Graveyard slot - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A graveyard slot is a time period in which a television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

audience

Audience

An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...

is very small compared to other times of the day, and therefore broadcast programming is considered far less important. Graveyard slots are usually in the early morning hours of each day, when most people are asleep. Because there is little likelihood of having a substantial viewing audience during this time period, providing useful television program

Television program

A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...

ming during this time is usually considered unimportant; some broadcast stations go off the air during these hours, and some audience measurement

Audience measurement

Audience measurement measures how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic on websites...

systems do not bother collecting measurements for these periods. Some broadcasters may do engineering work at this time.

Programming

The most well-known graveyard slot in most parts of the world is the overnight television slot, after late night television

Late night television

Late night television in the United States is the block of television programming airing after 11:00 pm and usually through 2:00 am. Traditionally, this type of programming airs after the late local news and is most notable for being the daypart used for a particular genre of programming that falls...

and before breakfast television

Breakfast television

Breakfast television or morning show , is a type of infotainment television program, broadcast live in the morning...

. During this time slot, most people that are at home are asleep, and most of those that are awake are at work

Night Shift

A night shift is either a group of workers who work during the night, or the period in which they work. See shift work.Night Shift may also refer to:* Night Shift , a fictional team of supervillains in the Marvel Universe...

, away from the television. As a result, insomnia

Insomnia

Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...

cs and the small amount of shift workers with television access are effectively the only available audience during this time slot. Since the advent of home video recording, some programs in this slot may be transmitted mainly with home taping in mind. Among these are the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

's Sign Zone and their former specialist service BBC Select

BBC Select

BBC Select was an overnight television service run by the BBC during the hours when BBC1 or BBC2 had closed down, usually between 2am and 6am.The channel showed programming intended for specialist audiences, such as businessmen, lawyers, nurses and teachers, and was designed to be viewed after...

, which were for specialist audiences. Some channels carry adult content

Pornography

Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

in the graveyard slot, although this happens less often because most government communications regulations forbid pornography in all forms at any given time.

Since the 1980s, graveyard slots, once populated by broadcasts of syndicated rerun

Rerun

A rerun or repeat is a re-airing of an episode of a radio or television broadcast. The invention of the rerun is generally credited to Desi Arnaz. There are two types of reruns—those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Reruns can also be, as the...

s and old movies

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, have increasingly been used for program-length infomercial

Infomercial

Infomercials are direct response television commercials which generally include a phone number or website. There are long-form infomercials, which are typically between 15 and 30 minutes in length, and short-form infomercials, which are typically 30 seconds to 120 seconds in length. Infomercials...

s or simulcasting of home shopping

Home shopping

Home shopping commonly refers to the electronic retailing/home shopping channels industry, which includes such billion dollar television-based and e-commerce companies as HSN, QVC, eBay, ShopNBC, Buy.com, and Amazon.com, as well as traditional mail order and brick and mortar retailers as Hammacher...

channels, which provide a media outlet with revenue without any programming expenses. It is also a popular "dumping ground" for government-mandated public affairs programming. Also, since the proliferation of digital video recorder

Digital video recorder

A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...

s, several cable and satellite outlets have begun airing original or rarely-seen archival programming in these time slots to make them available to those recording them on DVRs (special restrictions prevent stations from using the overnight graveyard slot for E/I

E/I

E/I, which stands for "educational and informative," refers to a type of children's television programming shown in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission requires that every full-service Terrestrial television station in the U.S. show at least three hours of these television...

shows). An emerging trend in the United States is an increasingly early local news

Local news

In journalism, local news refers to news coverage of events in a local context which would not normally be of interest to those of other localities, or otherwise be of national or international scope.-Television:...

cast, which now begins at 4:30 a.m. in some major markets

Media market

A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area , Television Market Area , or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same television and radio station offerings, and may also include other types of media including newspapers and Internet content...

, targeting those who work early shifts; this early newscast would fit into the overnight daypart rather than breakfast television

Breakfast television

Breakfast television or morning show , is a type of infotainment television program, broadcast live in the morning...

.

