Effects of time zones on North American broadcasting
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The scheduling of television programming in North America (namely the United States, Canada, and Mexico) must cope with different time zones. The United States (excluding territories) has six time zones (Hawaii–Aleutian, Alaska, Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern), with further variation in the observance of daylight saving time. Canada also has six time zones (Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern, Atlantic and Newfoundland). Mexico has four time zones (Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern). This requires broadcast and pay television networks in each country to shift programs in time to show them in different regions.
In Canada
Broadcast networks
Canadian broadcasting networks, with six time zones and a much larger percentage of its audience residing in the Mountain Time Zone than in the Central Time Zone, are sometimes able to avoid the issues that affect American programming by airing pre-recorded programs on local time. CBC Television and CTV created delay centres in Calgary in the early 1960s in order to allow programming to air in each time zone based on the region.[1]
In order to protect local advertising revenue, the "
Saskatchewan does not observe Daylight Saving Time, officially observing Central Standard Time year-round. This matches Mountain Daylight Time when DST is in effect, but networked stations generally follow the schedules of their sister stations in Manitoba year-round, except delayed by one hour.
Unlike in the United States, virtually all live events, including live entertainment shows and sports television, are simultaneously broadcast nationwide in Canada. For instance, live shows in Canada are aired to entirety at the same time in all time zones based on Eastern time. Several live U.S. shows are also aired simultaneously in all of Canada, including for viewers in the Pacific Coast (unlike in the United States where some viewers on the same side of the continent depend on tape-delayed broadcasts for some otherwise live events). Conversely, live shows aired in Canada are frequently televised simultaneously for some viewers in the U.S. with access to Canadian broadcast networks.[1]
Cable and satellite channels
The vast majority of
Some specialty channels do operate two separate broadcast feeds for Eastern and Western Canada. The Eastern feed airs programs on an Eastern Time schedule, while the Western feed airs the same programming on a three-hour delay. The separation between feeds is typically implemented at the border between Manitoba and Ontario, which may result in a program that airs at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time in Ontario not airing in Manitoba until midnight CT (whereas an equivalent program in the U.S. would typically be available at 9:00 p.m. for Central Time viewers). However, one channel, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, implements the separation at the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan.[citation needed]
Watershed and safe harbour
The
In the United States
Time zone feeds
With four time zones in the
The Eastern Time Zone is commonly used as a de facto premier time for the United States as the region covered by the zone covers nearly half of the U.S. population and has the highest metropolitan area density within the country.[3] Network promotions typically advertise airtimes either on Eastern Time only or, more commonly, in conjunction with airtimes in the Central and/or Pacific Time Zones.
Network stations in the Alaska and Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zones that draw from the "western feed" utilize the "local delay" scheduling approach applied to affiliate stations in the Central and Mountain zone that receive their network's "eastern feed." Daytime and prime access programming is transmitted simultaneously on network affiliates in the Pacific and Alaska Time Zones; stations in the Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zone transmit a secondary local feed, on which programs are usually broadcast on a two-hour delay from the Pacific Time Zone.
Broadcast television
Effectively, the East, Mountain and West network feeds allow prime time on broadcast television networks to end at 10:00 p.m. Central, Mountain, Alaska and Hawaii–Aleutian, and 11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. When it first expanded its programming into prime time in April 1987, Fox became the first major broadcast network in the U.S. to offer a "common prime" schedule; this type of scheduling subtracts an hour from the prime time schedule, reducing it to two hours on Monday through Saturdays and three hours on Sundays – ending evening network programming earlier than NBC, CBS and ABC did and continue to do. (Fox did expand its Sunday prime time schedule into the 10:00 p.m. timeslot in September 1987, before giving back that hour to its stations in September 1993.) UPN and The WB followed the "common prime" scheduling model when they both launched in January 1995; the replacements for those networks, The CW and MyNetworkTV, similarly used that model upon their launches in September 2006.
In 2009,
Cable and satellite television
Subscribers to cable or satellite television services may still only receive East Coast feeds for certain channels even if they reside on the West Coast. Providers in the Mountain Time Zone, Alaska and Hawaii may transmit either the Pacific Time Zone feed or the East Coast feed, depending on the service and/or channel. Some cable channels only offer one broadcast feed, where viewers see the same program in all time zones. For example, until it dropped the program in 2014, superstation-turned-basic cable channel WGN America (now NewsNation) telecast the noon (Central Time) newscast from WGN-TV in Chicago at 1:00 p.m. Eastern in Washington, D.C. and 10:00 a.m. Pacific in Los Angeles.
