Most competitive and renumerative network viewing hours between 20:00 and 23:00.

Here, networks place their most popular shows (and evening line-ups) in order to attract desired demographics and sponsor revenues; this is the home of television sitcoms, dramas (westerns, crime, lawyers, doctors, soaps) and, increasingly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, of news magazines and “reality” shows. Manipulation of prime time is especially notable during the three yearly sweeps months when audience data are more systematically collected and compared. The impact of cable has altered the stakes and viewership of prime time, yet it still constitutes an exclusive battlefield for programmers, producers and actors.