The graveyard slots' lack of importance sometimes benefits programs. Producers and program-makers can afford to take more risks, as there is less advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

revenue

Revenue

In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....

at stake. For example, an unusual or niche program may find a chance for an audience in a graveyard slot, or a formerly-popular program that no longer merits an important time slot may be allowed to run in a graveyard slot instead of being removed from the schedule completely. However, abusing this practice may lead to channel drift

Channel drift

Channel drift, or network decay is the gradual transition of a television network away from its original programming focus to either target a newer more lucrative audience, or to broaden their viewership by including less niche programming...

if the demoted programs were presented as channel stars at some time.

Examples

Examples of graveyard slots in the United States, outside of the traditional overnight slots, include:
Weekdays, noon Eastern: This time slot became a "death slot" for network programming, as local midday news became more popular in the 1970s. CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

still offers an option for affiliates to air The Young and the Restless
The Young and the Restless
The Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City, which is unlike and unrelated to the real life village of the same name, Genoa City, Wisconsin...

at noon Eastern (usually so those in the Central Time Zone can air their news at noon local time), but most stations wait until 12:30 p.m. to air that show, even though most (though not all) CBS stations have shifted their noon news in the Central Time Zone to a midday news at 11 a.m. Stations that do not carry news in this slot usually air syndicated fare or an infomercial. Prior to the 1970s, this slot was a popular "lunch slot," and shows such as Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...

were popular in the time slot.
Weekdays, 4 p.m. Eastern: When the noon time slot became unusable in the late 1970s, networks began doubling up airings of their noon shows at 4 p.m. Increases in syndication during the early 1980s led to networks having fewer and fewer affiliates in this time slot as well, and eventually all networks abandoned the slot by 1986 (incidentally, the same year The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....

debuted; Oprah soon came to dominate the time slot). Several larger market affiliates such as CBS affiliate WOIO

WOIO

WOIO, virtual channel 19 , is the CBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio. It is licensed to the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights. WOIO is owned by Raycom Media and its sister station to MyNetworkTV affiliate WUAB . The two stations share a studio facility in Cleveland and WOIO's transmitter is located in...

in Cleveland and CBS O&O

Owned-and-operated station

In the broadcasting industry , an owned-and-operated station usually refers to a television station or radio station that is owned by the network with which it is associated...

KDKA-TV

KDKA-TV, channel 2, is an owned and operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. KDKA-TV broadcasts from a transmitter located in the Perry North neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and its studios are located in downtown Pittsburgh at Gateway Center....

in Pittsburgh now air local news

Local news

in this hour.
Friday night death slot

Friday night death slot

The Friday night death slot is a perceived graveyard slot in American television, referring to the concept that a television program in the United States scheduled on Friday evenings is destined for imminent cancellation....

: This time slot has become increasingly unpopular due to fewer viewers watching television on Friday nights, in particular among the much-sought after 18-49 demographic. As such, programs that air on Friday nights tend to lag behind in viewership compared to those on other weeknights, and networks have since programmed inexpensive reality programming

Reality television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...

or news magazines in this slot instead of scripted programs. Since 2005, CBS is the only network that continues to air a full line-up of scripted programming on Fridays and has in the last 15 years become successful with this time slot. Despite being a known graveyard slot, there have been notable exceptions to this rule, such as The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...

, Full House
Full House
Full House is an American sitcom television series. Set in San Francisco, the show chronicles widowed father Danny Tanner, who, after the death of his wife, enlists his best friend Joey Gladstone and his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis to help raise his three daughters, D.J., Stephanie, and...

, Dallas
Dallas (TV series)
Dallas is an American serial drama/prime time soap opera that revolves around the Ewings, a wealthy Texas family in the oil and cattle-ranching industries. Throughout the series, Larry Hagman stars as greedy, scheming oil baron J. R. Ewing...

, Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest is an American primetime television soap opera which aired on the CBS network for nine seasons, from December 4, 1981 to May 17, 1990. A total of 227 episodes were produced....

, Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son is an American sitcom, based on the BBC's Steptoe and Son, that ran on the NBC television network from January 14, 1972, to March 25, 1977....

