Timezones and international live events

Other mistakes:
Iceland uses GMT all year round, not GMT-1
Actually all the "GMT+1" should be "GMT+2" etc., because she's not calculating DST

I doubt Russia has a peak time starting at 7pm: more like 8pm, with a shoulder peak at 7pm, or even at 8pm (see when Vesti, the Rossija 1 News, are scheduled): Portugal, in a similar way, has its news starting at 8pm, with the main show at 9pm
And so on..

I'd say UK and Ireland all in all, have one of the earliest prime times in Europe, even considering countries with similar climates

Also, it seems the US is one of the few countries not scheduling the national and regional news during their peak times: most main stations have them at 6pm ET-PT / 5pm CT-MT , 11pm ET-PT /10pm CT-MT, but these tend not to be peak times, in the US, or am I wrong?

The peak time on US TV is mostly 20:00-23:00 / 19:00-22:00 CT-MT

Also, and I know I'm diverging a lot from the original topic: in the UK, are the 6pm BBC News more important than the 10pm ones?

The 6pm tends to get between 1-2 million more than the 10 though that can change depending on news events and the 9pm show leading in to it.

I'm drawing a blank on any 'funny' 10pm or 10am start times in the UK due to an overseas audience. But maybe you know some?

One event that was scheduled for foreign broadcasters was the NFL Wembley series (Sunday 6pm UK time), to coincide with games in the U.S. (1pm ET). But the British games have since often been played on Sunday afternoons for an earlier finish.

The 2012 Olympic opening ceremony sprung to mind as a 9pm start, lasting past midnight, but that wasn't for foreign TV – it was because the producers wanted dark sky for the show. And American TV didn't show it live anyway.

The Premier League's early-afternoon kickoffs may not have started because of overseas TV, but the matches are at a good time for viewers in Asia: part of the reason why the continent pays so much for TV rights. Early kick-offs are explicitly geared to suit Asian TV by La Liga in Spain and in Italy's Milan derby this year. They may as well hold the games there But a lot of Premier League kickoffs have changed with no outside influence, including some odd morning matches...

RUSSIA'S WORLD CUP

2018 opening match: 16.00 BST
Group stage matches for the days with three matches: 13.00, 16.00, 19.00 BST
Day 3 (Sat 16 June) has four matches: 11.00, 14.00, 17.00, 20.00 BST
Last round of group matches with simultaneous kick-offs: 15.00, 19.00 BST
Round of 16: 15.00, 19.00
Quarter-finals: 15.00, 19.00
Semi-finals: 19.00 • 3rd-place playoff: 15.00 • Final: 16.00

Full schedule and BST times - www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/schedule/group-stage. Kickoffs are largely unchanged from Fifa's initial 2015 announcement, corrections welcome.

The first main curiosity is a World Cup Final at 4pm BST, the first 4pm final since 1974. Every single final has been in UK primetime since then, except 2002 in Japan AFAIK. It was probably about time for a change, but it'd be fascinating to find out why Fifa chose an earlier time for this final, and broke a long-standing habit. (Semi-finals are still at 19:00 BST.) Previously Fifa's head of TV has talked about audiences in many different parts of the world, so perhaps Western European countries are less paramount than they used to be?

There's also that possible clash with the Wimbledon men's final...



The only other match that's out-of-the-ordinary is an 11:00 BST morning kickoff, Australia v France. Luck of the draw, for viewers in Australia that'll be an evening game, whereas most of the tournament is taking place overnight. The World Cup is no longer a listed full free-to-air event in Australia.



Well, that's utter madness. And the fans still showed up!

Winter Olympic figure skating in Korea is affected by American television – starting at 10am most days, so as to be in U.S. primetime.

Are any of the other events scheduled in such a way?

"Figure skating in morning at 2018 Olympics"
- http://www.globetrottingbyphiliphersh.com/home/2016/3/29/exclusive-figure-skating-in-morning-at-2018-olympics

'"It's really not a great time to be skating a pairs free program," Kiefer said. "I think all the couples agree."
'This is not the first time Olympic events in Asia have been moved to the morning primarily for the benefit of U.S. broadcaster NBC, which pays the International Olympic Committee significantly higher rights fees than any other national or area broadcaster.
'All track and field final sessions and some swimming finals [on ABC] at the 1988 Seoul, South Korea Summer Games began in the morning. So did all the swimming finals at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.'


"Winter Olympics 2018 schedule, figure skating"
- https://fansided.com/2018/01/08/olympic-figure-skating-schedule-2018-team-pairs-mens-womens/

"For example, a figure skating event that takes place at 10 a.m. on Saturday in Pyeongchang will air at 8 p.m. EST on Friday, the night before. Morning events become evening events, primetime events become crack-of-dawn events and afternoon events, well, they become middle of the night viewing [in the U.S.]."

http://thecomeback.com/awfulannouncing/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2014/02/Tara-and-Johnny-02.jpg
Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir presenting on NBCSN at the 2014 Winter Olympics

Whenever UFC hold events in the UK they tend to run them overnight because they don't want to hurt their US PPV business which gives them most of their money - certainly more than they get from BT for the UK broadcasting rights. From what I remember its something like prelim fights starting at 11:30pm; the main card at 3am with the show as a whole being done 6-7am depending on how long fights take. That's a very extreme example though and it worked; sold out the Manchester arena in minutes...

Hmm, I've been to a UFC event in Glasgow which ran from about 2pm onwards. Not entirely sure....what market that was good for.

Just looking that up: that was a Fight Night show which is on TV in America (Fox Sports 1 to be exact) so less important for them than the Pay-per-View shows. Considering just how long UFC prelims can be that'd probably have ended up being a show where the main event went on at a Prime Time slot for Europe and mid-afternoon in America which works for a less important show.

The PPVs (and also the shows that are on Fox Network TV) always start at around the same time in the US because the Americas are where they get their money from and they think that they'd get less money from an afternoon PPV or from a delaying showing as results would get out. They'll put the less important stuff on at more... normal times especially since they'll tend to put local names on those cards to get attention locally.

Not as drastic as The Games imagined it, but the 10am start has resulted in "empty seats galore" today at the figure skating.

- https://www.businessinsider.com/winter-olympics-figure-skating-arena-empty-nbc-time-zone-2018-2

Empty seats galore at start of first Olympic figure skating event. 10 am start for US television can’t be easy on spectators pic.twitter.com/0XpFzMAoHj

— Philip Hersh (@olyphil) February 9, 2018

All of the Olympic schedule looks a bit weird to me – or is this normal? Hardly any events are on between 2pm and 8pm local time. That means plenty of late events, like ski jumping going on after 10pm (1pm GMT). Maybe to suit European viewers?

Apart from NBC messing up the the figure skating times, some other major events are early in the day – some that won't please anyone.

The ice hockey women's and men's gold medal matches are at 1pm local time, or 11pm ET in North America. Some of Canada's/USA's matches are an hour earlier at noon (10pm ET).

(From this Canadian Olympic schedule)
- http://dailyhive.com/toronto/canada-winter-olympics-2018-time-zone


As ice hockey is Canada's biggest sport by a long way the scheduling might be a problem for TV and for fans:

- http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bars-hours-olympics-time-difference-1.4526029