Counterprogramming (television)

In broadcast programming, counterprogramming is the practice of offering television programs to attract an audience from another television station or cable channel airing a major event. It is also referred when programmers offer something different from the rival's program as an alternative to increase the audience size.

United States

The main events counterprogrammed in the United States are the Super Bowl, the Oscars, and the Olympic Games.

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl, being among the most watched sports television events in the United States, became a notable target of counterprogramming during the 1990s due to its previous halftime shows; which critics felt were dated and not representative of modern pop culture. During Super Bowl XXVI, Fox aired a live, football-themed episode of ''In Living Color'' against halftime (featuring an onscreen countdown clock so fans would know when to switch back to the game); the special drew 22 million viewers. Nielsen estimated that CBS lost 10 ratings points during halftime as a result of the special.

The success of the special alarmed the National Football League, who took steps to raise interest and viewership of the halftime show by inviting major pop musicians to perform, beginning with Michael Jackson at Super Bowl XXVII. This pattern continued until 2005, following an incident at Super Bowl XXXVIII's halftime show where Justin Timberlake exposed one of Janet Jackson's breasts, leading to a string of halftime shows with a single, headlining classic rock act (such as the Rolling Stones, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen) in an effort to prevent a repeat of the "wardrobe malfunction" (since Super Bowl XLV, the NFL has returned to inviting pop artists to play halftime). Despite Michael Jackson's performance helping to increase interest in subsequent halftime shows, Fox's success inspired imitators, and influenced other specials such as Animal Planet's annual ''Puppy Bowl'' (featuring dogs playing in a model football stadium), and the Lingerie Bowl, a series of pay-per-view broadcasts of all-female football games played in lingerieproving popular enough to be spun off into its own Lingerie Football League.

Under an unsaid gentlemen's agreement, all four major networks (including CBS, Fox, NBC, and ESPN/ABC, who also alternate airing the Super Bowl on a yearly cycle) will typically not schedule any new programming (nor air counterprogramming) on the night of the Super Bowl. NFL Network suspends programming during the Super Bowl in favor of ''Super Bowl Game Center'', a static screen with the game's radio broadcast and a live scoreboard. Fox provided an exception in 2010 when it aired two new episodes of '''Til Death'' against Super Bowl XLIV; however, the network had been in the process of burning off the low-rated sitcom in unusual timeslots (including a marathon of four new episodes on Christmas Day) so Sony Pictures Television would have enough episodes to syndicate it.

As to preempt the possibility that the 2022 Winter Olympics would counterprogram the game, CBS agreed to swap Super Bowl LVI—which, for the first time, was scheduled during an ongoing Olympic Games—to NBC for Super Bowl LV, so that both events were aired by the same network. Furthermore, the structure of the rotation under the NFL's next round of television contracts (which expands it to all four major networks) deliberately gave NBC the Super Bowl games in subsequent Winter Olympic ( 2026, 2030, and 2034) years.

Academy Awards

In 2007, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series' Auto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, was held on the same day as the 79th Academy Awards, although it was held during the early afternoon with a 1:00 p.m. PT (4:00 p.m. ET) start. The 2008 Auto Club 500 was plagued by rain delays and unintentionally aired against a portion of the 80th Academy Awards; its start time was pushed back to around 3:00 p.m. PT (6:00 p.m. ET), while the race itself was halted again at around 6:00 p.m. PT (9:00 p.m. ET). In 2009, the race was intentionally scheduled with a 3:00 p.m. PT start, which would overlap into the telecast of the 81st Academy Awards. Fox Sports' senior vice president of programming and research Bill Wanger supported the idea, believing that NASCAR races " ouldhold their own against any competition", arguing that the Oscars and the race appealed primarily to female and male audiences respectively. For the 2010 season, the race was moved to a 12:00 p.m. PT (3:00 p.m. ET) due to NASCAR adopting standardized start times for all races.

For a number of years, the championship game of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament aired on the day of the Academy Awards ceremony, leading into primetime. During the 48th Academy Awards in 1976, presenter Elliott Gould acknowledged the game during the ceremony after hearing it on a radio backstage, interjecting his co-presenter Isabelle Adjani by jokingly announcing that the winner for Best Film Editing was "Indiana, 86–68". By the time CBS had taken over broadcasting the NCAA Final Four, the Academy Awards ceremony had by now taken place the week before the Final Four, and has since moved well away into mid or late February (except during Winter Olympic years) due to ABC's want to have the awards take place during the February sweeps period, along with the general consolidation of the film awards season into a shorter period.