, Miami Vice
Miami Vice
Miami Vice is an American television series produced by Michael Mann for NBC. The series starred Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two Metro-Dade Police Department detectives working undercover in Miami. It ran for five seasons on NBC from 1984–1989...

, Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...

, Reba
Reba (TV series)
Reba is an American sitcom starring Reba McEntire, which ran from 2001 to 2007. For the show's first five seasons, it ran on The WB, with the show transitioning to The CW in its last year.-Synopsis:...

, Numb3rs
NUMB3RS
Numb3rs is an American television drama which premiered on CBS on January 23, 2005, and concluded on March 12, 2010. The series was created by Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton, and follows FBI Special Agent Don Eppes and his mathematical genius brother, Charlie Eppes , who helps Don solve crimes...

, Ghost Whisperer
Ghost Whisperer
Ghost Whisperer is an American television supernatural drama, which ran on CBS from September 23, 2005 to May 21, 2010.The series follows the life of Melinda Gordon , who has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts...

, CSI: NY
CSI: NY
CSI: NY is an American police procedural television series that premiered on September 22, 2004, on CBS. The show follows the investigations of a team of NYPD forensic scientists and police officers as they unveil the circumstances behind mysterious and unusual deaths as well as other crimes...

, and others.
Weekend afternoons: Particularly when no sporting events are airing, there is very little incentive to watch television after the Saturday morning cartoon

Saturday morning cartoon

A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...

s and the Sunday morning talk shows end, and most stations air infomercials, movies, or little-watched syndicated fare in this slot. ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

currently runs reality television reruns in the late afternoon slot when the channel is not airing sports.
Saturday nights: Up until the 1990s, many popular series aired on Saturdays, including CBS series such as Have Gun - Will Travel, All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...

, The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns that aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977...

, The Bob Newhart Show
The Bob Newhart Show
The Bob Newhart Show is an American situation comedy produced by MTM Enterprises, which aired 142 original episodes on CBS from September 16, , to April 1, . Comedian Bob Newhart portrayed a psychologist having to deal with his patients and fellow office workers...

, The Carol Burnett Show
The Carol Burnett Show
The Carol Burnett Show is a variety / sketch comedy television show starring Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner, and Tim Conway. It originally ran on CBS from September 11, 1967, to March 29, 1978, for 278 episodes and originated from CBS Television City's Studio 33...

, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman is an American post-Civil War western/drama series created by Beth Sullivan. Dr. Michaela "Mike" Quinn, played by Jane Seymour, left Boston in search of adventure. She goes to Colorado Springs, Colorado where she establishes herself as doctor/adviser.The show ran on CBS...

, Early Edition
Early Edition
Early Edition is an American television series that aired on CBS from September 28, 1996 to May 27, 2000. Set in the city of Chicago, Illinois, it follows the adventures of a man who mysteriously receives each Chicago Sun-Times newspaper the day before it is actually published, and who uses this...

, and Walker, Texas Ranger
Walker, Texas Ranger
Walker, Texas Ranger is an American television action crime drama series created by Leslie Greif and Paul Haggis, and starring Chuck Norris as a member of the Texas Ranger Division. The show aired on CBS in the spring of 1993, with the first season consisting of three pilot episodes. Eight full...

, as well as NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

's The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris, which originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992. Starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, the show centers on four older women sharing a home in Miami, Florida...

and its numerous spin-offs, and most networks maintained a full schedule (though the night was also often used for airing movies). However, in the past decade, a similar situation to Friday nights has emerged, with fewer viewers in front of a TV set. The last major efforts to program Saturday nights ended in 2001, when CBS canceled

Cancellation (television)

In television, cancellation refers to the termination of a program by a network, typically because of low viewership and/or unfavourable critical reviews. Another reason why television programs can be cancelled is to make room for new television programs...

Walker, Texas Ranger and NBC failed with the XFL

XFL

The XFL was a professional American football league that played for one season in 2001. The league was founded by Vince McMahon, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of WWE...

