Timezones and international live events

A subject that people will probably think about more often, now that we're in an interconnected age of live global cat videos.

They're hard to schedule, these 'international' TV events in sport / entertainment / royal weddings etc. Which country can have it in primetime or at 4am? Traditionally Europe and America had the most TVs and the most influence over scheduling, but Asia's increase in viewership power is changing all that – from China's world-record ratings to an EFL Cup draw held at 4.15am, to possible schedule changes in the Premier League and Champions League.

Some ideas:

• What events or sport have been held at crazy times? Either for the 'home' audience or overseas audience.

• What's the hardest event to schedule for its international audiences?

• What UK events were timed to suit another timezone?

• Should Eurovision be on earlier? (No wars please)

Coincidentally a few big sporting events are coming up at non-UK-friendly times: the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics (overnight), and England's RLWC semi-final (5am). But Europe is often fortunate, as its TV audiences are usually considered even when the event is held far away. In men's football, every World Cup Final for 40 years was scheduled for European primetime, except two: 2002 in Japan, and 2018 in Russia. It's likely to happen less in future.

About the Eurovision question, see Lisa-Jayne Lewis's recent post (http://escinsight.com/2017/09/21/when-should-the-eurovision-song-contest-start/). Regardless of logistics and 'peak' time, some Eurovision nights have had a local start time of 11pm and even midnight (2009 and 2012).

Eurovision 2012 in Azerbaijan (pic: Vugarİbadov, cc-by-sa)

Some previous threads – Queen's Xmas Message times and English TV abroad
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F1 races are held later in the day in the eastern hemisphere so that they arent too early for the European audience, and also might be why they are towards the beginning of the season. Those in the Americas are later in the season and are great for prime time in Europe.

Thinking about the tennis watching I do, the US Open is probably best for European audiences as play starts 4pm GMT. Likewise the Aussie Open does well in the US at prime time but its a midnight start to the day's play in the UK.

The opposite of that is that the main evening matches with the top seeds don’t start until 12.30am (0130 CET) which is the most unfriendly time possible, and the matches can go on for 4+ hours sometimes.

As regards Eurovision SVT attempted to have the start time of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest moved to 20:00 CET (7:00PM) however the EBU vetoed this and insisted that it start at the normal time of 21:00 CET.

True, but the 'biggest' matches in the US Open (aside from the finals) are overnight, which is hardly great from the perspective of a UK or European audience. The night sessions at the Aussie Open are enjoyable viewing on a weekend morning.

Is there any practical or sensible reason why Eurovision starts at 21:00 CET and not earlier?

8pm news broadcasts?

The UK/Ireland are fairly fluid moving the news around to fit around specials but given that Eurovision is shown by PSB/State broadcasters in Europe, whose broadcasting overlords may not be as forgiving for requests to shunt the main evening news around to fit in with a yearly singing and LED light show.

9pm is considered the peak viewing show across mainland Europe.

Tradition. When the contest started in 1956 it was only broadcast to countries within CET time zone. The addition of the UK/Ireland didn’t matter to this. It’s important to remember that as recently as 1992 there were no countries from far beyond CMT in the contest. In fact the likes of Armenia & Azerbaijan only arrived in the past 10 years.

The contest has started at 8.00pm UK time every year since 1980. Before that the timeslot tended to vary much more from year to year, with the contest often starting at 9.00 or later, even going as late as 10.00 from 1967-70 - though of course the contest was much shorter in those days.

In the Women's World Cup, I should add, the priorities are the opposite - the last final was timed to suit North America and got the most ever viewers for a US soccer match. (And England got good ratings for games played after midnight.)

Living Down Under, you really notice the time differences! Nearly everything from abroad is on live at a 'funny' time, usually early in the morning. The Games joked that the Sydney Olympics would be held at a quarter to four in the morning to suit overseas TV ("they're paying for it"), which would've rung true to Australian viewers.

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And where is the problem, with Eurovision starting at 21:00 CET?
9pm is when the prime time starts for most European countries.. anyway, UK and Ireland get the show at 8pm, which is when the British prime time starts, I think

In my country, Italy, having the main TV drama at 8pm on the main channels would be considered weird..so is the case in countries like France