The 2012 NBA All-Star Game was played opposite the 84th Academy Awards. The presentation drew an estimated 39.3 million viewers, a 4% increase over the previous year. Conversely, viewership for the All Star Game on TNT measured at 7.1 million, a 22% decline from last year's 9.1 million.

The Alliance of American Football scheduled one of its contests opposite the 91st Academy Awards in 2019. The game drew 515,000 viewers, a bump of approximately 20% from the previous week's and following week's matchup on the same network, NFL Network.

NBC has counterprogrammed the Oscars with ''Shrek'' in more recent Winter Olympic years.

College football

The move is harder in the sport, especially with ESPN games competing against CBS games. Because of a CBS contract with the Southeastern Conference that gives the conference exclusivity at the 3:30 p.m. ET slot, and ESPN's games being regional (parts of the country may receive games from different conferences, with ABC now airing primarily the Atlantic Coast Conference and most Notre Dame away games), and even a Fox game with one of their three conferences, college football schedules are intentionally made flexible in order to allow networks to choose the best game when possible. The SEC opened their exclusivity up slightly in the 2014 for ESPN with the launch of their SEC Network with the conference, which now allows that ESPN to air up to two SEC games (one on the main SEC Network feed, with a lower-tier matchup carried by the SEC Network's alternate feed), though CBS retains first choice for their preferred game.

Professional wrestling

One of the earliest prominent examples of counter-programming in professional wrestling occurred in 1987, when the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) scheduled its new pay-per-view (PPV), Survivor Series on Thanksgiving evening, going head-to-head with Jim Crockett Promotions's (JCP) Starrcade, which was their flagship annual event. WWF owner Vince McMahon made carriage of the following year's WrestleMania IV contingent on carrying Survivor Series; as a result, few cable companies elected to carry Starrcade. WWF would also air the first Royal Rumble event in January 1988 on free television against JCP's Bunkhouse Stampede. Crockett would retaliate by scheduling the first Clash of the Champions on free television directly against WrestleMania IV, but the internecine squabbling had a deleterious effect on profits for promotions and cable companies alike, leading to JCP's near-bankruptcy and eventual purchase by Ted Turner, who reformed JCP into World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Due to the intervention of cable companies, WWF and WCW were not permitted to schedule major shows against each other. The only exception was when WCW scheduled Clash of the Champions VI: Ragin' Cajun against WrestleMania V in April 1989 at the direct behest of the cable companies, who were locked in a dispute with McMahon regarding carriage fees; after the dispute was resolved, the cable companies allowed WCW to run Clash of the Champions on free television.

In 1995, WCW began to schedule a live, weekly show on TNT, '' Monday Nitro'', to compete directly with the rival WWF's (now WWE) '' Raw'' on USA Network (which, at the time, did not always broadcast live), resulting in an intense rivalry dubbed the "Monday Night War". Aided by WCW's popular New World Order (nWo) stable featuring Hulk Hogan, ''Nitro'' regularly beat ''Raw'' in viewership for 84 consecutive weeks. In 1997, the WWF began to shift its programming in a mature direction dubbed the " Attitude Era" to compete with WCW. By April 1998, bolstered by the popularity of performers such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, and his in-universe feuds with WWF owner Vince McMahon, ''Raw'' began to overtake ''Nitro'' in viewership for the first time since 1996.

As the show only aired live on occasion at the time, WCW commentators occasionally discussed ''Raw'' spoilers on-air as a ploy to keep viewers from tuning away. This tactic infamously backfired during the January 4, 1999 episode of ''Nitro'', when a spoiler that Mick Foley (who previously performed for WCW as Cactus Jack, and was performing in the WWF as Mankind) would win the WWF Championship had the opposite effect, causing ''Nitro'' to lose around 600,000 viewers to the final hour of ''Raw''. The ''Nitro'' main event (featuring Hulk Hogan defeating Kevin Nash for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship) was also marred by its unusual build-up and controversial finish—dubbed the " Fingerpoke of Doom". The episode's events were retrospectively considered to be one of several missteps that led towards WCW's eventual demise, and the sale of its assets to WWF.

