Late-night television in the United States


Late-night television is the general term for television programs produced for broadcast during the late evening and overnight hours—most commonly shown after, if not in competition with, local late-evening newscasts; programs that have been showcased in the daypart historically encompassed a particular genre of programming that falls somewhere between a variety show and a talk show. Late-night shows predominantly cater to night owls, people suffering from insomnia, shift workers with irregular schedule assignments, younger male audiences and college students, along with spillover audiences through viewers of entertainment and news programs aired earlier in the evening.
In the United States, the late night slot primarily encompasses the "late fringe" daypart leading out of prime time, usually running after 11:00 p.m. and through 2:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. An informal broader definition of the daypart includes the designated overnight graveyard slot.
This article focuses on television programs, genres and other programming concepts common in American late night television, primarily focusing on programs typically shown on national broadcast and cable television networks and in syndication.

Talk shows

The late-night talk show format traces its roots in early television variety shows, a format that originated on radio and the dominant form of light entertainment during most of the old-time radio era, and in particular incorporates some elements tracing to the 1938–48 weekly NBC radio program The Pepsodent Show, which featured an opening segment in which host Bob Hope delivered rapid-fire, topical and often political observational humor. The first late-night television program was the 1950–51 NBC variety program Broadway Open House, which ended as a result of host Jerry Lester's decision to leave the show amid frustration with being upstaged by sidekick Virginia "Dagmar" Lewis, burnout from having to go through a large amount of material in a short time, and the lack of enough television sets in American households to make late night programming viable. The first televised late-night talk show was The Faye Emerson Show, a 15-minute program that aired on CBS from 1949 to 1952. Emerson's show was distinctive from her NBC competition in that she was more openly political ; Emerson, an avowed Democrat, regularly interviewed political and intellectual figures on the program, in addition to showcasing some vaudeville and variety acts.
Tonight Starring Steve Allen, the first iteration of The Tonight Show that debuted on NBC in September 1954, developed many modern talk show concepts including an opening monologue, celebrity interviews, audience participation segments, comedy bits, and musical performances, accompanied by the show's house band; it also incorporated concepts taken from the radio era, including a vocal group, something that later late-night shows would abandon. The expansion of television stations across the country, and households owning television sets helped Tonight to become a major success. CBS and ABC waited until the 1960s to wade into any major late-night programming efforts. ABC entered the arena in November 1964 with The Les Crane Show, which lasted until February 1965 in its original format; it was then retooled as ABC's Nightlife, which originally employed rotating guest hosts before bringing back Crane as host that June for what would be the final six months of the program's run. CBS joined the fray five years later in August 1969 with Griffin Show">Merv Griffin">Griffin Show, which began seven years earlier as an NBC daytime program before returning in syndication in 1965; Griffin, whose show was mired in second place behind the dominant Carson, chose to reach an agreement with the network to end his contract early, sensing it would soon cancel the show, and signed a contract with Metromedia Producers Corporation to continue his program in syndication, where it lasted until 1986.
Popular shows within the late night talk show genre include The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Show with Stephen Colbert">The Late Show (franchise)">Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Famous former hosts include Johnny Carson of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; David Letterman of Late Night with David Letterman and Late Show with David Letterman ; Conan O'Brien of Conan O'Brien">Conan (talk show)">Conan O'Brien, The [Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien], and Conan; Jay Leno of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno ; James Corden of The [Late Late Show with James Corden]; Craig Ferguson of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson; Arsenio Hall of The [Arsenio Hall Show]; Tom Snyder of Tomorrow and The Late Late Show; Steve Allen, the father of the late night talk show and founder of Tonight ; Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett, early competitors with Carson; and Jack Paar, the man who followed Steve Allen as host of The Tonight Show and who is responsible for setting the standards for the genre.
Networks typically produce two late night shows: one taped in New York City and one in Los Angeles. Most are taped late in the afternoon; exceptions include Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which finishes taping about an hour before its initial broadcast in the Eastern and Central Time Zones, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which airs live after events of major importance. The fact that this limits accurate coverage of the latest 24-hour news cycle is sometimes the source of ironic humor or notable delays.
Despite being more appointment-oriented shows, the late-night talk format had been enduring declining viewership and advertising revenue since the mid-2010s due to competition from streaming, making many of the shows increasingly expensive to produce because of declining profitability. In July 2025, CBS became the first of the Big Three networks to discontinue late-night talk programming, announcing it would end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in May 2026, reportedly due to profit losses of up to $100 million in recent years. It sparked controversy, however, as it followed network parent Paramount Global's settlement of a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump over an October 2024 60 Minutes interview of then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris amid concerns the Federal Communications Commission might interfere in its merger with Skydance Media and came just days after Colbert—a longtime critic of Trump throughout the latter's political career—criticized the settlement on-air. As such, many of Trump's critics and the Writers Guild of America questioned whether the cancellation was politically rather than financially motivated.

Scheduling

Except for a brief period between September 2009 and March 2010, the "Big Three television networks" have all begun their late night programming at 11:35 p.m. Eastern Time each night. NBC became the first network to start its late night schedule at 11:35 in September 1991, in a bid to prevent affiliates from dropping or delaying The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in favor of lucrative syndicated programs; ABC followed suit in September 1992, followed by CBS upon the Late Show with David Lettermans debut in September 1993. Since June 1994, Fox, the fourth major U.S. network, airs only one day of late night programming—Saturday—starting at 11:00 p.m. ET, a half-hour to one hour after the end of prime time to allow most of its stations to air local late-evening newscasts. ABC, CBS and NBC all begin their late night schedules with comedy and interview-based talk shows, though programming in the lead-out 12:35 a.m. ET slot differs on each network: only NBC airs an additional lead-out talk show in the slot, while CBS—which had aired talk shows that ran through the later slot off-and-on from January 1989 to September 1990 and started in the slot itself during the 1995–2023 run of The Late Late Show—airs the comedic panel game show After Midnight as the lead-out to The Late Show and ABC airs the newsmagazine Nightline following Jimmy Kimmel Live!. In March 2025, CBS announced that it would cease offering first-run programming in the 12:35 timeslot once After Midnight ended its two-season run that June ; original and archived episodes of the syndicated Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen would fill the slot starting in September 2025.
NBC followed a significantly different model for most of the 2009–10 season, following severe audience losses for the scripted dramas it had been airing in the final hour of prime time. Jay Leno, who in 2004 had announced he would step down as host of the Tonight Show franchise at the end of his renewed five-year contract, had reached a compromise to stay with the network and launch a new talk show in the 10:00 p.m. ET hour, ahead of the local newscasts on most stations in a timeslot that competed with CBS and ABC's respective prime time programs. Premiering in September 2009, The Jay Leno Show maintained a format largely similar to his Tonight runs. NBC had previously chosen Conan O'Brien to take over as host of The Tonight Show to avoid a repeat of the 1992 conflict that arose between Leno and David Letterman in their bid to succeed Tonight predecessor Johnny Carson, which saw Letterman leave NBC for his own CBS show; Jimmy Fallon consequently assumed hosting duties for Late Night. Fellow NBC late-night programs Last Call with Carson Daly and Poker After Dark remained as is, and the network warned its affiliates not to preempt or delay Leno for local news. After fears raised by affiliates of significantly lower ratings for their local newscasts from the Leno lead-in were in fact realized, NBC announced it would indeed cancel its 10:00 p.m. experiment after a six-month run and move Leno back to his traditional start time of 11:35, originally by moving The Jay Leno Show, before rejoining as host of The Tonight Show outright after O'Brien negotiated an exit from his Tonight contract in opposition to the network's original plan to shift the latter program later by a half-hour to make room for Leno.
Of the major broadcast networks, NBC, ABC and CBS program the late night slot on weekdays, but only NBC carries first-run entertainment shows in that time period on Saturdays; none of the major networks have ever scheduled first-run late night shows on Sundays on a regular basis.
Fox carried first-run late night programming on weeknights off-and-on from October 1986 to May 1994 and on Saturdays for most of the time from August 1989 to April 2010; however since the 2010 cancellation of The Wanda Sykes Show with few exceptions thereafter, the network no longer airs traditional late night programs on any day of the week, and since May 2016, its Saturday late-night slot has been filled by reruns of various unscripted Fox prime time shows. The Saturday slot previously occupied by Sykes and before that by MADtv—which has lasted for one hour for most of the time since Fox began programming the slot in 1989, with previous extensions to 90 minutes and two hours —consisted only of Fox prime time reruns until the July 2013 debut of the adult animation block Animation Domination High-Def, which was canceled in April 2014 citing an inability to reach its intended young adult demographic, an issue aggravated by frequent sports overruns ; Fox would last attempt first-run late night programming in any capacity in 2016 with the female-led sketch comedy series Party Over Here, which was cancelled after one season.
Up until the early-to-mid-1990s, syndicated late-night talk shows were fairly common, due to NBC having the only network shows at the time in that daypart. The Arsenio Hall Show, which was distributed by Paramount Domestic Television from January 1989 to May 1994, was able to pick from CBS, ABC or Fox affiliates. When CBS's Late Show with David Letterman and Fox's infamously short-lived The Chevy Chase Show debuted in September 1993, ratings for Hall's program declined as it lost a large number of affiliates and was shifted to undesirable later timeslots on stations that kept it, resulting in Arsenio leaving the air at the end of the 1993–94 season. There has not been a successful syndicated late night talk show since then, and outside of the panel-formatted Comics Unleashed and the 2010s Arsenio revival, the few that have debuted since the 1998 failure of The Magic Hour have lacked full national distribution or been limited to weekend timeslots.

