On 10/21/05, Colin Humphreys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Steve Adeff wrote: > > On Thursday 20 October 2005 11:03, Rudy Zijlstra wrote: > > > >> > >>In the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany - those i am certain of - > >>programs can start more than 20 minutes later than announced. Not on all > >>channels, some are worse than others, yet most channels are "late" by > >>23:00 or later. > > > > > > wow, thats so weird. why do they do this? > > In Australia it seems to be to make schedules between stations out of > kilter. The idea being when you flip channels after the show you are > watching is finished, the other channels are in the middle of a program, > so they hope you will flip back to the original channel. They are also > keen on running the end and start sections of programs right next to > each other without ads. (The next frame after the closing credits are > finished is the opening scene of the next program) Of course this > happens 10 minutes after the scheduled finish time. > >
There seems to be a general feeling amongst Australian television channels that they can pretty much do as they please and the viewers will eat it up and come back for more anyway. Perhaps this is due to the fact there is only 3 commercial stations, plus two government sponsored channels (who behave much better). There isn't a lot to turn to when you get fed up with the treatment of viewers by one channel. They regularly run late. They mix repeats in with new series to pad them out. For example, I think one channel was padding out NCIS by alternating between a new episodes and old ones for most of this year. They often take programs off the air without any announcement, leaving you with no idea if they're ever going to come back to it. They also run series out of order. I have no idea how they think this benefits them, but they do it. They'll also cut bits out of programs to fit in more ads. Repeats of the Simpsons reguarly have scenes cut to allow more ads to be shown. Ok, that was a bit of a rant, but I think it might help for the devs to have an idea of what we're using Myth to deal with when they're making decisions about the future of Myth (eg. the cutting post-roll to 30secs debate). This is the first time I've posted to -dev, so I'd like to thank everyone who puts their time into Myth, it really makes all the difference to watching TV for me. Ben Rigby _______________________________________________ mythtv-dev mailing list mythtv-dev@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
