Counterprogramming (television)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the similar strategy in film distribution, see counterprogramming (film distribution).

In

television programs to attract an audience from another television station or cable channel airing a major event. It is also referred when programmers offer something different from the rival's program as an alternative to increase the audience size.[1]

United States

The main events counterprogrammed in the United States are the

Oscars, and the Olympic Games
.

Super Bowl

Main article: Super Bowl counterprogramming

The

Nielsen estimated that CBS lost 10 ratings points during halftime as a result of the special.[3]

The success of the special alarmed the

Lingerie Football League.[5]

Under an unsaid

syndicate it.[7][8]

As to preempt the possibility that the 2022 Winter Olympics would counterprogram the game, CBS agreed to swap Super Bowl LVI—which, for the first time, was scheduled during an ongoing Olympic Games—to NBC for Super Bowl LV, so that both events were aired by the same network.[9][10] Furthermore, the structure of the rotation under the NFL's next round of television contracts (which expands it to all four major networks) deliberately gave NBC the Super Bowl games in subsequent Winter Olympic (2026, 2030, and 2034) years.[11][12]

Academy Awards

In 2007, the

Auto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, was held on the same day as the 79th Academy Awards, although it was held during the early afternoon with a 1:00 p.m. PT (4:00 p.m. ET) start.[13] The 2008 Auto Club 500 was plagued by rain delays and unintentionally aired against a portion of the 80th Academy Awards; its start time was pushed back to around 3:00 p.m. PT (6:00 p.m. ET), while the race itself was halted again at around 6:00 p.m. PT (9:00 p.m. ET). In 2009, the race was intentionally scheduled with a 3:00 p.m. PT start, which would overlap into the telecast of the 81st Academy Awards. Fox Sports' senior vice president of programming and research Bill Wanger supported the idea, believing that NASCAR races "[could] hold their own against any competition", arguing that the Oscars and the race appealed primarily to female and male audiences respectively.[14][15] For the 2010 season, the race was moved to a 12:00 p.m. PT (3:00 p.m. ET) due to NASCAR adopting standardized start times for all races.[16][17]

For a number of years, the championship game of the

sweeps
period, along with the general consolidation of the film awards season into a shorter period.

The

TNT measured at 7.1 million, a 22% decline from last year's 9.1 million.[19]

The Alliance of American Football scheduled one of its contests opposite the 91st Academy Awards in 2019. The game drew 515,000 viewers, a bump of approximately 20% from the previous week's and following week's matchup on the same network, NFL Network.[20]

NBC has counterprogrammed the Oscars with Shrek in more recent Winter Olympic years.

College football

The move is harder in the sport, especially with ESPN games competing against CBS games. Because of a CBS contract with the

at the 3:30 p.m. ET slot, and ESPN's games being regional (parts of the country may receive games from different conferences, with ABC now airing primarily the Atlantic Coast Conference and most Notre Dame away games), and even a Fox game with one of their three conferences, college football schedules are intentionally made flexible in order to allow networks to choose the best game when possible. The SEC opened their exclusivity up slightly in the 2014 for ESPN with the launch of their SEC Network
with the conference, which now allows that ESPN to air up to two SEC games (one on the main SEC Network feed, with a lower-tier matchup carried by the SEC Network's alternate feed), though CBS retains first choice for their preferred game.

Professional wrestling

In 1995, the

stable featuring Hulk Hogan, Nitro regularly beat Raw in viewership for 84 consecutive weeks.[21] In 1997, the WWF began to shift its programming in a mature direction dubbed the "Attitude Era" to compete with WCW. By April 1998, bolstered by the popularity of performers such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, and his in-universe feuds with WWF owner Vince McMahon, Raw began to overtake Nitro in viewership for the first time since 1996.[22][21][23]