For eight weeks beginning January 4, 2010, competing promotion TNA briefly moved its weekly program '' Impact!'' on Spike to Monday night''s'', airing directly against ''Raw''. In response, WWE staged the return of Bret Hart, his first WWE appearance in over 12 years. TNA lost two thirds of its audience during this time, before TNA moved back to Thursday, with president Dixie Carter saying: “Our fans made it clear that they preferred the Thursday night time period. By moving to Thursdays, this is a win/win opportunity for both TNA and the fans. We are looking forward to delivering what the fans are asking for.”

A renewed wrestling rivalry between TNT and USA dubbed the " Wednesday Night Wars" emerged in 2019, between WWE and the new promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW)—which has been seen as the first major promotion since WCW to compete financially with WWE. TNT began to air AEW's first weekly program, ''Dynamite'', on Wednesday nights beginning on October 2, 2019. On August 2, WWE announced that it would expand ''WWE NXT''—a popular WWE Network program that focuses on a developmental brand of the same name—to a two-hour format on USA Network beginning the same night; the expansion soft-launched on September 18 with only the first hour airing on USA, to accommodate the final episodes of '' Suits''' final season. The decision was seen as a move to counterprogram the upstart AEW, and also came alongside USA losing WWE's second flagship program '' SmackDown'' to Fox the same month. Both AEW and ''NXT'' held two-week events on their July 1 and 8, 2020 episodes, with AEW holding Fyter Fest (which had originally been planned as a PPV), and ''NXT'' holding The Great American Bash (a former pay-per-view brand originating from WCW). After regularly losing in the ratings to ''Dynamite'', on April 13, 2021, WWE moved ''NXT'' to Tuesday nights.

Since 2021, ''Dynamite'' would only air head-to-head with WWE's television shows if either promotion was pre-empted by other events, most notably by TBS coverage of the MLB playoffs pre-empting ''Dynamite'' to a Tuesday airing in 2023 and 2024 and news coverage of the 2024 presidential election pre-empting that week's ''NXT'' to Wednesday. WWE and AEW's television shows would directly compete in other circumstances, such as an extended edition of WWE's '' SmackDown'' going head-to-head with AEW's ''Rampage'' in October 2021, or AEW's ''Collision'' sometimes going head-to-head with WWE's premium live events on Saturday evenings.

WWE would also take steps to counter-program AEW's PPVs; WWE running the Clash at the Castle and Worlds Collide in 2022 on Labor Day weekend, against AEW's All Out, let to an expletive-laden tirade from AEW's owner Tony Khan that "he had a lot more fucking money than Jim Crockett did" and that he wouldn't "sit back and take this shit" going forward. WWE scheduling a house show in the same city and on the same night as AEW's Worlds End in December 2024 led to a change in AEW's strategy of event promotion in 2025. Nevertheless, WWE elected to schedule an edition of ''Saturday Night's Main Event'' and NXT Battleground on the same weekend as AEW's Double or Nothing, and NXT The Great American Bash, Evolution and another ''Saturday Night's Main Event'' on the same weekend as AEW's All In. In response, Khan described WWE's strategy in 2025 as "the most consistent head-to-head scheduling since Jim Crockett Promotions", but again vowed that the conflict would end differently.

Other

When Seattle's KCPQ signed back on on November 4, 1980, it aired the film '' The Deer Hunter'' to counter the major networks' coverage of the 1980 presidential election.

NBC, the long-time broadcaster of the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks in New York City, has historically aired an encore presentation of the special at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT, immediately following its live broadcast. The Boston Pops Orchestra's own concert and fireworks special on CBS aired live at the same time as the NBC encore. While NBC claimed that this was for budgetary reasons, Boston Pops executive producer David G. Mugar believed that NBC had done so to intentionally pull viewers away from the Boston Pops. After ratings fell by 1 million viewers for 2012, CBS ended its national broadcasts of the event in 2013; the concert was still aired in full, as before, by its Boston station WBZ-TV. The national broadcast was revived on CBS for 2016 with an expanded two-hour format, before moving to Bloomberg Television in 2017 due to Bloomberg's new sponsorship of the event.