Local scheduling

In previous years, network late-night programs were often subject to delay by some "Big Three" affiliates to accommodate syndicated programming in their post-late news slot, allowing them to generate additional revenue from local advertising sales. CBS was particularly susceptible to affiliates preempting or delaying its late night programming from the 1970s through the early 1990s, partly due to its meager performance in the time period prior to the September 1993 debut of the Late Show with David Letterman. While Fox's pre-1994 late night efforts generally were carried in pattern, the mid-1990s affiliation switches of several former Big Three affiliates—led by those acquired by New World Communications and SF Broadcasting—to the network saw affected stations in the Central, Mountain and Hawaii–Aleutian time zones delay the network's Saturday late night efforts by a half-hour to accommodate local 10:00 p.m. CT/MT/HT newscasts ; during its 1995–2010 run, this put MADtv in direct competition with NBC's Saturday Night Live, which typically overlapped with it in the latter's 11:30 p.m. ET timeslot.
NBC—which preferred that its stations carry as much of its programming as possible and was less tolerant of preemptions than its rivals—has largely had its stations carry The Tonight Show in its network-designated timeslot. Yet despite the program's success during that timeframe, a handful of affiliates had delayed The Tonight Show during the Carson and, except for WTMJ, early Leno eras to run syndicated sitcom reruns immediately following the late news, instead of in-between Tonight and its lead-out network programs, as was common between the late 1970s and the 1990s. WTMJ began preempting Tonight outright in September 1984, amid a dispute with NBC over the station's request to delay it by an hour so it could air reruns of Trapper John, M.D. after its 10:00 p.m. news; NBC contracted independent station WVTV to air Tonight, running there for four years until WTMJ agreed to air the program at its normal time in 1988. Though the few NBC and CBS stations that had delayed Tonight and the Late Show had gotten around to airing them in pattern by 1999, many continued to air their post-midnight network shows on a delayed basis—usually running a half-hour behind schedule—as late as 2004. Houston NBC affiliate KPRC notably delayed Late Night with Conan O'Brien to 2:40 a.m. when it resumed carrying the program after a two-year absence in 1996, in favor of airing various first-run syndicated shows and a rebroadcast of its 10:00 p.m. newscast between it and Tonight. O'Brien used this anomaly as the basis for a classic 1997 on-location piece in which he made impromptu stops throughout the city to watch an episode of his own show during its local graveyard slot; the station moved Late Night to 12:35 a.m. in 1998, and finally to its network-designated 11:35 p.m. CT slot in 2004.
Several ABC stations continued to run syndicated sitcom reruns and entertainment newsmagazines in the post-local news slot well into the 2000s, and at least three of them carried hour-long local newscasts for even longer, delaying part or all of the network's late-night lineup as late as one hour behind their intended airtime. This would pose an issue for Jimmy Kimmel Live! when it debuted in 2003, as the practice stunted the show early on, although its ratings markedly improved over the next decade, eventually placing behind Tonight and the Late Show. ABC would gradually get its stations on board to airing Kimmel and Nightline in their designated timeslots into the 2010s, even after both shows traded slots in January 2013; Hearst Television was the last of ABC's major affiliate groups to end the practice of delaying its network late-night schedule in January 2019, per the terms of a renewed affiliation agreement that forced them to give up their ability to delay the program for extended local newscasts or syndicated programming.

Typical format

These shows often follow the same canonical format:
There have been deviations from this format. Tom Snyder employed a more intimate concept on Tomorrow and his 1995–99 run as the original host of The Late Late Show, conducting one-on-one interviews and choosing not to have a studio audience, house band, writing staff or scripted pieces. This style would be replicated for the original format of Later, which had original host Bob Costas and occasional guest hosts interview a single guest for the entire half hour, and to an extent for the syndicated Whoopi Goldberg Show and Lauren Hutton and... . Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley, which were syndicated to public television stations, also mirrored the Snyder/Costas formulae, while featuring a wider range of guests including athletes; politicians; authors; businesspersons; and scientists.
Tomorrow, despite opposition from Snyder to the overhaul that coincided with its expansion from 60 to 90 minutes, incorporated elements of the entertainment talk format and, for a time, entertainment reports by gossip columnist Rona Barrett for what became the final 17 months of its run from 1980 to 1981. Later would also adopt a more conventional late-night format—while maintaining the single-guest interview setup—after Greg Kinnear took over as host in February 1994, but reverted to the Costas-era format in 2000 under final host Cynthia Garrett; though Later ended in January 2001, the banner title remained for one more year to present edited repeats of the 1976–84 Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV in the talk show's former timeslot. Except for a two-year period beginning in 2007, Last Call with Carson Daly had traditionally avoided monologues and comedy bits, although it originally utilized most major elements of the traditional late-night talk format; in 2009, the show deviated even further from the traditional format by taping all hosted and interview segments on-location and shooting all interviews and musical performances in the style of a documentary.
Late night talk shows often incorporate political satire, and several programs of the genre are formatted around political and pop culture-focused topical humor instead of featuring interviews, and music and stand-up comedy performances. Notable examples include The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Gutfeld!, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. The Daily Show is a satire of evening news programs that initially mixed political and pop culture satire during its first three years under original host Craig Kilborn, transitioning to a more political focus—subsequent to Jon Stewart replacing Kilborn—in 1999, which earned acclaim with viewers and critics; the program inspired similar satirical news shows such as The Colbert Report, a spin-off that parodied political talk shows with host Stephen Colbert's in-show persona mocking conservative talk show hosts and televised political pundits more broadly, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which offers a satirical "week-in-review" commentary as well as a seriocomic topical "main story" of interest taking deeper dives into various systemic issues.
Red Eye, Last Call, and both of Bill Maher's late-night discussion shows, Politically Incorrect and Real Time, have used a round table format that incorporates a mix of news discussion and satire, although roundtable is only used in the descriptive sense; in the case of Red Eye, some guests appeared on the program via satellite, while a regular on the show appeared from another part of the Fox News studios.
The traditional late-night talk format has largely been unable to maintain a long-term presence on American Spanish-language television; however a few efforts aimed at Hispanic and Latino audiences have been attempted over the years, including A Oscuras Pero Encendidos, the first to be produced for and longest to air on American Spanish media, which originated in 1995 on independent WJAN-CA/Miami before going national in its third season; Mas Vale Tarde ; and Noche de Perros., Nos Cayó la Noche con Alex Montiel and ''Tu-Night con Omar Chaparro''