Broadcasters offer East and West Coast feeds of some basic cable channels for viewing in all time zones. The usage of dual feeds of the same channel is a commonplace method for
Most commonly, the Eastern and Pacific Time Zone feeds of only the main channel are packaged together, although some providers may also provide both coastal feeds of a premium service's multiplex channels. In some cases, cable networks that do not offer a separate west coast feed (such as news channels, unless airing live breaking news coverage) may schedule same-night encores of their prime time programming that correspond with their advertised time (or one hour later) in the Pacific Time Zone.
In the United States, distant over-the-air broadcast stations affiliated with the six broadcast networks are offered by
The country's two major satellite providers – DirecTV and Dish Network – only offer these de facto coastal feeds in order to provide programming from at least one network to subscribers living in smaller media markets or rural areas where a network does not have a local affiliate available on the provider, if even presently serving the given location at all. Since the services began offering local network affiliates from additional markets in the early 2000s, many local stations have successfully sued DBS providers to deny access to distant stations carrying programming from the same network as them within their markets. This differs from the subscription television model in Canada, most cable and satellite providers carry distant over-the-air broadcast stations from the U.S. (consisting of both affiliates of the Big Four broadcast networks and minor network affiliates classified as superstations), in addition to O&Os and affiliates of domestically based networks.[citation needed]
Live events
News and sports
Most sports television programs, including other major national events, are broadcast live in all time zones across U.S. territories, but also present special problems for local stations. For such events, the networks may either advertise Eastern time only, or list the times in both Eastern and Pacific (e.g. "8 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Pacific"). As such, a live Sunday sporting event that is played from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time preempts local 6:00 p.m. newscasts on the East Coast. Likewise, a State of the Union address that is televised at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time preempts local 6:00 p.m. newscasts on the West Coast. Similarly, as sports programs would normally air weekend afternoons on the east coast on major TV networks and late mornings on the west, the weekend editions of national morning news shows could air on the west as early as 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. PT. News channels such as CNN and sports channels such as ESPN that frequently broadcast live events offer a single feed that airs in all time zones. About 80% of the U.S. population reside in the Central and Eastern time zones, where the nation's largest city (and the main anchor of television programming) New York is located.[5]
A notable exception to live telecasts in sports was the Olympic Games. Although it has provided live coverage of events during other dayparts via platforms such as cable and streaming, NBC's flagship primetime coverage block typically featured tape-delayed and "plausibly live" presentations of events from earlier in the day. When allowed by the host's time zone, NBC does include live coverage of selected events in the block. This practice is reflected in the actual scheduling of the Olympic events, which NBC may influence to maximize primetime viewership due to the value of its broadcast rights: at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, many swimming events were held in the morning local time to allow for primetime broadcasts in the Americas.[6] As per prior practice, this block aired in tape delay on the West Coast.[7][8]
Tape delays have occurred even during Olympics held in the Americas, including the famous "Miracle on Ice" hockey game at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York (which ABC was unsuccessful in having rescheduled for primetime due to objections from Soviet officials, who wanted a more favorable timeslot for its local audience),[9] and most egregiously during the 2002 and 2010 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and Vancouver respectively, which were both held in western North America.[10][11][7][8]
For the
Entertainment
Several entertainment shows that are broadcast live during primetime in the Eastern and Central time zones, including some that originate from Los Angeles (particularly live reality competition shows like NBC's
The
The Grammy Awards historically delayed its live ceremonies for West Coast viewers. In 2016, however, CBS began to allow its stations in the Western U.S. to carry the ceremony live as long as they also carried a prime time rebroadcast,[19] before mandating all of its affiliates to air Grammys live all across the U.S. (inclusive of time zones outside the contiguous U.S.), with corresponding primetime rebroadcasts for viewers outside the Eastern and Central time zones. Despite shifting venues across the mainland U.S., most notably to Las Vegas in 2022, the Grammys have continued to use the format, making it the first major award show to have consistently aired live every year across all U.S. territories. Although the Primetime Emmy Awards, currently aired in rotation by ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, began airing live coast-to-coast in the U.S. in 2010, the awards show followed suit with the Grammys in airing live simultaneously outside the contiguous U.S. time zones with CBS' telecast in 2017.
