Brian, It seems to me that one of the reasons this thread is going on so long is that many of the people in it share a belief which you don't - and to them it seems so obvious that they haven't bothered to state it explicitly. Here is what I believe is the major axiom of contention:
"It is impossible to run a broadcast channel precisely to schedule" It seems to me that Brian's suggestions make sense if this axiom turns out to be false. Similarly it seems to me that everyone else's defence of the status quo is a description of an engineering work-around designed to compensate for the problems caused by this axiom holding true. Martin and Brian batted back and forth: > > If you can show me a broadcast schedule for a major channel which > > publicly publishes, in advance, the exact start times of their > > programmes (eg Never Better, Tonight at 2202 on BBC Two), then I'll > > gladly eat a copy of the Radio Times[1]. > I have already said that the BBC Radio 4 schedule is to the minute. I suspect that Martin's response might well be "Ok - but they don't actually stick to that schedule". Indeed Steve has already said: > I mean, think how often Radio 4 presenters crash the pips. This is because they're trying their damndest to stick to a schedule that's too tight. So they come in late on a regular basis. Just like Southern Trains, in fact. There are a number of possible solutions to this problem. The one that seems to have been universally adopted by UK TV networks is to publish a fuzzy timetable. One that's accurate to about 5 minutes. They can aim internally for minute-accuracy, but they know they won't get it. This is OK, because they didn't promise minute-accuracy to the world - only 5-minute accuracy. This is comparable to the standard practice when making Hi-Fi equipment. If you build an amp that can cope with an input range of between x and y (before it blows up), then you'll write on the box that it can cope with between x+delta and y-delta. That way there's some tolerance for when things go wrong. If you want to make an FOI request for the timetable everyone aims at internally, then I'm sure you'll get it. But it won't come with any guarantees. If they were to publish it in the EPG, then people would complain when it turned out that 99% of the programmes broadcast at different times to those scheduled. They don't want to imply a guarantee that they can't keep, so they won't volunteer the minute-accurate target schedule. Is that at all helpful? Gareth. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