. Thus, since 2004, the mainstream U.S. networks have largely abandoned original programming on Saturday nights in favor of reruns and occasionally sports coverage (with the exceptions of Fox, which has continued to air its long running reality show COPS
COPS (TV series)
Cops is an American documentary/reality television series that follows police officers, constables, and sheriff's deputies during patrols and other police activities...

, and CBS, which continues a limited first-run presence with 48 Hours Mystery
48 Hours (TV series)
48 Hours is a documentary and news program broadcast on the CBS television network since January 19, 1988. The program originally presented documentaries of various events related to a particular subject occurring within a 48-hour period, and is credited as one of the first to air a "reality show"...

). In recent years, a new trend has emerged where a show that is considered to be a ratings failure (or is already canceled) is moved to Saturday nights to finish airing its original episodes

Burning off

Burning off is the low-profile airing of otherwise-abandoned unaired television programs, usually by scheduling in far less important time slots or on less important sister stations...

(examples include NBC's Crusoe
Crusoe (TV series)
Crusoe is a television adventure drama based loosely on the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The series' 13 episodes aired on NBC during the first half of the 2008-2009 television season. It follows the adventures of Robinson Crusoe: a man who has been shipwrecked on an island for six years...

and the CBS

CBS

miniseries Harper's Island in 2008-09, CBS' Three Rivers
Three Rivers (TV series)
Three Rivers is a medical drama, which premiered on CBS on October 4, 2009 and aired Sundays at 9 pm Eastern Time/Pacific Time. The series was set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at a fictional hospital specializing in transplants, with Alex O'Loughlin starring as a famous transplant surgeon...

and ABC's The Forgotten
The Forgotten (TV series)
The Forgotten is a television series which premiered on September 22, 2009 on ABC. On November 9, 2009, ABC ordered five additional episodes of the series, bringing the first season's total to eighteen episodes...

in 2009-2010, and NBC's Outlaw
Outlaw (TV series)
Outlaw is an American television series that was aired on the NBC network. The one-hour courtroom drama stars Jimmy Smits as a Supreme Court Justice who resigns from the bench to start his own law firm, as a way to more directly promote the ends of justice...

and Chase
Chase (2010 TV series)
Chase is an American police procedural drama television series created by Jennifer Johnson for the NBC network. The series follows a U.S. Marshals fugitive-apprehension team, based out of Houston, Texas. Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnson serve as executive producers for the one-hour drama...

and CBS's CHAOS

Chaos (TV series)

CHAOS is an American television series for the CBS network. The one-hour comedic drama premiered on April 1, 2011, as a midseason replacement for The Defenders.-Premise:...

in 2010-2011).
Early Sunday mornings (prior to 7 a.m.): Owing to the fact that people generally stay out later on Saturday nights than other nights of the week, people also tend to sleep in longer on Sunday mornings. The Sunday morning 5-7 a.m. time slot is the most common time for stations to air public affairs and televangelism

Televangelism

Televangelism is the use of television to communicate the Christian faith. The word is a portmanteau of television and evangelism and was coined by Time magazine. A “televangelist” is a Christian minister who devotes a large portion of his ministry to television broadcasting...

programs.
Sunday nights, 7-8 p.m. and 10-11 p.m.: Because of overruns from National Football League

National Football League

The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...

(NFL) games, Fox

Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

(in the earlier slot) and, to a lesser extent, CBS (in the latter slot) have had difficulty launching shows in these time slots. Each network had a different strategy to handle overruns; Fox would preempt its programming in the early time slot if an NFL game overran its time slot, while CBS (in order to protect its popular news magazine, 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....

) delays its entire prime time

Prime time

Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 or 20:00 to 23:00 Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast...

broadcast programming schedule if a game overruns, resulting in the show scheduled for the 10 p.m. slot sometimes (but less often) being bumped. Fox has since addressed its issues by clearing out the time slot for an NFL post-game show

Post-game show

A post-game show or postgame show is a TV or radio presentation that occurs immediately after the live broadcast of a major sporting event.Contents may include:* replays of key moments in the game.* interviews with players, coaches and managers....

during the NFL regular season, though mid-season replacement series have still had problems finding an audience in the time slot. CBS has attempted to stabilize the 10 p.m. slot by moving its established series, CSI: Miami
CSI: Miami
CSI: Miami is an American police procedural television series, which premiered on September 23, 2002 on CBS. The series is a spin-off of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation....

