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Why 11:35?

A

ActionDan403

Guest
I am curious if anyone knows why the late night TV shows that follow the local newscasts begin at 11:35 instead of 11:30. Most shows start at the top and bottom of each hour. I know this has been the case for many years, but did the FCC change guidelines at some point, or has it always been that way since the original Tonight Show and other late night programming premiered?
 
It has nothing to do whatsoever with the FCC and everything to do with revenue at local stations.

The big money revenue-getter program at most stations is the late, 11 PM news. For years, in the '50's and '60's and beyond, the news only ran to 11:30, starting and ending on the half-hour like most shows do. In fact, some stations only managed to eek out a 15 minute newscast - and THE TONIGHT SHOW and NBC actually provided an extra 15 minutes of lite-chat prior to the 11:30 official start time.

When the local stations figured out that they made their most money from that half-hour, they lobbied and got their networks to push the 11:30 shows back by 5 minutes. Why? So they could sell five minutes more advertising WITHIN their 11 PM newscasts.

A similar phenomenon exists with popular network shows. Check when LOST or CSI: airs. You'll find that they start on time, but end a few minutes into the next hour. That's so that the networks can sell more minutes WITHIN those shows. And they'll actually run fewer commercials in the shows that follow.

For the 10:00 hour, the networks sometimes start a popular show a minute or two early. Back in its final few seasons, E.R. used to start at 9:58 PM.
 
And who can forget NBC's "super-sized" sitcoms on Thursday nights? ;D

I believe the shift to :35 after happened officially across the board sometime in the early 90's.
 
Ted Turner's TBS used to start all shows at :05 and :35 back in the 90's as well. I was watching WPVI last night and I noticed that a couple shows (Modern Family, Cougar Town) ran until :31 and :01 after the hour. There were a few commercials on toward the conclusion of Modern Family, they came back for a brief concluding segment at 9:31, then went straight into Cougar Town.
 
"The Tonight Show" started airing at 11:35/10:35 CT in the fall of 1991. ABC followed suit with "Nightline" either around the same time or shortly thereafter. CBS didn't push back late-night programming to 11:35 until David Letterman moved to the network in the fall of '93.
 
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