Does the daylight savings change cost the Networks money in lost programming?

General Questions
#1

We sprang forward an hour last night. Lost an hours worth of sleep.

What about the tv networks? Every second of commercial time represents big bucks.
Did they lose an hours worth of programming?

I’ve actually been up before and seen the time change on my direct tv guide. One moment they show programs scheduled for 2 AM. boom, it’s suddenly 3 AM. (it’s more exciting if you’ve had a couple beers before hand. :stuck_out_tongue: )

So, how do the networks figure their commercial revenue after a time change? Obviously the day still had 24 hours, but it’s like it got pushed down the ruler by an hour.

#2

It’s at night so no prime time spots would have been lost and so the lost airtime accounts for a tiny percentage of the available commercial airtime. Plus, commercials that late are generally taken by advertisers who just pay to get x number of spots at some time during that period of the evening. So yes commercial airtime does get lost in that sense, but 6 months later you get it back again with an extra hour.

In Britain at least you count ratings. I’m not even sure if they bother calculating the loss of ratings from that hour in the weekly ratings projection, but if they do we’re talking a really miniscule percentage. However it’s fairly easy to manage - you just tweak a spreadsheet.

#3

I wouldn’t think the revenue for 2:00AM to 3:00AM on a Sunday night (Monday morning technically), makes a difference. If not for infomercials, many local stations (I don’t know if there’s any network programming at that hour anymore, I think CBS had an all night show for a while), would play the anthem and put up a test pattern (remember theIndian?)

#4

It is actually 2:00AM to 3:00AM on a Saturday night (Sunday morning technically). If people forget, they will be an hour late for church! :smiley:

#5

:smack::smack::smack: that’s what 1 less hour of the little sleep I get will do.

#6

So what do the networks do in the Fall when we set the clocks back an hour? Do they do a 1-time fill-in of an hour’s programming? And it would seem they get an hour extra revenue to offset any loss in the spring. (Yeah, I know, all businesses live quarter-to-quarter but still…)

#7

I’ve sat up and watched NBC during this time before. NBC repeated the 11:00 news broadcast at 3:00, and then followed it with last week’s episodes of the Tonight Show and Late Night before switching to morning programming. When DST started, they would skip the Late Night repeat. When it ended, they would show two, one from a week ago, and one particularly popular one.

Of course, this was while Conan still had Late Night. But I’m sure the general idea of skipping a repeat is used.

ETA: I just remembered: that’s only with my local affiliate KYTV. As far as I know, the last few hours of programming are not dictated by the network. If they were, they’d have to take into account Arizona.

#8

No, they did not lose any programming at all. Any tv station or network that broadcasts all night on a regular Saturday night was broadcasting all night on this one also. They didn’t lose a dime.

Maybe what you meant was to ask how it shows up on the accounting books, given that there were only 23 hours in this particular day. I guess they did make a little less money than usual, not that 2 AM on Sunday morning is such a big moneymaker to begin with. But it balances out in the fall, with a Sunday that’s 25 hours long.

#9

Admittedly, I don’t know the numbers, but I doubt that the 2-3 am hour on Sunday “represents big bucks” at all. My guess is that any lost revenue is negligible, percentage-wise. And, as previously mentioned, they make it back in October anyway.