewership of TV, SLO 1 news the time slot was changed to 7:10 pm in 2002. But POP TV soon followed in 2003 to change a time slot to 7:00 pm. In late 2000s, POP TV moved news to 6:55 pm as it is now. In 2009, Kanal A started broadcasting 6 o'clock news.

Sweden [edit]

In Sweden prime time starts at 20:00. It is preceded by daily news at 19:30 and local news at 19:50.

Spain [edit]

In Spain, prime time refers to the time period in which the most watched shows are screened.  Prime time in Spain starts quite late when compared to most nations as it runs from 10 p.m. till 1 a.m..  Most news programmes in Spain air at 9 p.m. for an hour, and prime time follows.  However, due to fierce competition, especially amongst the private stations, prime time has in the last few months (2007) even been delayed until 11 p.m..  Most channels are delaying prime time in order to protect their top shows from sporting events.

As of April 2008, prime time in Spain has officially been delayed to 10:15 p.m..  Despite channels publishing and advertising programmes as starting at 10:15 p.m., none keep to the announced, and the reality is that prime time programmes start at any time between 10:15 and 11 p.m..  The change has come about as a result of channels now inserting what they have deemed “access prime-time” shows at 9:40 p.m. or 9:45 p.m.. These shows should run for 30 minutes, but, with most being compilation sketch shows, their durations are normally extended to over an hour on selected days in order to delay prime time and avoid direct confrontation with sporting events etc.  TVE1, TVE2, and LaSexta are the only two channels in Spain that have adhered to starting prime time shows at 10 p.m..

In the 1990s, prime time in Spain began at 9 p.m., moving to 9:30 p.m. in the latter half of the 1990s.  Prior to the arrival of the commercial broadcasters in 1991, Spanish prime time began at 9 p.m..

New commercial broadcaster La Sexta and the second channel from State Broadcaster TVE2 (Or La2) have attempted to shift prime time back to 9:30 p.m. in 2006 and Spring 2007, but these attempts have been unsuccessful.

The lateness in the start of prime time in Spain is also due to Spanish culture.  Spanish people generally work 10 a.m.–2 p.m. and then 5 p.m.–8 p.m. as opposed to the standard 9 a.m.–5 p.m..  Popular late night show Crónicas Marcianas in the late 1990s–2000 also helped to extend prime time well into the early hours with the show being watched by a share of 40%, despite finishing at 2 a.m..

Spain might also be unique in that it has a second prime time, this being 2:30–5 p.m., which coincides with the extended Spanish lunch break.  Shows airing in second prime time on many occasions beat those in night prime time on a daily basis.  Second prime time only occurs on weekdays, though, and the slot is usually filled with news, soap operas, tabloid shows, and magazine/talk shows.

United Kingdom [edit]

In the U.K., prime time (usually referred to as “peak time”) refers to the hours between 6 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.—which is the period in which the most popular shows are screened and the highest ratings are achieved.  The hours between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. are more popular with families, and, after that time, prime time television is mostly watched by an older demographic.

North America [edit]

In North America, television networks feed their prime time programming in two blocks: one for the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones, and one for the Pacific, Alaskan, and Hawaiian time zones, to their local network affiliates.  In Atlantic Canada (including Newfoundland) as well as Alaska and Hawaii, there is no change in the interpretation or usage of “prime time” as the concept is not attached to time zones in any way.  Affiliates in the Mountain, Alaskan, and Hawaii-Aleutian zones are either on their own to broadcast delay by an hour or two, or collectively form a small, regional network feed with others in the same time zone.

In North America, the hours traditionally taken as constituting prime time are 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Central and Mountain Time Monday–Saturday.  On Sundays, prime time begins an hour earlier, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and 6:00 p.m. Central and Mountain, ending at the same time as on the other six days of the week.  For cable networks, such as USA, TBS, and ABC Family, prime time is 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. all seven days of the week.  Some networks such as Fox, The CW, and MyNetworkTV only broadcast from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., a time period known as “common prime”.  Since September 2009, The CW and MyNetworkTV do not program Saturday or Sunday prime time at all, as The CW turned over its Sunday night schedule and MyNetworkTV its Saturday night schedule over to their affiliates.  Also, over the past decade, the major American networks have come to consider Saturday prime time as a graveyard slot and as such have largely abandoned scheduling of new scripted programming on that night, although the networks still maintain a prime time programming schedule on that night, generally featuring rebroadcasts of programmes aired earlier in the week, movies, non-scripted reality programs and, occasionally, remnant episodes of cancelled series.

