My TV Guide has the show that follows Lost starting at 8:01 CDT, and the show following that at 9:02 CDT.
Clearly, ABC is up to something, but I have no idea what that could be.
Is this some nefarious way of defeating TiVo? And how does ABC benefit from defeating TiVo, anyway?
I can’t say for sure that this is what is happening in your case but sometimes in the U.K. there is a short interlude between programs for things such as the news in 60 seconds or the weather. They aren’t listed in the T.V. guides as seperate programs they are part of the preceding show. Perhaps that is what is happening in your case, Lost is on for one hour then news headlines or something.
Just a WAG.
If TV Guide knows, then TiVo knows. Doubt it’s nefarious. (But the networks wouldn’t want you skipping commericals.)
It’s probably not so much for defeating TiVo as it is a ploy to keep you tuned in to ABC.
Remember how WTBS used to run all their shows at x:05 or x:35? That was done so when you finished watching one of their shows, every other show was already five minutes in. Since you wouldn’t want to tune in five minutes late, you would stay on TBS (or, if you were like me, you would never bother watching TBS in the first place).
As someone who watches no live TV at all (DVR fricking rules), I gotta say that this would piss me off to no end, and prevent me from watching in the future (fortunately, I don’t watch Lost).
It’s to mess up people with TiVos. Either the TiVo guide is fooled, in which case you may miss the first or last minute of your show unless you watch it live, or the TiVo isn’t fooled and therefore will bump the recording of a 9:00 show on another network so it can finish the extra minute of an 8:00 show that’s higher priority.
–Cliffy
Say, when did they stop that, anyway?
I thought the entire TBS ploy was to get an entire section just for TBS showing.
This is one of my pet peeves. Alias airs right after Lost on ABC, and when I set my PVR to record the former, I got five minutes of the latter, and missed the last five minutes of Alias. And, in their infinite wisdom, Scientific Atlanta (who make the PVR) have programmed it to ignore the end time if you try to manually over-ride it (it resets 10:05 PM back to 10:00 PM). MOST annoying.
What’s troubling about this is that on other channels, shows that start at 11:05 PM are in the on-screen guide as starting then, and the PVR will correctly record the entire show. Frustrating.
It also gives the network an extra minute or two of ad time to sell. It’s not like you’re gaining one or two minutes of actual programming.
But why? What do they gain from doing this?
Well, if the networks can tell their advertisers that they’ve found a way to beat tivo; they’ll be more likely to go with them.
In short, more $$.
It might be to get you to watch their show live and Tivo the other one you were going to watch live. That way you can’t FF through all their commercials. Just a WAG, but I have heard that the networks are scared about the ways people are avoiding commercials.
Sounds plausible. But it won’t work on me at least - I avoid watching commercials by not watching commercial TV at all anymore.