Youth-oriented music specials such as the
National
Occasionally, networks will produce and broadcast the same live event twice in one night – broadcasting once on an East Coast feed, and again on a West Coast feed three hours later. This permits more viewers to watch the broadcast live in prime time (although not all), as the show can air in its usual timeslot in all markets, but incurs the expense and difficulty of delivering two live broadcasts. In some cases, the two broadcasts may include intentional differences as
Few regularly scheduled prime time shows, both scripted and non-scripted, and sports and non-sports in genre, have been aired to totality at the same time live across all continental U.S. time zones. This format, similar to aforementioned major awards shows, involves airing live on prime time or late night in the East Coast (and late afternoon hours or on prime time, simultaneously and respectively, on the West Coast) on a weekly basis due to episodic, per-season formats. NBC remains the foremost proponent of live television, with its broadcasts of Sunday Night Football and Saturday Night Live being transmitted live across the contiguous U.S. states (and for the former, including for U.S. time zones outside the mainland), with a corresponding prime time or late-night encore for viewers outside the Eastern and Central time zones.
The mechanics of the 2014 ABC series Rising Star — which allowed for live, real-time voting by viewers – would allow the insertion of live reaction segments in the event that a contestant eliminated by low vote totals in the original Eastern/Central/Mountain time zone broadcast would be saved by results watching the Pacific/Alaska broadcast, but the show was broadcast live across the mainland U.S. except the Pacific time zone. Alaskan viewers, despite only receiving delayed telecasts, were able to participate in the voting process due to having to be one hour behind of Pacific Time and having to be following schedules similar to that of Central and Mountain Time. All remaining U.S. territories outside the North American continental mainland, however, are excluded from the show's real-time voting process due to multiple-hour time differences. Moreover, ABC noted that the chances of West Coast votes differing substantially from other viewers was statistically small.[23][24]
In mid-2018,
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the beginning of the 2020s resulted in some of the most drastic scheduling changes for major annual events on U.S. network television in the 21st century. In 2020, MTV began expanding its broadcast coverage of the Video Music Awards with its simultaneous live telecasts via The CW in all U.S. territories. The postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to 2021 ushered the transition of NBC Olympic broadcasts to fully live nationwide telecasts of both opening and closing ceremonies for all succeeding editions regardless of timezones of hosting nations to coincide with the longstanding simultaneous live global Olympic telecasts, continuing with the network's live broadcasts of the Beijing Olympics in 2022 that lapsed with the Super Bowl in the same period.
2022 also marked the first time that the
Effects on local programming
Local stations and affiliates must schedule their local and
The most common set of programming chosen by Central Time Zone stations aligned with the
Many stations that do not carry a newscast in the 6:00 p.m. timeslot in the Central Time Zone (commonly
Local programming such as locally produced newscasts are not typically affected as many stations air their morning newscast at 4:00, 4:30, 5:00 or 5:30 a.m., and their early evening newscasts at 5:00 and/or 6:00 p.m.; however, the late evening newscast is affected due to the differences in time between time zones, meaning that if the late local news starts at 10:00 p.m. Central time on one network station, an affiliate of the same network in the Eastern Time Zone airs its newscast at 11:00 p.m.; network evening newscasts on CBS, ABC, and NBC are affected since they are usually scheduled to air at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time (barring preemption due to network sports coverage or at the discretion of the local station, breaking news or severe weather coverage) in order to sync up with its simultaneous broadcast in the Central Time Zone. Midday newscasts are not necessarily affected, depending on whether the station's affiliated network schedules their daytime lineup simultaneously in the Eastern and Central Time Zones (as with ABC and CBS) or just to the Eastern Time Zone first (as with NBC). The late night program lineups on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are also similarly timeshifted, airing a half-hour later (after a newscast or syndicated programming if the station does not run news programming) but are shifted due to the time zone differences (a bigger issue with first-run late night programs that air after 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time since the later start time may subject these programs to a potentially decreased audience). Many Fox affiliates, and some independent stations carry a prime time newscast that is similarly affected by the timeshifting of the prime time schedule, meaning that if said late evening newscast starts at 9:00 p.m. Mountain Time on one network station, an affiliate of the same network in the Pacific time zone would air its news at 10:00 p.m.
In the 2010s, KABC-TV in Los Angeles added a live broadcast of the East Coast edition of ABC's World News Tonight at 3:30 p.m. PT to compete with local programming on competing stations in that timeslot. In 2022, rival KCBS-TV announced plans to move its weekday morning newscast to sister independent station KCAL-TV and replace it with airings of the live East Coast edition of CBS Mornings, a simulcast of KCAL's morning news at 6:00 a.m., followed by the West Coast edition of CBS Mornings.[32][33]
See also
References
- ^ a b ""Half an hour later in Newfoundland....?" Yes, but why?". 2014-09-14. Archived from the original on 2014-09-14. Retrieved 2019-08-04.