, from its original Monday night slot to Sunday nights instead of trying to launch a new show in the usually troublesome slot. Rival networks ABC and NBC air America's Funniest Home Videos
America's Funniest Home Videos
America's Funniest Home Videos is an American reality television program on ABC in which viewers are able to send in humorous homemade videotapes. The most common videos usually feature slapstick physical comedy arising from incidents, accidents and mishaps...

and Dateline NBC
Dateline NBC
Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC. It previously was NBC's flagship news magazine, but now focuses on true crime stories. It airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST and after football season on Sunday at 7 p.m. EST.-History:Dateline is historically notable for...

respectively in the early time slot, both relatively low-cost programs. ABC has had somewhat greater success in the late slot with scripted dramas (e.g. The Practice
The Practice
The Practice is an American legal drama created by David E. Kelley centering on the partners and associates at a Boston law firm. Running for eight seasons from 1997 to 2004, the show won the Emmy in 1998 and 1999 for Best Drama Series, and spawned the successful and lighter spin-off series Boston...

, Brothers & Sisters).
Opposite popular programming: Programs such as the Super Bowl

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...

and American Idol
American Idol
American Idol, titled American Idol: The Search for a Superstar for the first season, is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment...

are known to draw so many viewers that almost all efforts to counterprogram

Counterprogramming

In Broadcast programming, counterprogramming is the practice of offering television programs to attract an audience from another television station airing a major event.-Television:...

against them have failed. This results in most stations putting their weakest, least expensive, or most unusual programming in these time slots. (see also: Super Bowl counterprogramming
Super Bowl counterprogramming
Although it is consistently one of the most watched sports television events in the United States, television networks and television stations channels have often attempted to counterprogram against the Super Bowl with original television programming...

)

Content requirements

In Canada

Television in Canada

Television in Canada officially began with the opening of the nation's first television stations in Montreal and Toronto in 1952. As with most media in Canada, the television industry, and the television programming available in that country, are strongly influenced by the American media, perhaps...

, federal regulations require television channels and radio stations to carry a certain percentage of Canadian content

Canadian content

Canadian content refers to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requirements that radio and television broadcasters must air a certain percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from...

(or Cancon). It is common for most privately-owned television channels to air the bulk of their Cancon in such graveyard slots (especially weekday mornings and Saturday nights), ensuring they can meet their required percentages of Canadian programming while leaving room for more popular foreign programming in other time periods. For over-the-air terrestrial television

Terrestrial television

Terrestrial television is a mode of television broadcasting which does not involve satellite transmission or cables — typically using radio waves through transmitting and receiving antennas or television antenna aerials...

stations, the overnight hours are generally not subject to Canadian content

Canadian content

(Cancon) requirements, allowing some opportunity for niche or experimental programming during those hours, although most commonly infomercials air instead. Canadian radio stations have similar practices regarding broadcasts of Canadian music, known pejoratively as the "beaver hour

Beaver hour

The beaver hour, or beaver bin, is a satirical nickname for a programming philosophy used by some Canadian radio stations, which was prominent especially, but not exclusively, in the 1970s....

".

Likewise, in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, some stations attempt to bury mandated E/I

E/I

educational television

Educational television

Educational television is the use of television programs in the field of distance education. It may be in the form of individual television programs or dedicated specialty channels that is often associated with cable television in the United States as Public, educational, and government access ...

programming in graveyard slots, though under current regulations by the Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

(FCC), Children's television series

Children's television series

Children's television series, are commercial television programs designed for, and marketed to children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run in the early evening, for the children that go to school...

must air during times when children are awake (current standards state between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.). Thus, these channels will "bury" E/I programs in the middle of a block of infomercial

Infomercial

s during the daytime television

Daytime television

Daytime television is the general term for television shows produced that are intended to air during the daytime hours on weekdays. This article is about American daytime television, for information about international daytime television see Daytime television....

, when most children are at school and are unlikely to ever see them.

Programming

Examples

Content requirements

See also