As the show only aired live on occasion at the time, WCW commentators occasionally discussed Raw spoilers on-air as a ploy to keep viewers from tuning away. This tactic infamously backfired during the January 4, 1999 episode of Nitro, when a spoiler that Mick Foley (who previously performed for WCW as Cactus Jack, and was performing in the WWF as Mankind) would win the WWF Championship had the opposite effect, causing Nitro to lose around 600,000 viewers to the final hour of Raw. The Nitro main event (featuring Hulk Hogan defeating Kevin Nash for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship) was also marred by its unusual build-up and controversial finish—dubbed the "Fingerpoke of Doom". The episode's events were retrospectively considered to be one of several missteps that led towards WCW's eventual demise, and the sale of its assets to WWF.[22][24][25][23]

For eight weeks beginning January 4, 2010, competing promotion

Impact! on Spike to Monday nights, airing directly against Raw. In response, WWE staged the return of Bret Hart, his first WWE appearance in over 12 years.[26] TNA lost two thirds of its audience during this time, before TNA moved back to Thursday, with president Dixie Carter saying: “Our fans made it clear that they preferred the Thursday night time period. By moving to Thursdays, this is a win/win opportunity for both TNA and the fans. We are looking forward to delivering what the fans are asking for.”[27]

A renewed wrestling rivalry between TNT and USA dubbed the "Wednesday Night Wars" emerged in 2019, between WWE and the new promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW)—which has been seen as the first major promotion since WCW to compete financially with WWE.[28] TNT began to air AEW's first weekly program, Dynamite, on Wednesday nights beginning on October 2, 2019. On August 2, WWE announced that it would expand WWE NXT—a popular WWE Network program that focuses on a developmental brand of the same name—to a two-hour format on USA Network beginning the same night; the expansion soft-launched on September 18 with only the first hour airing on USA, to accommodate the final episodes of Suits' final season. The decision was seen as a move to counterprogram the upstart AEW, and also came alongside USA losing WWE's second flagship program SmackDown to Fox the same month.[29][30] Both AEW and NXT held two-week events on their July 1 and 8, 2020 episodes, with AEW holding Fyter Fest (which had originally been planned as a PPV), and NXT holding The Great American Bash (a former pay-per-view brand originating from WCW).[31] After regularly losing in the ratings to Dynamite, on April 13, 2021, WWE moved NXT to Tuesday nights.[32]

The October 15, 2021, episode of SmackDown (which was slated to feature the semi-finals of the

Sasha Banks—countering the first half-hour of Rampage. In response, AEW announced that it would stream a pre-show on YouTube prior to Rampage with a match between Bryan Danielson and Minoru Suzuki. After WWE announced that an encore presentation of SmackDown would immediately follow the live airing, AEW then announced that its opening match between CM Punk and Matt Sydal would also air commercial-free.[33] In key demographic viewership, Rampage drew 328,000 viewers, beating the extension of SmackDown by 43,000.[34]

In October 2023, Dynamite—which had since moved to

Lexis King, and surprise appearances by Jade Cargill, Rhea Ripley, and The Undertaker. Both programs aired their first half-hour commercial free.[35][36][37][38][39] In average viewership, NXT outdrew Dynamite with 921,000 viewers, in comparison to 609,000 for Dynamite.[40]

As a lead-in to its pay-per-view Full Gear on November 18, 2023, AEW rescheduled its Saturday-night program Collision to Friday, November 17, with both it and Rampage serving as go-home shows, and airing against SmackDown.[41][42] If WWE is holding a PPV on a Saturday night, TNT has sometimes moved Collision to a 5 p.m. ET timeslot prior to the event to avoid counterprogramming—such as during WrestleMania XL. After AEW had announced its intent to continue this practice for SummerSlam in 2024, WWE subsequently announced that SummerSlam would have a three-hour pre-show.[43]

On October 21, 2024, WWE announced that it would air a special Wednesday-night episode of NXT—now on The CW—on November 6, 2024, from Philadelphia's 2300 Arena—a historic wrestling venue that served as the home arena for ECW. The episode was shifted from Tuesday to not conflict with election day, thus once again placing the show in direct competition with Dynamite.[44]

Other

When Seattle's KCPQ signed back on on November 4, 1980, it aired the film The Deer Hunter to counter the major networks' coverage of the 1980 presidential election.[45]