House bands

Most shows in this genre have a house band that plays musical interludes. Late-night talk shows are the last television format to still use house bands, which were common during the Golden Age of Radio on most variety shows and sitcoms but largely faded away in most formats other than variety and late-night in the 1950s.
Popular late night band leaders include Paul Shaffer, leader of the World's Most Dangerous Band during David Letterman's tenures on Late Night and the Late Show, where it was known as the CBS Orchestra; Doc Severinsen, leader of the NBC Orchestra for the majority of Johnny Carson's tenure on The Tonight Show and a member of the franchise's original band under its first host, Steve Allen; Max Weinberg, leader of The Max Weinberg 7 on Late Night and The Tonight Show Band on The Tonight Show during Conan O'Brien's tenures on both shows; Cleto and the Cletones on Jimmy Kimmel Live!; Branford Marsalis and Kevin Eubanks, leaders of The Tonight Show Band during Jay Leno's tenure on Tonight; The Roots, an eclectic hip-hop band turned host-band for Jimmy Fallon's tenures on Late Night and The Tonight Show; and Jon Batiste and Stay Human, the house band for Stephen Colbert's iteration of The Late Show.
Usually the band leader is a major part of the show, and the band leader and host often exchange playful banter during the monologue and comedy segments; the band leader has thus taken over the part of being the host's sidekick, which in the past was played by an announcer or designated co-host. Paul Shaffer was well known for being a straight man to David Letterman on Late Night and the Late Show. Mort Lindsey was the official bandleader of The Merv Griffin Show, but trumpeter Jack Sheldon shared most of the comic material and banter with host Merv Griffin. However, on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Max Weinberg rarely spoke during the show, and his interactions with O'Brien were often short and awkward—a running gag on the show, and Kevin Eubanks was often the butt of Leno's jokes, particularly regarding drug-related stories.
Most notably The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson did not have a house band, and Ferguson often used that fact as a running gag in his show; Ferguson used a robot named Geoff Peterson as his sidekick. Late Night with Seth Meyers—which had employed a band since its February 2014 debut, like the franchise's predecessors dating back to original host David Letterman—laid off The 8G Band in June 2024, as part of budget cuts coinciding with a four-year renewal of Meyers' contract; in September 2024, the show began utilizing prerecorded music composed by the band for its opening and closing themes, and segment intros and outros.

Announcers

Often, the show's announcer is also a major part of the show, sometimes serving as a de facto sidekick to the host or participating in comedy bits. Famous announcers include Gene Rayburn and Hugh Downs ; Ed McMahon ; Edd Hall and John Melendez ; Bill Wendell and Alan Kalter ; Joel Godard ; Dicky Barrett ; Steve Higgins ; Andy Richter ; and Don Pardo and Darrell Hammond. These announcers often have significant career accomplishments outside of their particular shows. Jen Spyra, who previously worked as a writer for the show, became the first female to serve as an announcer on a network late-night comedy/talk/variety program, when The Late Show with Stephen Colbert moved her to an off-screen announcing role in 2016.

Other formats

Network variety and entertainment programming

Other late night programs on broadcast and cable television break the standard format. In October 1975, after the network decided to discontinue its Saturday reruns of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson per Carson's request to instead air reruns periodically during the week to decrease his production workload, NBC replaced the weekend Tonight reruns with a new comedy-variety series, NBC's Saturday Night ; the 90-minute program, which continues to air as of 2024 and has remained a staple of NBC's Saturday lineup even after the network ceased producing original scripted prime time programming on that night in the mid-2000s, primarily features sketches performed by a repertory cast of comedians and a celebrity guest host as well as live performances from a featured musical act. The program inspired other sketch comedy-focused variety series, including a handful that aired in late night, such as Fridays and MADtv.
During the 1970s and 1980s, CBS filled its late-night period with dramatic programming, primarily under the CBS Late Movie banner. Although the time slot did, indeed, feature movies, it also featured a mixture of previously broadcast dramas dating back to the 1960s as well as first-run series. The CBS Late Movie block was eventually restructured as CBS Late Night in September 1985, featuring reruns of CBS series, imported and first-run programs. CBS incorporated more conventional first-run fare into its late night lineup between 1989 and 1992, though, outside of sketch comedy The Kids in the Hall, most were unsuccessful against their competition on NBC and ABC, consistent with CBS's general underperformance in that timeslot from the 1970s through the early 1990s. The block was supplanted in March 1991 by Crimetime After Primetime, a rotating collection of original crime drama series that lasted until the Late Show with David Letterman premiered in September 1993.
Networks have also run music programs in the time period, including NBC's The Midnight Special and Friday Night Videos, and ABC's In Concert.
NBC took a different approach to programming the overnight slot in September 1998; replacing the late newscast NBC Nightside, "NBC All Night" showcased repeats of selected late night, daytime and news programs. Episodes of The Tonight Show and Late Night from the previous week and weekly 90-minute classic episodes of Saturday Night Live were prominent parts of the block, though rebroadcasts of Meet the Press, Dateline and even the daytime soap opera Sunset Beach were also featured. The "All Night" banner was retired in 2008 as repeats of NBC late-night shows were gradually replaced over the next few years by Poker After Dark, a Saturday overnight block of lifestyle programs produced by sister company LXTV and, in the early 2010s, weeknight rebroadcasts of the fourth hour of Today and the CNBC financial program Mad Money.
Among American Spanish-language media, three of the four major broadcast networks—Univision, Telemundo and Estrella TV—typically begin their late night programming with an hour-long network newscast that is separated into two half-hour programs ; UniMás, the other major Spanish-language network, does not carry news programming in any form. Other than Estrella TV, the late night and overnight dayparts on the major Spanish-language networks are otherwise filled by reruns of telenovelas and other entertainment programs, movies or infomercials. Sports news/talk programs—often prominently covering soccer with supplemental coverage of other domestic sports, and serving as counterparts to ESPN's SportsCenter and local sports "wrap-up" shows that follow late-evening weekend newscasts on many stations—have also been produced for the late night slot on the major Spanish networks, including Contacto Deportivo, Titulares Telemundo and its spinoff Titulares y Mas: Zona Mixta.