- ^ "PrideVision changing its format in preparation of new adult-only channel". Channel Canada (Press release). Archived from the original on October 28, 2006. Retrieved August 20, 2014.
- ^ Based on 2011 population estimates, 46% of the American population live in the Eastern time zone, 30% in the Central zone; 7% in the Mountain zone, and 17% in the Pacific zone.
- ^ "New servers, not separate feeds, will handle PBS time-zone delays (Idaho Public Television in the News)". Idaho Public Television. Retrieved October 25, 2012.
- ^ Rice, Lynette (February 22, 2012). "Oscars exec producer: 'We need to go for comedy'". Entertainment Weekly. Time Inc. Retrieved February 22, 2012 – via CNN.
- ^ Campbell, Denis (July 16, 2006). "BBC at war over 'mad' Olympic start times". The Observer. The Guardian.
- ^ a b "Vancouver Olympics Coverage Requires Fewer Tape Delays, Except for West Coast Viewers". The Wall Street Journal. February 11, 2010. [dead link]
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
- ^ Sandomir, Richard (22 February 2000). "TV SPORTS; 'Miracle on Ice' of 1980 Looks Different Today". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 September 2016.
- ^ Richard Sandomir (July 2, 2012). "NBC Goes Digital for Olympics, but Tape Will Still Roll in Prime Time". The New York Times. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- Salt Lake Tribune. February 20, 2010. Archived from the originalon February 23, 2010.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "NBC to Broadcast Winter Olympics Live Across All Time Zones". Variety. 2017-03-28. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
- ^ Brennan, Christine. "NBC won't send sports announcing teams to 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to COVID-19". USA Today. Retrieved 2022-02-07.
- ^ "NBC will air the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony live in all time zones". Awful Announcing. 2021-02-10. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
- ^ KITV's Twitter Page
- ^ "Oscars to be shown LIVE this Sunday on KITV!". KITV. February 23, 2016. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
- ^ "The countdown to the 91st Academy Awards has begun!". KITV. February 20, 2019. Archived from the original on February 22, 2019. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
- ^ Adalian, Josef (19 January 2016). "For the First Time Ever, the West Coast Can Watch the Grammys Live, Too". Vulture. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
- ^ "TV Picks for Monday: 'New Year's at The Needle' on KING". The Seattle Times. 2018-12-31. Retrieved 2019-10-15.
- ^ "CBS lines up Circa's Stadium Swim, Legacy, Plaza for NYE". Las Vegas Review-Journal. 2020-12-21. Retrieved 2022-05-14.
- ^ Lincoln, Ross A. (2016-12-05). "'Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve' Heads To New Orleans For First-Ever Live Central Time Zone Countdown". Deadline. Retrieved 2019-10-15.
- ^ Michael O'Connell (May 29, 2014). "'Rising Star' Producers Consulted Mathematicians Over Time Zone Dilemma". The Hollywood Reporter.
- ^ Nellie Andreeva (May 29, 2014). "'Rising Star' Producers On How Interactive Talent Show Will Tackle U.S.' 4 Time Zones". Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation.
- ^ Haring, Bruce (April 23, 2018). "'American Idol' First: Simulcast Will Allow Live Voting Across The US". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on April 23, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
- ^ Strause, Jackie (April 23, 2018). "'American Idol' to Air Nationwide Live Telecasts for First Time". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
- ^ Barton, Amy (March 18, 2019). "American Idol 2019 Live Viewing Coast-to-Coast & Simul-Vote Details". abc.go. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
- ^ Gelt, Jessica (9 June 2022). "How to watch the 2022 Tony Awards featuring Andrew Garfield, Lin-Manuel Miranda, more". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ Whitten, Sarrah (8 April 2022). "ENTERTAINMENT 'Dancing With the Stars' moves to Disney+ as company looks to boost streaming subscriptions". CNBC.
- ^ Sottile, Zoe (15 January 2023). "How to watch the 71st Miss Universe competition". CNN.
- ^ Rice, Lynette (January 11, 2023). "SAG Awards Find a New Home on Netflix in 2024; This Year's Show Will Stream on YouTube". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved January 11, 2023.
- ^ Jacobson, Adam (2022-07-12). "CBS Reshapes KCAL With Big L.A. Local News Revamp". Radio & Television Business Report. Retrieved 2022-12-16.
- ^ "CBS to Expand AM News at LA Stations; KCAL to Air Local Morning News for First Time Ever". TVSpy. 13 July 2022. Retrieved 2022-12-16.