Big Apple
"The Big Apple" was popularized as a name for New York City by John J. Fitz Gerald in a number of horse-racing articles for the "New York Morning Telegraph" in the 1920s. The earliest of these was a casual reference on 3rd May, 1921:
Time in New York
The state of New York uses the Eastern Time Zone (UTC-5) with DST (UTC-4). Because the largest city in the state, New York City, is the largest city in the United States, and because the Eastern Time Zone is used in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in addition to the fact that a majority of the nation's population is in that time zone, Eastern Time is the most commonly used time zone for television scheduling. Therefore, if a program airs at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, the network will usually advertise it by saying "Tonight at 7, 6 Central", or just "Tonight at 7".