News

National newsmagazines and late-night newscasts

ABC's Nightline has long been an exception to the networks' "comedy/variety" formula. Debuting in March 1980, the nightly half-hour newsmagazine originally aired immediately after local newscasts on ABC's owned and affiliated stations for its first 32 years, before being pushed to a later slot in January 2013, when it switched timeslots with the hour-long Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Under original anchor Ted Koppel, Nightline maintained a single-topic format, featuring live interviews related to the subject discussed in the main story segment. Following Koppel's 2005 retirement, the program began employing multiple anchors ; began featuring two or three topics per broadcast ; and incorporated pop culture-related pieces alongside stories on current news events, interviews and investigative features. The program inspired CBS to create the similarly formatted America Tonight, debuting in October 1990, as a direct competitor to Nightline. Despite employing a top-tier slate of anchors that included Dan Rather, Charles Kuralt and Lesley Stahl, America Tonight failed to make a dent against Nightline and NBC rival The Tonight Show, resulting in its cancellation after only six months in March 1991.
Predating the debut of Nightline, ABC and CBS each offered late-night newscasts in the form of abbreviated, 15-minute weekend broadcasts. Fed to affiliates starting at 11:00 p.m. ET, the ABC News Weekend Report and the CBS Sunday Night News were usually shown immediately following local late-evening newscasts on their owned and affiliated stations; however, some stations opted to air them as filler programming leading into their regular sign-off period. Declining interest from affiliates and low viewership resulted in both networks discontinuing their weekend late newscasts during the 1990s: ABC's Weekend Report ended in September 1991, while CBS's Sunday Night News aired its final broadcast in September 1997.
The three major English-language networks have also ventured into overnight newscasts that air after the traditional late night schedules; airing as a continuous feed of looping 60- to 90-minute-long blocks, stations typically preempt some portion of the rolling broadcasts to air local, acquired or paid programming following the network late night shows. NBC premiered the first overnight network news effort in July 1982 with NBC News Overnight, an hour-long program that mixed hard news features with incisive topical commentary and light-hearted feature stories; it aired for 18 months until high production costs and limited ad revenue led to the show being discontinued in December 1983. CBS followed in October 1982 with CBS News Nightwatch, which maintained a hybrid traditional newscast and interview/debate format.
More conventional overnight network newscasts debuted in the early 1990s to fill airtime on major network affiliates that had adopted or were planning to adopt 24-hour program schedules to compete with increased late-night offerings on cable television and more specifically CNN, which was lauded for its round-the-clock coverage of the Gulf War in early 1991. During the 1991–92 television season, the "Big Three" networks each premiered their own overnight newscasts: NBC Nightside, ABC's World News Now, and CBS's Up to the Minute. Many stations, including some Big Three affiliates, also filled overnight timeslots with syndicated rolling news blocks from CNN Headline News and All News Channel —either in conjunction with or in place of late-night network newscasts—during the 1990s and much of the 2000s.
, World News Now is the only overnight newscast that debuted in 1991–92 which continues to air. NBC replaced Nightside with the "NBC All Night" entertainment block in September 1998; however in September 2017, the network began offering its early-morning news program Early Today as a de facto overnight newscast, after its live telecast and loop feeds were moved into the slot previously filled by rebroadcasts of CNBC's Mad Money to accommodate local morning newscasts that expanded into the 4:00 a.m. hour in some markets during the 2010s. CBS replaced Up to the Minute in September 2015 with CBS Overnight News, featuring a mix of segments repurposed from the previous day's edition of the CBS Evening News/''CBS Weekend News, updated news summaries and additional content; Overnight News was replaced in May 2024 by CBS News Roundup, a more conventional broadcast produced by co-owned streaming network CBS News 24/7 incorporating reports filed by correspondents from CBS News and local CBS-owned stations.
Most of the major Spanish-language networks have also offered conventional news programming in the late fringe slot. Univision debuted an 11:30 p.m. ET edition of its flagship news program Noticiero Univision—titled for most of its history as Noticiero Univision: Edición Nocturna, and currently the longest-running network late news show on American Spanish-language television—in September 1989; the half-hour preceding the newscast's late edition was occupied from 1998 to 2019 by Primer Impacto Extra, a condensed half-hour version of the late afternoon tabloid newsmagazine Primer Impacto, and since September 2019 by a rebroadcast of Noticiero Univisions main 6:30 p.m. ET broadcast. Telemundo, which previously offered a late-night newscast from 1987 to 2011, resumed national news programming in the slot in March 2020; initially conceived as a specialized half-hour newscast focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the country's Hispanic/Latino community, the one-hour news block utilizes the same structure as Univision's late news format. Estrella TV has long had a one-hour jump on Univision and Telemundo in airing its flagship late-evening newscast, Cierre de Edición, in the final half-hour of prime time, from the network's launch in September 2009 until September 2024; it would follow its rivals' lead with its own late fringe news offering in January 2022, debuting an hour-long block of its secondary newscast 24 Horas —which originated on co-owned streaming news channel Estrella News—as a companion broadcast to Cierre de Edición'', utilizing the same part-taped/part-live structure as Univision and Telemundo's late newscasts. Both newscasts—the latter having eliminated its weekend editions by that time—were moved up by a half-hour to form an hour-long, late-primetime news block in September 2024.

Local news

Late-night local newscasts are traditionally broadcast at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT on most CBS, NBC and ABC stations, and various other network and independent stations. Originally lasting typically for 15 and later 30 minutes, the 35-minute late news format became the industry norm starting with NBC's move of The Tonight Show to 11:35 p.m. ET/PT in September 1991, which allowed stations to use the five extra minutes of local airtime to run more story packages and commercials. Most Fox, CW, MyNetworkTV and independent stations and select multicast network outlets air a 30-minute to one-hour late newscast during the final hour of prime time—10:00 p.m. ET/PT —which may be produced in-house or outsourced to a local Big Three station, and often employs a larger story selection than their similarly formatted counterparts on major-network stations. Washington, D.C. independent WTTG was the first American television station to debut a regular local prime time newscast ; however, New York City sister station WNEW-TV is credited with popularizing the concept, having launched its own 10:00 p.m. newscast in March 1967. Other large- and mid-market independents launched their own newscasts in the 10:00/9:00 hour through the 1970s and 1980s, although the concept gained momentum during Fox's expansion in the early 1990s as the network pushed its stations to offer local newscasts and aligned with several former ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates.
Local newscasts airing in the slot usually provide newer top stories and follow-ups of stories from earlier that day; breaking news stories occurring prior to airtime; in-depth feature segments ; special coverage of local and national elections when held; national and international news ; weather reports with an emphasis on next-day forecasts; and highlights of the day's sporting events. On some stations, the newscast may run a 10- or 11-minute "non-stop" first segment and, on Sunday nights, may be followed by an extended sportscast—often structured as a separate "sports extra" program, some of which focus mainly on football and baseball action—providing game recaps, sports news headlines and commentary. Since they commonly air at the start of the watershed slot, late-night newscasts have more editorial freedom to cover stories of a more violent, profane or sexual nature compared to those in earlier timeslots. The idiom "film at 11" comes from the now-archaic term once used to close promotions for the upcoming newscast that are shown during prime time programs, promising shots from a breaking story during the 11:00 p.m. newscast; the phrase—dating to when news footage was shot on film and had to be transported back to the station to be edited before broadcast—has since been substituted by similar idioms like "story at 11" or "details at 11" as the advent of videotape and later digital video, and technological advances in remote broadcasting saw these become the chosen mediums for packaging televised reports more efficiently and instantaneously.
Local news programs have also aired in the overnight slot in various formats; between the 1960s and the mid-1980s, many stations carried "sign-off edition" newscasts of varying length—usually running between five and 15 minutes —that provided brief summaries of local, national and international headlines, sports scores and a short- to medium-range weather forecast. Independent stations WFLD/Chicago and KTTV/Los Angeles experimented with teletext to serve a similar purpose in the early 1980s; notably, WFLD utilized the KeyFax service for its teletext news service Nite-Owl, which aired until the resumption of regular programming each day from 1981 to 1982, when Keyfax began an attempt to reposition itself as a two-way information service that ended in 1986. Since then, at least four other stations have offered live newscasts past the traditional late news slot: ABC affiliate KSTP-TV/Minneapolis–St. Paul, Fox affiliates WXIX-TV/Cincinnati and KTVI/St. Louis, and CW affiliate KWGN-TV/Denver.
Beginning in the early 1980s, many stations offered rebroadcasts of their late-evening newscasts, intended primarily for the convenience of late-shift workers who were not awake hours earlier for the broadcast's initial airing, and in many cases, acting as replacements for the "sign-off edition" broadcasts. Late-night news rebroadcasts declined in prevalence during the 2000s, being replaced by syndicated programs, extended feeds of overnight network newscasts and infomercials; in 2021 however, NBC's decision to turn over the 1:35 a.m. ET timeslot to its stations following the cancellation of A Little Late with Lilly Singh allowed some affiliates—including those that previously abandoned the practice—to offer late news rebroadcasts in the vacated slot as a lead-out to network late-night programs. Stations that employed the "24-Hour News Source" concept during the 1990s also produced live or prerecorded overnight updates, often employing on-duty production staff assigned to their local morning newscasts in lieu of station daytime and evening talent that would normally conduct the segments.

