Timezones and international live events

British Prime Time really starts at 7pm, but it's not much of an issue in Western or Central Europe; it becomes an issue the further east you go.

Officially I think its 6pm-10:30pm the peak UK viewing window, and I'm sure I read somewhere the American system is as late as from 8pm and is actually quite short compared to some other countries.

Yo, someone did reesearch

Lisa-Jayne Lewis, ESC Insight (escinsight.com/2017/09/21/when-should-the-eurovision-song-contest-start)

"I have spoken to TV professionals in participating countries and looked across the European TV audiences (where figures are available) and you can also see that the most popular TV shows for Saturday night viewing start at around 8pm (8:30pm in France)."

http://escinsight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CurrentESCPeakTime_640.jpg

Italy may be unusual in starting primetime at 9pm. Most countries' primetime shows wouldn't be 3 and a half hours long like Eurovision is. The times I've seen a "CET" Eurovision, the results bit was much less appealing than sleep But perhaps the ratings don't drop off too much?

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Actually, the American primetime at 8pm is more similar to the one found in many European countries I think

For instance, Germany, at 8:15pm: Italy is more 9:10/9:15pm these days, "thanks" to the likes of Striscia La Notizia (Canale 5) and the typical game shows on Rai1 expanding their slot irregularly, and influencing other channels

In Italy, however, news start at 8pm: which I guess corresponds to 6pm in the UK

However, the most extreme case is Spain: in part because of it being in the wrong time zone (CET instead of GMT) , in part because of a typical late nature of the country: there the prime time starts at 10pm/10:30pm!

That's informative

But Italy HAS a shoulder peak: mainly 8pm-9:10/9:15pm, when you get the news (8pm), and the pre-prime time show (at around 8:30pm)

I suppose the "Big Five", Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK have the most power over the schedule?

In Italy Eurovision at 8pm wouldn't work, at all: as I said before, nothing super-important in Italy (aside from the news and the likes of the Rai1 game show) is shown before 9pm.. I understand the good intentions from that blogger, but he's minimising some factors too much

And as other big 5 countries share similar habits, well, I could see Eurovision being moved to 8pm even less

In Italy we're used to children being awake until 11pm-12am, so the family argument doesn't hold up too well

I think 21:00 CET is a nice compromise between the late Southern times and the earlier Northern ones

*she

sorry

How about kickoffs for football-type sports? Does Italy usually have them at 9pm? I believe that's pretty common in France and Spain.

One example of the 'unusual' times to suit television was the 2008 CL final in Moscow... a 10.45pm kickoff local time, meaning 7.45 in the UK.

Conversely, the 2018 World Cup Final in Russia will be at 4pm UK / 7pm Moscow time, and it might clash with Wimbledon, so y'know, it's very hard to please everybody. The Rugby World Cup Final's 9pm start in New Zealand (10am UK) was a bit of a sore point in NZ as I recall.

Apparently Spain had some domestic football 11pm kickoffs in 2012? https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/complete-and-utter-shock-spain-midnight-football-proves-rather-unpopular

Anyway, Italy used to have an 8:30pm (with the news at 8:00pm) back in the 80s/90s: sadly, there's been a push towards ratings, meant that cheap shows like Striscia la Notizia, ended at around 9:15pm (actually, our prime time is heading towards 9:30pm, on the main channels)..
But the worst thing about the prime time shows in Italy (and even Spain, France etc.) is that a show tends to last for 3-4 hours, or we get back-to-back episodes of the same show, at least on the main channels: much less on the DTT/satellite/paying TV channels, which have more variety
It's also causing an outbreak of people feeling tired the morning later

Still, 6pm sounds too early for me: is 6pm really the time when family comes together to watch TV, in the UK, or it's more like 7pm?

Going back to tennis, tournaments in many countries will happily play well into the early hours of the morning under lights or indoors, and will schedule matches with start times late in the evening. Here in the UK, Wimbledon has a 11pm curfew, the ATP Finals schedules just the one match after 8pm, and everywhere else has to stop play when it gets dark because they don't have lights.

There are some tournaments in Asia, particularly China, where they don't start play until the early evening, not sure if this is for European audiences or because it is too hot in the day.