NBC, the long-time broadcaster of the

Boston Pops Orchestra's own concert and fireworks special on CBS aired live at the same time as the NBC encore. While NBC claimed that this was for budgetary reasons, Boston Pops executive producer David G. Mugar believed that NBC had done so to intentionally pull viewers away from the Boston Pops. After ratings fell by 1 million viewers for 2012, CBS ended its national broadcasts of the event in 2013; the concert was still aired in full, as before, by its Boston station WBZ-TV.[46] The national broadcast was revived on CBS for 2016 with an expanded two-hour format,[47] before moving to Bloomberg Television in 2017 due to Bloomberg's new sponsorship of the event.[48][49]

On the day of

20th season of South Park — which had featured an ongoing storyline where Mr. Garrison is elected president in a parody of Trump and his campaign.[50]

During the

Celebrity Big Brother—which aired its season finale against the closing ceremony.[51] CBS would order a second season of Celebrity Big Brother to air in 2019,[52][53] followed by a third in 2022 to air against the 2022 Winter Olympics.[54] ABC had planned a followup—The Bachelor Summer Games—to similarly air in August 2020 during the 2020 Summer Olympics, but production was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[55]

In June 2024, after his presidential campaign did not meet the criteria to participate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. counterprogrammed the CNN-hosted presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump with a livestreamed campaign event from Los Angeles dubbed "The Real Debate", in which he provided his own answers to the questions posed during the debate.[56][57]

Brazil

In the late 1980s, the Brazilian upstart network SBT faced counterprogramming efforts from perennial leader Rede Globo on several occasions, prompting SBT to engage in changes to its own schedule to avert them. After acquiring the rights to the American miniseries The Thorn Birds, SBT elected to schedule its airings after Globo's highly rated soap opera Roque Santeiro to avoid counterprogramming; when promoting it on his variety show, SBT founder and personality Silvio Santos encouraged viewers to tune in for The Thorn Birds after the soap. After the premiere successfully attracted viewers away from Globo, the network moved to give Santeiro and its newscast Jornal Nacional irregular running times, so that Santeiro would intentionally overrun into The Thorn Birds' timeslot. To avert this counterprogramming attempt, SBT would pre-empt The Thorn Birds to a later start time to compensate, airing cartoons as filler.[58]

Later, after Globo scheduled an airing of Rambo: First Blood Part II on the same day that SBT had planned to air its prequel, SBT pre-empted Rambo to the following week, only for Globo to counterprogram it with back-to-back episodes of its soap Vale Tudo. In response, SBT pre-empted Rambo to air after Vale Tudo, and aired a static slide announcing the schedule change for 50 minutes against the soap.[59]

United Kingdom

In the

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? opposite the final episode of One Foot in the Grave on BBC One drew accusations of counterprogramming; the Independent Television Commission (ITC), after investigating the matter, exonerated ITV of any wrongdoing.[60]

By contrast in 2005, attempts by ITV to counterprogram the BBC's Doctor Who with the poorly-received game show Celebrity Wrestling were unsuccessful, with ITV burning it off in a lower-profile Sunday timeslot after five episodes.[61]

See also

  • List of
    Super Bowl halftime counterprogramming

References

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  3. ^ a b c "Goal of spectacle colors NFL's thinking about Super Bowl halftime show". Chicago Tribune. 6 February 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  4. ^ Sandomir, Richard (30 June 2009). "How Jackson Redefined the Super Bowl". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 February 2013.
  5. ^ Mitchell, Houston (11 January 2013). "Lingerie Football League changes name; players to wear uniforms". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
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  51. ^ "How Broadcasters Are Counterprogramming Against 18 Days of Winter Olympics Coverage". Adweek. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
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  56. ^ Andrews, Natalie (June 28, 2024). "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Debates by Himself — and Draws a Crowd". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 1, 2024. Retrieved July 1, 2024.
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  58. ^ CASTRO, THELL DE (2015-02-08). "Minissérie do SBT, Pássaros Feridos bagunçou a programação da Globo". Notícias da TV (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2024-08-18.
  59. ^ CASTRO, THELL DE (2019-06-23). "Em guerra com a Globo, Silvio Santos mandou o público ver Rambo na rival em 1988". Notícias da TV (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2024-08-18.
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