Local and syndicated programming

American television stations have used the late-night timeslot to feature syndicated programming designed for the time period, such as late-night talk shows intended to compete with their network counterparts and series that incorporate more mature material; however, the daypart has also acted as a de facto "death slot" for syndicated programs that either were placed there involuntarily due to low ratings in their original daytime slots, a lack of room on their station's schedule to fit them in an appropriate timeslot where the program would otherwise benefit from a higher available audience, or to fill time that would otherwise be taken up by infomercials or reruns of current and past network shows distributed in off-network syndication.
Up through the 2000s, first-run syndicated programs most commonly seen in the overnight period consisted of daytime talk shows and game shows being burned off due to low ratings. Certain syndicated tabloid talk shows have also aired in late night—most either in their primary or secondary daily runs—because of their adult content. Some stations—most prevalent when King World began offering carrier stations of The Oprah Winfrey Show the option of running late-night rebroadcasts of the show in 2001—have also offered same-day reruns of talk shows already carried in daytime slots to reach audiences unable to watch them in their primary timeslot. Talk shows had been satirized on late night television—including in syndication—long before shows like The Larry Sanders Show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast and The Colbert Report gained acclaim amongst audiences for their takes on the format. The first television talk show satire, the Norman Lear-created syndicated comedy Fernwood 2 Night, itself a spin-off of the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, starred Martin Mull and Fred Willard in an irony-laden parody of late-night talk shows and locally produced fare found on midwestern American television at the time; the fictional show-within-a-show was retooled in-universe for its continuation series, America 2-Night, changing it from a local Ohio program to a national show set in Southern California, making it more plausible for real-life celebrities to appear as themselves. The weekly syndicated late-night comedy Night Stand with Dick Dietrick parodied the tabloid talk format—which had reached its zenith in syndication during the late 1980s and 1990s with shows like Downey, Springer, Geraldo, and in its early years, Oprah—with the titular dimwitted host character presiding over a fictional talk show that mocked the oft-exploitative and sensationalized nature of the format.
A brief influx of game shows began to fill the late night airwaves in the mid-to-late-1980s, virtually all of which were cancelled after one season due to low ratings exacerbated by undesirable scheduling or declining station clearances. These shows were intended for prime time access slots but by that time, as game shows were saturating the syndication market, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! had already cornered the access timeslot. From 1984 to 2007, the syndicated George Michael Sports Machine—produced out of and hosted by the titular then-sports director at Washington NBC O&O WRC-TV—featured highlights of sports events held before its initial Sunday late access airtime and interview-based feature segments; the program was syndicated by various distributors throughout its run, commonly airing as a lead-out to local sports news shows that followed Sunday night newscasts, primarily on NBC stations, in many markets.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, the dating game show also often filled late night slots in syndication. Two of the earliest successes were Love Connection, which incorporated elements of the video dating concept popularized in the 1980s and featured contestants discussing the date they went on; and Studs, a "question-and-answer" format that relied more heavily on sexual innuendo and double entendres. The dating game shows that debuted from 1998 onward were known for often pushing the boundaries of sexually suggestive content on broadcast television, and therefore usually aired in late night on the vast majority of their carrier stations. Though the genre largely died off from syndication in 2006, it saw a resurgence in 2011 with the debuts of the elimination-style Excused and Who Wants to Date a Comedian?, followed by the 2012 sale of the Game Show Network series Baggage into syndication; this would prove to be short-lived, as all three shows would exit the syndication market in September 2013. The expansion of the entertainment news genre in syndication starting in the early 1990s has also resulted in many first-run tabloid and infotainment programs occupying late night slots; while this is often because of a lack of available space in early access or prime access dayparts, some programs offer an optional same-day rebroadcast—usually incorporating updated material to account for story developments that broke after or production errors that occurred during the initial broadcast feed—in a secondary late night slot.

Preemptions and deferences of network and syndicated programs

Network programs preempted by their owned and affiliated stations in favor of an irregularly scheduled special event, special programming of local interest, breaking news or severe weather coverage are typically rescheduled in overnight timeslots—often but not always during the same broadcast day—to fulfill their contractual programming obligations. Because of the genre's daily format and continuity structure, preempted episodes of daytime soap operas are typically rebroadcast the night of their airdate to allow viewers to catch up on storylines before the next episode.
In some cases, higher-profile syndicated programs displaced from their regular daytime or early fringe slots for similar reasons have also been rescheduled in the overnight slot for the same purpose, allowing their carrier stations to fulfill obligations to air the program without penalty to the syndicator. Conversely, following its September 2009 conversion from a broadcast network to a syndication service, some affiliates of MyNetworkTV have pushed its schedule to late night or overnights full-time to make room for syndicated or local news programs in the service's normal two-hour weeknight prime time slot.

Movies

Movies, particularly films sold for the syndication market, have been a regular staple of late night programming since the 1950s. Until the late 1980s, many television stations offered nightly presentations of theatrical films in late night; during their respective heights, made-for-television films originally shown on network prime time television and direct-to-video films were sometimes featured in syndicated movie packages, especially those presented during the slot. Major network affiliates usually scheduled these presentations after the conclusion of their late local newscasts or following syndicated or, if cleared wholly or in part, network late-night offerings; NBC—whose affiliates did not have as much leeway to air movies until deeper into the night, if they signed off later or not at all, due to the presence of its late-night talk and variety block led by The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live—syndicated a weekly movie package to its owned-and-operated stations and selected affiliates, the NBC Late Night Movie, which aired on Sunday nights following their late local newscasts from 1977 to 1984.
Stations that offered 24-hour programming in some capacity as early as the late 1970s often aired multiple films well into the overnight hours. Many public television stations have long aired packages of older mainstream theatrical films—syndicated mainly by American Public Television—on weekends in late prime time and late night; these presentations, however, are regularly suspended during pledge drives held two to four times per year in favor of health and financial advice, and music specials normally shown in place of regular programming during pledge periods.
One popular late night format found particularly among local stations has been the "midnight movie", showcases of low-budget genre films that typically aired on Friday or Saturday nights, often featuring comedy skits and sardonic commentary bookending the films, which has its origins in the 1954–55 film showcase The Vampira Show that aired on Los Angeles ABC owned-and-operated station KABC-TV. Some of the better-known late night hosted movie series have included Svengoolie in the Chicago market, Off Beat Cinema in Buffalo, New York, Big Chuck and Lil' John in Cleveland, the Creature Double Feature in Boston and Philadelphia, and Elvira's Movie Macabre in Los Angeles. and Off Beat Cinema Though traditionally found in late-night slots, some broadcasters have aired "midnight movie" packages—like Movie Macabre and the current incarnation of Svengoolie—in weekend prime time, sometimes accompanied by another genre film—whether broken up by late-evening news or not, making the second presentation a literal midnight movie—resulting in unique virtual double bills. Horror-themed late-night movie presentations largely disappeared from many broadcast stations by the 2000s, though B movies have continued to run in post–primetime slots.
By the 1990s, late-night movie presentations were primarily offered by Fox affiliates and independent stations, usually during the overnight graveyard slot, although some Big Three affiliates continued to offer them on weekends into the early 2000s in certain markets. Movie packages sold through the commercial syndication market have steadily declined in volume since the late 1990s due largely to cable television cornering the film market, and the prime time expansions of The WB and UPN during that decade reducing available airtime on their affiliates, and more substantially amid the proliferation of streaming platforms in the mid-2010s, as film studios increasingly resorted to licensing their library titles to that medium; syndicated reruns and paid programming primarily now occupy late-night schedules on most stations outside or in lieu of network offerings made for the broader daypart, although some of the stations that carry the few film packages remaining in syndication continue to run movies in that daypart on weekends. In the present day, late-night movie presentations on American broadcast television are otherwise found primarily on digital multicast networks such as Movies!, Bounce TV, Positiv, 365BLK, Outlaw and Grit.