On the day of Donald Trump's first inauguration as president of the United States, Comedy Central broadcast an all-day marathon of the 20th season of ''South Park'' — which had featured an ongoing storyline where Mr. Garrison is elected president in a parody of Trump and his campaign.

During the 2018 Winter Olympics, which were broadcast by NBC, other networks generally placed their main lineups of scripted programming on hiatus, barring The CW for selected series. However, the networks continued to air most of their unscripted reality programs as an alternative, with ABC airing ''The Bachelor (American TV series), The Bachelor'' and ''Shark Tank'', and CBS airing ''The Amazing Race (American TV series), The Amazing Race''. ABC and CBS also scheduled spin-offs of their other signature reality franchises to specifically compete against the Olympics, including ''The Bachelor Winter Games'' (which featured alumni of The Bachelor (franchise), the franchise competing in winter sports challenges to earn dates), and the first American season of ''Celebrity Big Brother 1 (American season), Celebrity Big Brother—''which aired its season finale against the 2018 Winter Olympics closing ceremony, closing ceremony. CBS would order a Celebrity Big Brother 2 (American season), second season of ''Celebrity Big Brother'' to air in 2019, followed by a Celebrity Big Brother 3 (American season), third in 2022 to air against the 2022 Winter Olympics. ABC had planned a followup—''The Bachelor Summer Games''—to similarly air in August 2020 during the 2020 Summer Olympics, but production was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June 2024, after his Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 2024 presidential campaign, presidential campaign did not meet the criteria to participate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. counterprogrammed the CNN-hosted 2024 Joe Biden–Donald Trump presidential debate, presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump with a livestreamed campaign event from Los Angeles dubbed "The Real Debate", in which he provided his own answers to the questions posed during the debate.

Brazil

In the late 1980s, the Brazilian upstart network Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão, SBT faced counterprogramming efforts from perennial leader TV Globo, Rede Globo on several occasions, prompting SBT to engage in changes to its own schedule to avert them. After acquiring the rights to the American miniseries ''The Thorn Birds (miniseries), The Thorn Birds'', SBT elected to schedule its airings after Globo's highly rated Brazilian telenovela, soap opera ''Roque Santeiro'' to avoid counterprogramming; when promoting it on his Programa Silvio Santos, variety show, SBT founder and personality Silvio Santos encouraged viewers to tune in for ''The Thorn Birds'' after the soap. After the premiere successfully attracted viewers away from Globo, the network moved to give ''Santeiro'' and its newscast ''Jornal Nacional'' irregular running times, so that ''Santeiro'' would intentionally overrun into ''The Thorn Birds'' timeslot. To avert this counterprogramming attempt, SBT would pre-empt ''The Thorn Birds'' to a later start time to compensate, airing Animated series, cartoons as filler.

Later, after Globo scheduled an airing of ''Rambo: First Blood Part II'' on the same day that SBT had planned to air its First Blood, prequel, SBT pre-empted ''Rambo'' to the following week, only for Globo to counterprogram it with back-to-back episodes of its soap ''Vale Tudo (TV series), Vale Tudo''. In response, SBT pre-empted ''Rambo'' to air after ''Vale Tudo'', and aired a static slide announcing the schedule change for 50 minutes against the soap.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Ofcom can punish broadcasters who deliberately counterprogram another broadcaster for the intent of damaging the other broadcaster's ratings. In 2000, the coincidental scheduling of the Judith Keppel, first million-pound winner on ITV (TV channel), ITV's ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (UK game show), Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' opposite the Things Aren't Simple Any More, final episode of ''One Foot in the Grave'' on BBC One drew accusations of counterprogramming; the Independent Television Commission (ITC), after investigating the matter, exonerated ITV of any wrongdoing.

By contrast in 2005, attempts by ITV to counterprogram the BBC's ''Doctor Who'' with the poorly-received game show ''Celebrity Wrestling'' were unsuccessful, with ITV Burning off, burning it off in a lower-profile Sunday timeslot after five episodes.

See also

*List of Super Bowl halftime counterprogramming

References

{{Reflist

Television terminology