[mythtv-users] CBS sucks!

Ken Truesdale kat at tiac.net
Mon Oct 31 13:15:10 UTC 2011


We got burned by the delayed CBS schedule the first couple weeks this year too - for us it's The Good Wife, not Amazing Race - but padding by 1 hour is easy and will work for all but the longest games and as has been pointed out, that's very unlikely for an NFL game.  And for me, using MythTV to extend the recording helps with the MythTV-WAF since it is much easier to jump ahead to get the target show with MythTV than with the Comcast DVR.  

+1 to Gary's point about the NFL being a big moneymaker and for taking precedence over "regular" programming.  I also wanted to add that the NFL wants to run two games on Sundays and that they want their West Coast audience too which means 1:00pm to 7:00pm is their window - they can't move it up and CBS doesn't want to schedule 60 Minutes to start later.  Finally, remember that the percentage of people that use a DVR is lower than the people that watch live.  A typical CBS viewing household may be more likely to have football on, have it roll into 60 minutes and The Amazing Race.  

I agree with Brian that the audience who doesn't watch live is going to be increasingly annoyed with each blown recording and seek out other avenues for getting their content.  But when you consider the revenue and percentage of viewers that are not watching live, I'm sure CBS considers that a decent trade-off.  Especially since CBS doesn't have a sports network like ABC (ESPN) and NBC (Versus) to which they could shift the coverage.  And unlike some other sports which many networks would be happy to turf off to sports-only, non-broadcast networks, the NFL likes having Sunday broadcast TV dominated by NFL and would be less likely to give a contract to a network that required viewers to have more than just broadcast TV capability for their Sunday afternoons (they've already shifted the non-Sunday afternoon coverage to non-broadcast and they want feet in both avenues).  I'd like to see NFL games run faster and be able to fit a whole game in under 2:45 but with instant replay and advertiser revenue, that ship has sailed - and is even further OT than the OP!  

Oh, and Brian, if you want multiple recordings from CBS, there are two approaches.  1.) with multiple tuners available, just have all the recordings extended by an hour  2.) to use a single tuner, keep the earlier recordings to their original time slot and just extend the last one by an hour.  The former takes more disk and more resources but keeps the recordings distinct.  The latter takes less disk but you wouldn't want to delete The Good Wife recording before watching The Amazing Race, for example.  

So, yeah, pain for those of us who use DVRs and are used to the recording starting the second before and ending the second after the program aired.  But since we are still not the majority, nothing is going to change in how CBS airs shows.  So just add the padding and you are all set.  


Ken.




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