Paid programming

Following the 1984 elimination of Federal Communications Commission regulations prohibiting program-length advertising on television, the late-night slot has increasingly been used for infomercials, a type of direct-response advertisement intended to promote or sell mail-order products or other services that is paid for by the sponsor under time brokerage agreements. The concept of the program-length advertisement dates to the early years of modern commercial television: the first filmed half-hour infomercial for a commercial product was produced in 1949 by Ohio-based Cinécraft Productions for a Vitamix blender; first airing on New York City independent station WOR-TV in a Sunday 12:30 a.m. slot, an estimated 130 orders for the blender were made within 10 minutes of the infomercial's conclusion, and more than $41,400 in sales were generated after 12 airings of the broadcast.
Infomercials are usually structured under various concept formats including demonstration-based advertisements, "storymercials", "documercials", "brand demand" ads and talk show-style ads. These advertisements generate additional revenue for stations on top of the conventional short-form advertising they sell to sponsors, and provide them an inexpensive programming source to fill airtime as opposed to purchasing additional syndicated content in lower-profile time periods. Although they are commonly associated with overnight programming, infomercials are used as filler by some television stations for other timeslots not reserved for scheduled network, syndicated or local programming.
Simulcasts of home shopping channels have also been used to fill overnight airtime, more commonly during the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Shopping channels began serving as overnight filler on local broadcast stations with the 1988 launch of the Home Shopping Club Overnight Service, which was primarily syndicated to independent stations and selected network affiliates; originally operating as a nine-hour-a-day service, it evolved into a hybrid format as the Home Shopping Spree in 1989, broadcasting 24 hours a day on various low-power stations alongside the existing overnight syndication package, a structure that continued until what became America's Store shut down in April 2007.
Although typically associated with the Sunday morning timeslot, primarily as a means to allow those who cannot attend church services in-person due to illness or disability to participate from home, some time-brokered televangelist programs are also carried by some commercial stations during the overnight graveyard slot, particularly during the pre-dawn hours on weekends.

Overnight sign-offs

For much of the early history of American television broadcasting until the 1980s, most television stations regularly signed off during the overnight hours each night for a predetermined period, primarily due to technical constraints and, in earlier decades, the lack of demand or available viewership for stations to offer overnight programming. The sign-off was usually marked by a set sequence preceding the shutdown of the station's transmitter, usually concluded by a test pattern that lasts for several minutes until the transmitter is powered down. One widely used sign-off sequence was "National Anthem", produced by New York-based graphics firm Saxton Graphic Associates, Ltd; accompanied by a trumpet-led arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner" performed by the London Festival Orchestra and conducted by Bob Sharples in 1963, it featured images highlighting important events in U.S. history, culminating with the iconic 1969 photograph of an Apollo 11 astronaut standing on the Moon by the American flag.
Most stations scaled back or completely discontinued the practice during the 1980s and 1990s, as the rise of modern cable television—which saw many basic and premium cable channels begin switching to 24-hour-a-day programming or offering nighttime-only timeshare services in the early 1980s—increased demand for overnight programming. However, some commercial and noncommercial stations would continue to sign-off nightly or on weekends well into the 2000s, before they switched to round-the-clock broadcasts in the period surrounding the analog-to-digital transition.
Stations that transitioned to 24-hour broadcasts instead air many of the aforementioned programming formats during the overnight slot, although a scant few, particularly those that previously continued to sign-off overnight on weekends long after switching to 24-hour programming the rest of the week, chose to fill their former off-hours with a "nightlight" feed of live radar imagery or, if applicable, a simulcast of a locally programmed weather channel. Public television stations, meanwhile, fill that time by either running PBS's National Program Service feed or some combination of local programming repeats and programs from outside distributors. In the present day, some stations conduct a formal sign-on sequence—typically consisting solely of a national anthem montage—during the early morning to signify the start of the broadcast day; standard sign-off periods involving the temporary cessation of regular programming, meanwhile, are usually reserved for occasions where the transmitter is scheduled to undergo significant maintenance.

Cable television

Some American cable channels maintain a round-the-clock schedule incorporating various entertainment programs during the overnight hours; other channels offer blocks of infomercials and other paid programming of varying length during overnight time periods. Same-night rebroadcasts of prime time programming are most commonly offered by cable news channels and sports networks, which are designed as a singular feed due to their focus on live programming, especially in the context of national networks that operate on an Eastern Time schedule. Many sports networks and even certain general entertainment cable networks with some sports offerings rebroadcast sporting events held the previous day during the overnight slot. Because of interregional time differences, live national and regional telecasts of professional and collegiate sporting events played at venues in the Western United States during the early evening typically bleed—extending deeper in overtime situations—into the late or post-late fringe slots in the eastern half of the country. The late starts of Western games often contribute to a perceived coverage bias in sports news media towards teams based in the Eastern and Central states, where most evening games, outside of away games against opponents located in the West, are held when a majority of the population is still awake.
Cable news channels typically schedule rebroadcasts of their prime time news, talk and opinion programming after live broadcasts conclude for the day, with the initial rebroadcast of their prime time block scheduled in correspondence with each program's advertised time in the Pacific Time Zone. In contrast, business news channels CNBC and Bloomberg Television start their live pre-opening bell programming late in the overnight slot to provide early analysis of major business headlines and global markets going into the domestic trading day.
Live and tape-looped overnight newscasts that aired for years on Headline News and The Weather Channel were largely replaced by prime time repeats during the early years of the 21st century, although CNN has continued to offer regular late newscasts in some capacity. Headline News ended overnight news coverage in February 2005 to make way for a new nighttime talk show block, confining its longtime rolling news format to the morning and daytime hours; The Weather Channel gradually transitioned its nighttime schedule entirely to repeats of its prime time documentary programs between 2009 and 2013, culminating in the cancellation of the late night editions of Weather Center Live and limiting its weather news programming to mornings and weekday daytime hours.
The late-night talk/variety show format, once exclusive to network television, began expanding to cable in the 1990s with HBO's Dennis Miller Live and The Chris Rock Show, and Comedy Central's The Daily Show gaining success; other late night cable talk shows like The Colbert Report, Conan, Chelsea Lately and Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen have also proven successful in the early 21st century. However, late night talk/variety programs on cable have a slight advantage over their broadcast counterparts as most typically air at 11:00 p.m. ET, competing with late evening newscasts on most local broadcast stations and 35 minutes before the major networks begin their late night network programming. These shows also have the advantage of not being subject to FCC guidelines relating to the broadcast of indecent material, though internal network standards—in the case of advertiser-supported cable channels—generally result in these shows not being much more ribald than their network counterparts.
Basic cable networks that participated in the Cable in the Classroom initiative, overseen by the NCTA from 1989 to 2014, often scheduled educational programs intended for educators to record for later classroom use in late overnight/early morning slots. Subscription-based channels run independent and older or obscure feature films during the overnight hours; these are sometimes interspersed with more recent mainstream films, specials and specials and original programs in that daypart. Some pay services embraced the rise of videocassette recorders in the 1980s and 1990s by promoting the use of recording overnight films for later viewing; The Movie Channel was one such adopter, as from 1986 to 2004, it carried a daily block originally called "VCR Theater".