Prime time can be extended or truncated if coverage of sporting events run past its allotted end time.  Since the “Heidi Game” incident in 1968, in which NBC cut away on the east coast from a New York Jets/Oakland Raiders football game in its final minute of play in order to show a movie (and, in the process, missing an unexpected comeback by the Raiders to win the game), the National Football League began to mandate that all games be broadcast in their entirety.  Due to this rule, game telecasts may sometimes overrun into the 7:00 p.m. E.T. hour.  Fox previously scheduled repeats of its animated series in the 7:00 hour, allowing themselves to simply pre-empt the reruns if a game ran long.  This was later replaced by a half hour-long wrap-up show, The OT.  In contrast, CBS does not, as its weekly news magazine 60 Minutes has traditionally aired as close to 7:00 p.m. E.T. as possible.  If a game runs long, 60 Minutes is shown in its entirety at the conclusion of coverage, and the rest of the prime time schedule on the east coast is shifted to compensate.  For example, if game coverage were to end at 7:30 p.m., prime time would end at 11:30 p.m..

However, in the rare case where the NFL game runs excessively late (8 p.m. or later), an episode of a series scheduled for later in the evening may be pre-empted (for example, Cold Case in October 2009 after the Bills-Jets game ran excessively late).  In an extreme case, CBS's prime time can be extended past midnight during broadcasts of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament.  This does not necessarily apply universally; in 2001, after an XFL game went into overtime, forcing the delay of a highly promoted episode of Saturday Night Live, NBC made a decision to cut off all future XFL broadcasts at 11:00 p.m..  NBC backed out of the XFL after the end of that season, leading to its failure.

Until the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulated time slots prior to prime time with the now-defunct Prime Time Access Rule in 1971–1972, networks began programming at 7:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific / 6:30 p.m. Central and Mountain on weeknights.  (That is, the 1970–1971 season was the last season in which the networks began prime time at 7:30.)^[2]  The change helped instigate what is colloquially known as the ”rural purge”, in which rural-themed and older-skewing programs were disproportionately canceled.  In the 1987-1988 season, NBC-owned stations in several cities experimented with airing a schedule of syndicated first-run sitcoms at 7:30 / 6:30 p.m. (known as Prime Time Begins at 7:30) to compete against syndicated reruns or game shows such as Wheel of Fortune on rival stations.^[3]

The vast majority of prime time programming in English-speaking North America comes from the United States, with only a limited amount produced in Canada (most of which consists of local adaptations of worldwide reality television franchises, e.g., Canadian Idol and So You Think You Can Dance Canada).  The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission mandates quotas for Canadian content in prime time; these quotas indicate at least half of Canadian prime time programs must be Canadian in origin, but the majority of this is served by national and local news.

Likewise, the vast majority of Spanish-language programming in North America comes from Mexico.  Televisa, a Mexican network, provides the majority of programming to the dominant U.S.-based Spanish broadcaster, Univision.  Univision does produce a fairly large amount of unscripted Spanish-language programming, the best known being the long-running variety show Sábado Gigante, hosted and created by Chilean national Don Francisco.  Univision's distant second-place competitor, Telemundo, produces a much greater share of in-house content, including a long line of telenovelas.

In Quebec, the largest Francophone area of North America, French language programming consists of originally produced programs (most of which are produced in Montreal, with a few produced in Quebec City) and French-language dubs of English language programs.

Oceania [edit]

Prime time in Australia is officially from 6:00 p.m. to Midnight, following Australian Eastern Standard Time, with the highest ratings normally achieved between 6:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.  Prime time in New Zealand is considered to be 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. (Four's Prime time ends at 11 pm on Tuesdays to Fridays), but can be extended to cover the entire evening of television (6 p.m.–11 p.m.).

Latin America [edit]

In a great part of Latin American countries, prime time is considered to be from 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 or 11:00 p.m..  The time slot is usually used for news, telenovelas and TV series, and special time slots are used for reality shows, with great popularity, especially in Mexico and Brazil.  In Brazil, it's called horário nobre (“noble time”), which is the time the 3 most famous telenovelas in the country are shown each weekday and on Saturdays. Also, there are news, reality shows, and two sitcoms. In Argentina, prime time is considered to be from 10.00 p.m. until 02.00 a.m.; with the most successful series and telenovelas in the country (WAGs: Love for the Game, Valientes, etc.), and entertainment shows, like CQC.

See also [edit]

• Drive time (similar concept in radio)
• International broadcasting
• Late night
• Market share
• Deion Sanders
• Graveyard slot — the opposite of prime time
• Bob Ranft
• Saturday Night Live cast members/"Not Ready For Prime Time Players"
• History of Saturday Night Live (1975–1980)#Season 1 (1975–1976)
• The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946–Present
• List of long-running prime time series

References [edit]

External links [edit]