This is a question that has always puzzled me. How do TV stations readjust for the hour lossed/gained when turning the clocks back/forward?
Its supposed to happen at 2:00am. So what happens to the show at 2:00am then the clocks are turned backwards? Is the show at 1:00am repeated?
In the forward case, its now 3:00am…do we miss the show at 2:00am? What if there’s a movie on? Does the station adjust when the movie ends? Maybe they just make sure not to show movies that night…
Everytime I’ve tried staying up to see for myself what happens, I realize its past 2:00 and that I completely forgot to check
Believe it or not, this question has actually bothered me for a few years! Fortunately, I’ve never had a pressing need to tune in to HBO for a 2:00AM broadcast - even TV Guide doesn’t specify which of the dual 2:00AMs they mean! One year, I did watch a movie that started at 12:45, neatly sidestepping the ambiguity.
A sidenote question: do people working the graveyard shift get paid for the extra hours, and do the payroll computer systems (and timeclocks) figure that out automatically?
I don’t think it’s as weird as you would think. HBO would start a movie at say, 12:45 am and it will run for 2 hours. Since the DST changes would fall during this period, it would end at 3:45 am.
If there were some regularly scheduled program that started at 2 am on a Sunday morning (of which there are few), they are likely just skipped over.
I can ask some Hawaiians moved over here. The first time that DST rolled around, they stayed up late to “watch” the change.
Kniz has it pretty well nailed. Basically, stations just run a longer or shorter film than usual to get back on track. For a couple of decades a local station in St. Louis ran The Three Stooges in the early a.m. every Sunday. In the spring they simply ran fewer shorts, and in the fall ran more. If there is a one hour show which starts at 2:00 a.m. it just gets dropped in the spring when DST starts.
Some stations announce the time change as it occurs. Some stations shut off from time to time in the early a.m. for a period to conduct equipment maintenance. They deal with these schedule problems similarly.
When I was younger and at a sleepover once, I was up alone watching the TV Guide Channel (couldn’t sleep) when we switched off DST. IIRC, stations that had normal shows playing then just repeated their 1am-2am block.
Out of curiosity I have looked at the TV listings on days when DST either goes into effect or when we revert back to standard time.
In the spring, when clocks are set ahead by one hour, the listings skip the 2:00 AM block, going from 1:30 AM to 3:00 AM. In the fall, when clocks are set back an hour, the 2:00 AM time slot is repeated in place of where 3:00 AM would normally be. The “new” 3:00 AM, of course, follows the second iteration of the 2:00 AM time block. As for programming content which is omitted in the spring or added in the fall, I haven’t paid attention to this, but I would WAG that they just throw some informercials in there or just rerun a show from earlier in the day.
To answer bradwalt’s question about graveyard shift workers. My sister works overnights at a memory chip manufacturing plant that runs 24/7. In the spring she is paid for the extra hour. In the fall she works an hour less but she still gets paid for a full shift. I imagine some companies may be stingy enough to take away an hour’s pay in the fall, or they figure that if you get ripped off an hour in the spring you’ll “make it up” in the fall and it will even out.
