Broadcast programming
Broadcast programming is the practice of scheduling broadcast media shows, typically radio and television, in a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or season-long schedule.
Modern broadcasters use broadcast automation to regularly change the scheduling of their shows to build an audience for a new show, retain that audience, or compete with other broadcasters' shows. Most broadcast television shows are presented weekly in prime time or daily in other dayparts, though there are many exceptions.
At a micro level, scheduling is the minute planning of the transmission; what to broadcast and when, ensuring an adequate or maximum utilization of airtime. Television scheduling strategies are employed to give shows the best possible chance of attracting and retaining an audience. They are used to deliver shows to audiences when they are most likely to want to watch them and deliver audiences to advertisers in the composition that makes their advertising most likely to be effective.
With the growth of digital platforms and services allowing non-linear, on-demand access to television content, this approach to broadcasting has since been referred to using the retronym linear.
History
With the beginning of scheduled television in 1936, television programming was initially only concerned with filling a few hours each evening – the hours now known as prime time. Over time, though, television began to be seen during the daytime and late at night, as well on the weekends. As air time increased, so did the demand for new material. With the exception of sports television, variety shows became much more important in prime time.Scheduling strategies
Lead-ins and lead-outs
Broadcasters may schedule a program to air before or after a widely viewed tent-pole program, such as a popular series, or a special such as a high-profile sporting event, in the hope that audience flow will encourage the audience to tune-in early or stay for the second program. The second program is usually one that the broadcaster wants to promote to a wider audience, such as a new or lower-profile series. Sometimes, a lower-profile program may be scheduled between two tentpole programs, a technique known as hammocking.In some cases, a lead-in may be an episode of a series that has a tie-in or relevance to the lead-out. In May 2025, the BBC scheduled the Doctor Who episode "The Interstellar Song Contest"—which is themed after the Eurovision Song Contest—as a lead-in to its live broadcast of the 2025 edition. The episode was, in turn, aired after the 2025 FA Cup final; the hammocking of the episode between two live events proved to be risky for the BBC, with Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies expressing concern that the episode could have been preempted if the FA Cup match went to extra time. However, this did not prove to be the case, and the episode was the third-highest rated program of the night, behind only the FA Cup and Eurovision themselves.
Lead-outs can sometimes help to launch new programs and talent; in 1982, NBC premiered Late Night with David Letterman as a lead-out for its long-running late-night talk show The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Characterized by an off-beat style appealing to young adults, Late Night helped launch the career of host David Letterman, and influence later entries into the genre. Despite Carson's endorsement of Letterman as a successor following his 1992 retirement, NBC chose Jay Leno instead, and Letterman departed for CBS to host a spiritual successor—Late Show with David Letterman—beginning in the 1993–94 season. Late Night would continue as a franchise with hosts such as Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon—both of whom would later go on to host The Tonight Show. In 2005, the first season of The Ultimate Fighter—a reality competition series following mixed martial arts fighters competing for a contract in the UFC—aired on Spike TV as a lead-out to the professional wrestling series WWE Raw; the program pulled 36% higher viewership than Spike's prior programming in the post-Raw timeslot, and retained 57% of the Raw audience among young adult males.
In the 1993–94 season, Fox scheduled The X-Files as a lead-out for its sci-fi western The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., with the expectation that Brisco County Jr. would serve as the anchor of its Friday-night lineup. However, The X-Files proved to be significantly more successful, and would eventually run for nine seasons. By contrast, viewership for Brisco County Jr. declined throughout the season, and the show was cancelled. Fox attempted to use other sci-fi shows as a lead-in for The X-Files, but they were similarly unsuccessful.
A weak lead-in can have an impact on the viewership of programs that follow; NBC's 2009 attempt to strip the talk show The Jay Leno Show in a 10:00 p.m. ET/PT timeslot proved detrimental to the viewership of late local newscasts on its affiliates. NBC subsequently announced plans to shorten The Jay Leno Show to a half hour and move it to 11:35 p.m. ET/PT in late-February 2010, displacing The Tonight Show from its traditional timeslot. This proposal led to a public conflict between O'Brien and NBC, and ultimately resulted in his departure from the network, and the reinstatement of Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show.