Networks and programming blocks

Historically, cable television services have maintained timeshare services and programming blocks that broadcast primarily during the nighttime hours; two prominent nighttime-only cable-originated channels currently operate in the United States as of 2024.
Nick at Nite debuted over the channel space of parent network Nickelodeon in July 1985, as a collection of primarily reruns of older sitcoms and a limited selection of half-hour drama series from the 1950s and 1960s, along with nightly pre-1960s classic film presentations. Nick at Nite's schedule—which currently runs nightly from 8:00 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. ET—has evolved over the years, both to focus exclusively on sitcoms, to shift its programming timeline to accommodate more recent network sitcoms and, by 2009, to include occasional airings of more recent movies in prime time; although it first dabbled in that arena in the early 1990s, a limited slate of first-run original programs—like Fatherhood, See Dad Run, Glenn Martin, DDS and Instant Mom—was also offered from 2004 to 2018. Adult Swim debuted in September 2001 as a three-hour Sunday and Wednesday night block on Cartoon Network, featuring a mix of original and acquired adult animated series and anime targeted at older teenagers and young adults; it quickly expanded to other nights, and began incorporating live-action original programs in February 2007. Since the mid-2000s, Nielsen has been recording ratings for Nick at Nite and Adult Swim separately from their respective parent networks for demographic purposes.
As cable channels increased in number during the 1980s and 1990s, up until late in the latter decade, it was fairly common for two or more standalone networks to share space on a single channel; the duration during which each service occupied the shared channel varied, depending upon the amount of airtime reserved under the assigned channel or satellite transponder. Cable systems, in particular, compartmented multiple networks onto an assigned leased access-style timeshare channel to account for headend infrastructures of the era affording a relatively modest allotment of programmable channels ; in such cases, local cable providers would typically switch between continuously running channel feeds once each network begins their assigned airtime slot.
Networks that have offered nighttime-only timeshare channel feeds or program blocks include USA Network, which carried Black Entertainment Television (BET) as a two-hour-long Friday night block from January 1980 to August 1982 ; and the Financial News Network, which shared channel space with sports network Score—originally a nighttime and weekend service until September 1988, when FNN's introduction of a weeknight financial news and talk show block prompted Score to move exclusively to a weekend afternoon-to-evening schedule—from May 1985 to May 1991. During its first six years of operation, Nickelodeon leased transponder airtime to transmit The Movie Channel, the Alpha Repertory Television Service and its successor A&E over its channel space during the network's nighttime off-hours; both The Movie Channel and A&E would eventually obtain full-time standalone satellite transponders to allow 24-hour-a-day transmissions.
Two early programming blocks were also among the first original cable programs produced for late night. Night Flight was a visual arts magazine/variety program—airing for four hours on Friday and Saturday nights throughout its USA Network run—that showcased mainstream and alternative music videos, artist interviews, stand-up comedy sets, animation, B movies, documentaries and short films; the short-lived IFC version strayed from Night Flights original format in that it was a 15-minute program that mixed excerpts from the original series with surreal footage from film, television and the Internet. Night Tracks was a music video program—also airing on Fridays and Saturdays, originally in two three-hour blocks for most of its run—developed to capitalize on the medium's emergence into the mainstream through the growing popularity of MTV in the early 1980s, which spun off several themed video countdown blocks and served as the basis for one of the shortest-lived networks in American cable television history, Cable Music Channel, Turner Broadcasting System's unsuccessful attempt at an MTV competitor that operated for 35 days from October to November 1984; an overnight movie offshoot, Night Flicks, debuted in August 1989 and served as the lead-out for Night Tracks during the final three years of the music program's run.
Attempting to build on the success of Nick at Nite's timeshare concept, some of Nickelodeon's sister channels offered their own targeted nighttime blocks during the 2000s and 2010s. Noggin, a channel co-founded by Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop, launched in February 1999 with a nighttime "retro" block that mainly featured classic shows from Sesame Workshop's program library. In April 2002, the network revamped its schedule, discarding the retro block and relegating its programming for preschooler and tween audiences to daytime hours; a new nighttime block aimed at teenagers, branded as "The N," occupied the remaining 12 hours of its daily schedule, incorporating many of the tween-targeted shows that were previously carried on Noggin's daytime lineup and eventually adding original and acquired/sublicensed fare catering to older teens featuring material more mature than would be permissible on Nickelodeon's other youth-targeted networks.
In July 2011, TeenNick launched "NickRewind", a nostalgia block centered on reruns of Nickelodeon programs from the 1990s, aimed at young adults who watched them as children during that decade; the block was formally discontinued in January 2022, one month after TeenNick started filling the slot with other programs from its regular schedule. In October 2012, Nick Jr. launched the female-oriented comedy block "NickMom"; the block generated controversy as, because the network lacked a secondary Pacific TIme feed at the time, programs containing profanity and mature humor inappropriate for Nick Jr.'s main target audience of children ages 2 to 7 started at earlier times—as early as the late-afternoon in Hawaii—for viewers in regions from the Mountain Time Zone westward. Nick Jr. would rectify this issue in February 2013, when it added a Pacific Time feed for Western and certain non-contiguous regions that previously received the East Coast feed by default, ensuring that NickMom shows started at their appropriate times nationwide; the block was discontinued in September 2015, being replaced by reruns of recent and some older Nick Jr. series.
From its launch in April 1983 until September 2002, Disney Channel programmed its late-night schedule to cater to adult audiences. As a premium service, the channel's nighttime schedule featured a mix of recent and classic films of varying appeal to family audiences; historical, music and educational documentaries; and music specials aimed at adults. In September 1997, the "Vault Disney" block premiered as a Sunday-only nighttime collection of older Disney-produced series and specials and selected older feature films from the Disney Studios Motion Pictures|studio] that had been shifted off its daytime and prime time lineups ; it would expand into a nightly block by late 1998. "Vault Disney" was discontinued in September 2002 as part of a broader rebranding of the network to cater more to children and teenagers; since then, Disney Channel's late-night programming has consisted mainly of reruns of its preteen-skewing original and acquired series and, until the mid-2010s, occasional airings of the network's original made-for-TV films.
In February 2004, sister network Toon Disney debuted "Jetix", a block of action-oriented live-action and animated series targeted at older children in the evening and early overnight slot ; Jetix ended as a programming block in the United States in February 2009, when Toon Disney was replaced by Disney XD, which initially featured programming similar to that featured on and carried over from the Jetix block. Beginning with its January 2012 launch, the Disney Junior linear channel featured some archival programming from the 1990s during the overnight hours; however into the 2020s, its late night lineup has shifted increasingly towards reruns of the channel's more recent original preschooler-targeted programs. In January 2012, FX Movie Channel relegated the pre-1990s 20th Century Fox films that had made up most of the schedule since its October 1994 launch to a commercial-free overnight and daytime block, "FXM Retro", while devoting the remaining 12 hours of FXM's schedule to more recent movies from various studios that were originally acquired for broadcast on parent network FX.
Several basic and premium cable networks have carried thematic film showcases in late night, including several from the "midnight movie" genre that aired on Friday and Saturday nights. Notable late-night cable showcases have included USA Up All Night, which became synonymous for its longtime hosts Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear; Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater, which was hosted for all but the first two years of its run by actor/film critic John Bloom as the titular Joe Bob Briggs ; MonsterVision, a horror/schlock/sci-fi-focused, marathon block-turned-double feature showcase that Bloom hosted for its final three years under a format largely derived from his Drive-In Theater run; and TCM Underground, a cult film showcase that included film genres found less often on "midnight movie" presentations.

