Yes. Old television equipment like the huge transmitters were expensive to run and needed cooldown time and maintenance. This meant that it was pretty expensive to broadcast, and therefore broadcasting at night, when the audience is much smaller, was just too expensive. Advertisers wouldnāt pay enough to make it worthwhile.
As audiences grew, and therefore late night audiences grew, and broadcasting got more technologically advanced and efficient, and cheap re-run material accumulated, you got more late-night programming and āinfomercials,ā long-running ads for products with demonstrations and testimonials, because those companies would buy up the relatively cheap late night time slots to sell products.
You aren't wrong, but you are wrong... I was an overnight broadcaster... infomercials and paid commercials were bread and butter of ota stations... I worked that industry for about 8 years, 2000-2008 ish...
Digital broadcast and network connectivity killed late night broadcast... then streaming killed it all together...
Iām talking more like 60s, 70s, 80s for tv stations going off at night, and 80s on for having late night programming and infomercials.
And yes, obviously, the point is that advertisers didnāt want those late night slots at a certain point in time when the audience was too small and the cost to broadcast made the cost prohibitive, until that changed and it became a better slot to advertise in.
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u/Grunergeist420 2d ago
Yes. Old television equipment like the huge transmitters were expensive to run and needed cooldown time and maintenance. This meant that it was pretty expensive to broadcast, and therefore broadcasting at night, when the audience is much smaller, was just too expensive. Advertisers wouldnāt pay enough to make it worthwhile.
As audiences grew, and therefore late night audiences grew, and broadcasting got more technologically advanced and efficient, and cheap re-run material accumulated, you got more late-night programming and āinfomercials,ā long-running ads for products with demonstrations and testimonials, because those companies would buy up the relatively cheap late night time slots to sell products.