A type of lead-out popularized by some series is an aftershow—a supplemental talk show devoted to the preceding program. They usually feature discussion and analysis of its most recent episode, interviews with cast members and celebrity fans of the series, behind-the-scenes content, as well as audience and viewer interactivity. These formats were employed by networks such as AMC, where they served as a cost-effective lead-out that could retain viewers and appeal to fans of a popular series.
Blocks
Block programming is the practice of scheduling a group of complementary programs together. Blocks are typically built around specific genres, target audiences, or other factors, with their programming often promoted collectively under blanket titles.Bridging
Bridging is the practice of discouraging the audience from changing channels during the "junctions" between specific programs. This can be done, primarily, by airing promos for the next program near the end of the preceding program, such as during its credits, or reducing the length of the junction between two programs as much as possible. The host of the next program may similarly make a brief appearance near the end of the preceding program to provide a preview; in news broadcasting, this is typically referred to as a "throw" or "toss".A bridge was used by ABC between Roseanne and the December 1992 series premiere of The Jackie Thomas Show, a new sitcom co-created by Roseanne and Tom Arnold of Roseanne fame. A scene of the Connor family watching its opening on TV seamlessly transitioned into the program itself, with no junction in between. ABC commissioned a minute-by-minute Nielsen ratings report, which showed that the majority of viewers from Roseanne had been retained during the premiere. In June 2007, CBS scheduled a prime time encore of the season finale of The Price is Right—the final episode hosted by long-time emcee Bob Barker—as a lead-in to its telecast of the 34th Daytime Emmy Awards, with an additional bridge scene featuring Barker.
Owing to both programs' news comedy formats, the Comedy Central program The Daily Show used newscast-style toss segments to promote its new spin-off and lead-out, The Colbert Report, in which host Jon Stewart would engage in a comedic conversation with the latter's host, Stephen Colbert, via split-screen. On the December 18, 2014 episode of The Daily Show, this segment was used to seamlessly segue into the series finale of The Colbert Report. At its conclusion, the show transitioned back to Stewart '', who concluded his show with its traditional closing segment "Your Moment of Zen" as normal.
In some cases, a channel may intentionally allow a program to overrun into the next half-hour timeslot rather than end exactly on the half-hour, in order to discourage viewers from "surfing" away at traditional junction periods. This can, however, cause disruptions with recorders if they are not aware of the scheduling. For a period, TBS intentionally scheduled all of its programs at 5 and 35 minutes past the hour rather than exactly on the half hour, to attract viewers tuning away from other channels.
Crossovers
Crossovers can be organized between multiple programs, in which a single storyline is extended across episodes of two or more separate programs. Typically, these involve programs that form a single franchise or shared universe, such as NBC's Chicago franchise and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and the ABC dramas Grey's Anatomy and Station 19.Counterprogramming
Counterprogramming is the practice of deliberately scheduling programming to attract viewers away from another, major program. Counterprogramming efforts often involve scheduling a contrasting program of a different genre or demographic, targeting viewers who may not be interested in the major program. Despite frequently being among the top U.S. television broadcasts of all time, the Super Bowl has had a prominent history of being counterprogrammed in this manner. One of the most prominent examples of this practice was Fox's 1992 airing of a special live episode of In Living Color against the game's halftime show.Programs can also be counterprogrammed by a direct competitor in the same time slot, often resulting in the two programs attempting to attract viewers away from each other through publicity stunts and other tactics. These tactics have most notably been seen in counterprogramming efforts surrounding professional wrestling: WWE was known for its conflicts with the rival Jim Crockett Promotions, and the latter's corporate successor World Championship Wrestling in the 1980s and 1990s, and has since engaged in similar conflicts in the 2020s with the upstart All Elite Wrestling.
In some cases, broadcasters may attempt to adjust their schedules in order to avert attempts at counterprogramming, such as getting a slightly earlier time slot, scheduling the competing program on a different night, or moving it to a different portion of the television season to avoid competition altogether.