Adult programming

Premium cable services historically have aired softcore pornographic content during the late night hours, containing simulated sexual intercourse and nudity that would likely not be allowed to air during the daytime hours. Over-the-air subscription television services that operated in certain markets—mainly in cities that were not yet fully wired for cable television service—between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s were among the first pay services to offer pornographic content. Adult programming blocks offered by these services were generally sold as an optional programming tier on top of the standard service for an additional monthly fee; subscribers who did not order the tier had their set-top decoder boxes temporarily reencrypt the service's signal until adult programming concluded.
Showtime was one of the earliest mainstream cable-originated premium services to adopt the practice of incorporating softcore content as part of its late-night programming. Debuting in 1981, the network's nightly "After Hours" block featured a mix of softcore pornographic films, and action and adventure movies, depending on the night. The softcore programming featured on "After Hours" would disappear from the main channel's schedule by 2004; however, while scheduled far less often in the present day, softcore adult films have continued to air in early overnight slots on most of Showtime's companion multiplex channels, sister service The Movie Channel and their respective linear and on-demand services, serving as the genre's sole remaining presence on mainstream premium cable as of 2024.
Cinemax, which is mainly dedicated to mainstream theatrical films, was heavily associated with softcore adult programming, despite that content being contained entirely within a late-night block on the network. Originally debuting in May 1984 as part of the weekly block "Cinemax Friday After Dark", the network would expand its adult offerings to a nightly basis by 1996, and expanded the softcore fare in 1992 to include half-hour weekly series. The "After Dark" block became the subject of both media scrutiny and pop culture humor, and became so synonymous with the network that Cinemax was given the colloquial nickname "Skinemax" by both fans and detractors. Cinemax began scaling back its late-night softcore content in 2013 to focus more on its original action programs as the ubiquity of hardcore pornography on the Internet made such a block appear as a tamer novelty; adult programming on Cinemax and sister network HBO Zone was dropped in 2018 following parent Time Warner 's acquisition by AT&T.
24-hour pay services dedicated to pornographic content also exist, also operating under a pay-per-view model, and are typically sold by television providers in either nighttime-only or all-day package options. One of the first national adult-oriented cable services to debut was Escapade, launched by Rainbow Media in December 1980 as a male-targeted five-night-a-week pay service offering a mix of R-rated action, horror and exploitation B movies and softcore adult films that shared channel space with the company's highbrow arts and film service Bravo. In November 1982, Playboy Enterprises and Rainbow launched The Playboy Channel—which originally began in January of that year as a weekly programming block in Escapade's Friday night slot—as a standalone, nighttime-only pay service; in addition to adult films, it featured a mix of interview specials with celebrities and Playboy centerfolds, adult-oriented soap operas, and stand-up comedy specials. In December 1989, The Playboy Channel switched to a pay-per-view model, sharing channel space with the Action Channel, which offered action and horror films, and specials during the daytime hours. A secondary pay-per-view/premium service, Playboy TV, launched in 1994 on satellite provider DirecTV, eventually superseding Playboy at Night as the company's pay offering.
Other pornographic film-oriented services launched during the early 1980s, including the Fun Unrestricted Network, The Pleasure Channel, HiLife, Rendezvous and the more hardcore Private Screenings and Eros. These services faced opposition from parents and religious conservatives amid concerns about children viewing their programming. One such service that would become the center of this criticism, American Exxxtasy, began as an unscrambled softcore service available to C-band satellite customers; it would shift focus in 1985 to offer uncut hardcore films ; the relaunched service required an annual subscription of $399, although customers were able to view one free film per night as encouragement to sign up. Citing a 1988 federal law barring the transmission of "obscene material" on television, a 1989 Alabama obscenity investigation into children obtaining recorded copies of the network's hardcore movies led to parent company Home Dish Only Satellite Networks, satellite transmission firms GTE Spacenet and U.S. Satellite Corporation, and 10 people being indicted by a grand jury on 500 charges of distributing hardcore pornography via satellite into the state. HDOSN and its networks would shut down in March 1990, after several C-band providers dropped American Exxxtasy and its softcore sister service Tuxxedo to avoid further criminal liability, and company founders Paul Klein and Jeffrey Younger reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice agreeing to plead guilty to obscenity charges and pay a $150,000 fine, cease satellite transmissions and turn over their film library to the government. Civil liberty organizations condemned the settlement, fearing it would set a "horrendous precedent" for First Amendment expression rights and chill pay television industry innovation.
Additional services debuted during the 1990s; Spice launched in 1992, offering hardcore pornographic films reedited to incorporate "softcore" versions of sex scenes omitting more graphic material. In February 1993, pay-per-view network Viewer's Choice relaunched its secondary service Viewer's Choice II as Hot Choice, featuring action-adventure movies during the daytime and evening and erotica in the late evening and overnight hours. Erotica product-focused home shopping services Adam & Eve Channel and Cupid Network Television launched in 1994.
Networks featuring more hardcore content debuted in the late 1990s and 2000s, particularly as a result of the United States v. Playboy Entertainment ruling effectively determining obscenity regulations did not apply to pay television, including Spice Hot, The Erotic Network and Penthouse TV; however, other softcore services such as The Hot Network also entered the market during this timeframe. The increased competition eroded Playboy's dominance of the adult cable market, which it attempted to remedy by acquiring Spice parent Spice Entertainment Companies in February 1998 and later The Hot Network in July 2001, and adding somewhat more explicit films to Playboy TV's schedule.

Regulation

"Safe harbor" watershed

The late night and overnight graveyard slots fall within the FCC's defined "safe harbor" period, exceptions to regulations normally prohibiting "indecent" material on broadcast television and radio that permit programming suitable only for mature or adult audiences to be broadcast between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. local time. While broadcast stations can legally air almost anything they want late at night and cable networks can at all hours, broadcast stations rarely offer and basic cable services tend to limit their carriage of indecent content to avoid reprimands from advertisers, and in the case of over-the-air broadcasters, the constant fluctuation of indecency standards to account for changes in public acceptance and FCC enforcement.
The FCC attempted to eliminate the safe harbor provision in 1988, as directed by the United States Congress, however the proposed 24-hour ban on indecent material was stricken as unconstitutional by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 1991; the Telecommunications Act of 1992 re-established a safe harbor period from midnight to 6:00 a.m., before restoring the previous 10:00 p.m. watershed start following further D.C. Circuit rulings.

Regulations on adult cable programming

Restricted-access cable-originated channels are not covered by the "safe harbor" regulations. Premium channels and pay-per-view services distributed through multichannel video programming distributors are given considerably more leeway to broadcast material strong to graphic profanity, violence, nudity and sexual content as their revenue is generated through fees paid by subscribers. The FCC does require pay television providers to completely scramble or block the video and audio portions of channels dedicated to sexually explicit material, or require them to transmit their programming only during the designated watershed hours when children are not likely to view it.
Concerns over children hearing or seeing images of sexual content from adult networks resulting from signal bleed resulted in Congress including a provision into the Telecommunications Act of 1996 requiring cable providers carrying channels "primarily dedicated to sexually-oriented programs" to either fully scramble or block those channels, or to restrict their transmission to between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Section 505 of the Act, which was enacted based on a handful of complaints without a prior congressional hearing, was struck down in a 5-4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, holding that it constituted a broad content-based restriction in violation of the First Amendment as the provision singled out specific types of programming and programmers, and that a separate provision allowing subscribers to request the scrambling or complete blocking of an adult channel was sufficient.