This is the easiest IMHO question I have ever asked.
The Pacific Time Zone.
I’ll be in the Mountain Time Zone next week. But, I’ll be in Arizona so I’ll get the no Daylight Savings Time benefit.
Watching a major sporting event until the end? Yes, I’ll take that.
Can anyone defend the Eastern Time Zone?
I doubt it.
Every time I think of moving to say, Chicago or NYC, the line “LA @ SF 10:05p” in my head and I am dissuaded.
Could it possibly make a difference?
Mountain. I live in Eastern. I don’t really see a problem with eastern. I’m not a huge sports fan so…I love the seasons here. I lived in AZ for a while and it was nice, but I missed the stone walls and change of seasons.
If you’re a sports fan, yes.
Staying up until 11 at night versus 8 at night.
Pacific is great for sports but Mountain isn’t bad, prime time TV starts at 7 here so I don’t have to stay up to watch all of the prime time goodness.
I grew up in Central Time, now I live in Eastern Time. I’m not a fan. Sports are on too late, and 11:00 is too late to stay up and watch the news on a weeknight, and it aggravates the everloving shit out of me when they do that “more at 11” B.S. on the earlier news.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll restate it here, that as far as TV coverage goes the Mountain time zone is pretty much the “bastard stepchild” of the family.
The networks have one feed for the Eastern and Central time zones (so the Central folks get everything an hour later by their clocks), and another feed for the Pacific time zone, so folks on the west coast can see things at the same time (relatively speaking) as their eastern counterparts.
In the Mountain time zone, we get a mish-mash of programming. The local network affilliates (usually) tape the Eastern feed and air it 2 hours later (except for live sporting events, etc). The cable operators will provide either the East feed or the West feed for national networks (sometimes both), but usually you never know which one you’re watching. In fact, when I had Comcast they provided the feed for several of the channels from the West coast feed, but the HD versions of the same channels were the East coast feed, so they were 2 hours apart.
The bottom line is, when the announcer says “tonight at 8:00” I never can tell if I need to tune in at 6:00 or 9:00 without looking it up on the program guide.
I’m in Central time, and it’s great for me. I’m not a big sports fan, so staying up to watch the end of a game isn’t an issue.
I grew up in Alaska, and the timing of stuff was really weird sometimes. Still is, I guess. My dad still lives there, and they get shows in Mountain time. So something that’s showing at 7:00 PM MT is on at 5:00 PM on Dad’s TV. (I think he has Dish Network or something.)
GMT - it’s the Real Thing! 
(Except when we’re on BST, which is actually nicer, as in midsummer it stays light till 10pm; more like 11pm in the northwest.)
HEAR HEAR
San Vito, resident of ye olde London village of Greenwich, where the Meridian Line crosses through her bedroom
But don’t people do things later on the east coast? I always hear of 9 to 5, for example, but every real job I’ve ever had has started at 7 or 8 and ended by 4, for example.
I live in UTC+8 aka GMT+8 aka Hotel. The only problem I have with my timezone is that I have to watch the MotoGP at midnight. So i guess it’d be nice to live in a more European timezone. UTC/GMT/Zulu would do.
It’s true that Pacific time is nice for live sporting events (I’m a Giants fan, and listening to the 2002 playoffs and World Series on the radio when I was living in Michigan was NOT good for my productivity at work the next day), but the world seems to revolve around people farther east. Bad things about living in PT:
NBC tape delays the fuck out of the Olympics. I’m STILL bitter about their craptacular tape delays during the Salt Lake City Olympics. Everyone else got to see stuff live, but if you were stupid enough to live in the west, you had to watch everything seven hours late. And we’re one hour off of Utah. Who came up with this idea? I hate them. Right now, they’re showing loads of stuff with LIVE on the upper corner, and guess what? NOT LIVE.
Telemarketers calling you at 6 am. Look at where you’re calling, dumbass! (I once heard a coworker in Chicago call a client of his in Hawaii at like, 10 am CT. I only realized what he was doing about halfway through the call so I couldn’t stop him until it was too late.)
Realizing you need to call an office in the east, at 2:30 pm. Oops, too late.
I’m actually moving to the Eastern time zone today, so I may have some negative stuff about it to post tomorrow. But from what I remember about living there and in the Central, it was better than living out here in PT.
I like Central. Prime Time starts at 7 instead of 8 here. So, when I watch Lost at 9PM, I am in bed before 10 PM. Then I can unwind, as you cannot go straight to bed after lost.
Other than TV schedules, I cannot imagine it making any difference.
That’s easy: Hammer Time.
Stop!
The Central Time is the only way to go. It is called Central Time because it is the moderate in the bunch. TV schedules fall right where they should. I agree that Eastern Time sucks. I am a transplant from the Central Time zone to the Eastern one and there is no comparison. I am a night owl and yet there is no way I feel like watching the news at 11 pm. It is going to retard the children.
I have lived in GMT-8, GMT+1, GMT+3, GMT+4 and GMT+12.
+4 was best for dealing with most customers around the world at a decent hour.
I like Eastern. I’m a night owl, so I like it when programming goes to 11pm. OTOH, the only time I watch sports (on TV) is to watch the superbowl for the new commercials, so sports has no bearing at all on my preference for time zones.
Seriously? Is that just because of the traffic or something? I work 9-5:30 most days and almost everybody I know works some variation of 9-5 or similar, unless they work retail. This is in a smaller city where almost nobody has that flex time stuff, though.
And I don’t give a crap about sports, so I like stuff coming on when it’s supposed to come on. Eastern all the way for me.