Oh, Screw You, ABC!
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I don’t know about the marketing reasons behind the extended time slots, but it’s been going on for at least a year. NBC has been doing it pretty much for the entire last season of Friends.
All I know is that if they want to screw over DVR users, that’s fine with me. I’ll go out to [url=http://www.suprnova.org]http://www.suprnova.org[/url] and download the episodes I want to watch on bittorrent. The quality is just about as good and I don’t have to put up with commercials at all.
When “Joey” first came out, they screwed around with the show times and TiVo didn’t know about it. I wound up missing the last 5 minutes of the show. So I went to suprnova.org and found the pilot episode for Joey and downloaded the episode. Watched it on the computer and enjoyed it just fine.
I have since boycotted NBC and won’t watch anything on there now. If ABC is following suit, then I may have to extend my boycott.
I realize that DVR’s are only in about 1,000,000 homes currently, but people that do “Time Shifting” are much more numerous with VCR’s still out there.This affects DVR’s and VCR’s. At least VCR’s will finish recording the overlapping show, then switch to the other making you miss a minute or two.
I get a feeling that over time, we are going to see a lot more of this.
Oh, don’t get me wrong: I didn’t mean to say that this was solely aimed at DVR users. I certainly know there aren’t enough of them to likely be that important. But it does very visibly affect us in cases like this.
And you’re absolutely right, Dave: NBC has been guilty of this in the past, too. It just never affected me because I was never into Friends or the spinoff. And I almost mentioned the fact that crap like this does fuel the “illegal” downloading of episodes over things like Bit Torrent, iMesh, eMule, etc. Definitely no argument from me there!
Is it really illegal? I’m not keeping the episode, just watching it. I personally think of it as a different form of time shifting.
Well, you’re not allowed to rebroadcast things that you tape; it’s just “allowed” for personal use. Having a party and showing 500 people what you recorded on your VCR breaks the rebroadcasting laws, as screwy as that may sound, but it does nonetheless. So certainly sharing your recording with 1000+ strangers isn’t covered under private use protection.
I can’t find it right now, but there’s a case, and they won, where the NFL sued an individual for showing a football game that he taped for an office party. If I’m remembering the story correctly, I think it was the Superbowl, and everyone at the office had to work because of some project deadline, so they had all agreed to a self-imposed tv and media block for 24 hours following the game until they could all see it together at the office the next night, where they would all pretend it was live.
I wish I could afford a LexisNexis membership… At any rate, the legal portion begins and ends, seemingly, with the party rebroadcasting. So an internet download would be cut and dry as to who was culpable, but with BitTorrent, the line is much fuzzier since everyone has a hand in distribution.
Either reason, to mess with DVR owners, or to try to monopolize advertising air market sections, it’s retarded, and hopefully someone intelligent will lobby for the FCC to impose some restrictions. I mean, at least that the networks would have to obey. Cable and satellite networks will always be free to do whatever the heck they want.
I remember when TBS used to air EVERYTHING at five after. (2:05--3:35 and so on).
I was always pissed at it even as a kid, and refused to watch thier shows.
Do they still do that? i don’t watch TV. Seriously, like less than 20 minutes of TV a week.
i don’t watch TV. Seriously, like less than 20 minutes of TV a week.
I’m not sure that counts. You’re still watching “something” in the time period. You’re just determining the schedule and content. 
I mean, I really really hate to play devil’s advocate here, but entertainment, legally or illegally obtained, is created for the purpose of money. Actors get paid, writers get paid, directors get paid, producers get paid, evil insidious non-human network executives get paid. Can you think of a single person, especially in this country, that would give us anything remotely interesting to watch or with good production values if it were pro bono?
I’ve honestly got problems with both sides of the coin here: greedy grubs who are already fat cats wanting more cash--and those that think that they deserve 100’s of other people’s hard work for free on their own terms, as if entertainment were somehow owed to them.
In this specific case, with broadcast networks, I’m erring on the side of common man, though I feel somewhat tainted in doing so. It’s almost like I’m saying that I feel that there’s a public interest and societal need for television entertainment to make sure that it operates in a way that never inconveniences any of the people that it freely entertains. It’s easy to blame the networks, but what they do only works because the majority of the populace absolutely fawns over their every move.
I guess I see your point about the re-broadcasting thing. One thing that may be a “backfire” to their little adjustments to the time a show starts and stops. We really wanted to watch the new series “Clubhouse” that started this fall. However, since se missed the pilot and second episode due to weirdness of start and stop times, we didn’t get to see the episodes. Later, we downloaded the episodes from bittorrent. Before we watched the episodes we heard that the show wasn’t that good. We lost interest in the series before even watching it and so we don’t watch it now. Maybe we would have liked it even though the reviews were bad. However, thanks to their screwing with the times, we just didn’t watch it at all.
As to downloading the episodes to watch them later… Illegal or not, I’ll still do it if we miss something that we want to see. I’m really greatfull that people rip them so that others can see what they missed.
Actually, it’s to inflate ratings. The motive is no more pure, but by extending into the 8pm time slot, ratings recorders will show <x> viewers watching “Lost” and not the “West Wing”. It also inflates the numbers that ABC and local affiliates get to use when determining commercial air time fees during “Lost”. The lead-in and out-going commercial slots are the most expensive and desired on shows with this exposure, and this helps ABC and it’s affiliates milk it.
I mean, I’m sure some execs at ABC get a kick out of it also screwing DVR users, but I think the primary reason is to exploit the current system of advertising and ratings.
By Derek Jones on October 26, 2004 at 11:34am link