‘Nightline’ to Get Later Starting Time

“Nightline,” TV’s top-rated late-night program so far this year, will move to a new starting time of 11:35 p.m. beginning April 5, ABC said Thursday.

The five-minute delay is part of an incentive package that the network is offering its affiliated stations to get more of them to broadcast the admired news program at the most lucrative hour.

Currently, only 61% of the affiliates carry “Nightline” at 11:30. The others broadcast it at midnight or later, when fewer people are watching TV and advertising revenue is smaller.

The decision to start at 11:35 p.m., as NBC and CBS do with their late-night programming, means local stations can extend their newscasts by five minutes and sell additional commercial time.

In addition, ABC said that stations that broadcast “Nightline” at 11:35 will be given five new 30-second spots on the program to sell to local advertisers each week, plus a 30-second spot on both “20/20” and “PrimeTime Live.” On stations that don’t carry “Nightline” at 11:35, those spots will be used for network promos.

Clearances have been a problem for “Nightline” for the past several years, but the network is stepping up efforts to improve them now because the program’s ratings have risen dramatically--they are up 17% this year over the same period in 1992--and ABC sees an opportunity to do even better when David Letterman moves to CBS this summer and perhaps takes away some of the audience that currently watches NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”