Regarding television in the 21st century, we live in the age of plenty. 500 channels and nothing is on.
When something is on that’s worth watching, it’s on at the wrong time. Local television stations are robbing their viewers of time so they can run more commercials. More commercials mean more money for them, less time for you.
Here’s how it works. Most television programs run about 30 minutes or 60 minutes in length. For each hour, there are about 20 minutes of commercials. Local television stations often add more commercials to a television program, extending the lengthy by one to five minutes.
More commercials means more money for the stations, but less time for the television program for viewers. We’re being robbed by the local media barons.
How so? Digital video recorders. The DVR. TiVo. These nifty little devices record television programs just like the VCR of yesteryear, and store them for later playback. That process is called time shifting. Television stations, networks, and program producers don’t like the DVR. Viewers love it.
The DVR makes it simple to schedule a television program to be recorded. But what if the television program doesn’t begin right at, say, 7:00 PM because the local station inserted extra commercials, moving the start time to 7:04 PM? The DVR starts recording on schedule at 7:00, so the first four minutes of what gets recorded are commercials, not program.
The hammer comes down at the end of the program, which, in the case of a one hour program that starts at 7:04, would be 8:04, or four minutes after the DVR finished recording said program between 7:00 and 8:00. The end result? The end of the program is not recorded.
Thank you, management of local television stations.
Fortunately, most DVRs can be set to record specific start and stop times, which can circumvent the problem, but it’s a guessing game as to which television program will be affected and when. Local television stations are either totally inept about keeping on time to a network schedule, or they think so little of their viewers that they don’t mind insulting them with more commercials at the most inopportune time.
Whatever it is, Hawaii’s television schedules are broken.
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