appointment TV

noun

variants or appointment television

: television programming that people make time to watch at the time of its original broadcast because they have a strong desire to see what will happen or be done or said

Can Katie Couric bring back those days when the evening news was appointment TV?

—Chris Matthews, NBC News Transcripts, 14 May 2006

A hit reality show, networks realized, could get people talking; it could become appointment TV at a time when cop dramas and sitcoms about zany families seemed tired.

—Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5 July 2009

Walter [Cronkite] was a seminal force in making the network evening news broadcasts appointment television across the country, a time of day when millions tuned in to find out what had happened in their world.

—Tom Brokaw, in Washington Post, 19 July 2009

And because sports make for "appointment television"—who wants to watch Sunday Night Football on DVR on Monday?—they're at least somewhat immune from the pressures besetting other forms of programming.

—Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated, 28 Dec. 2009

Word History

First Known Use

1988, in the meaning defined above

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