After growing-up in the Eastern Time zone and now living in Central Time for the last two years, having TV shows come on one hour earlier has been a life altering experience — TV programming on the East Coast should be bumped up one hour.
Before I discuss the merits of the hour earlier scheduling, I want to state that I believe the chief reason that primetime programming starts at 8 p.m. is that it forces us to watch more TV — I have found that the primary benefit of the 7 p.m. start time is that I watch less TV.
I say life altering without any jest.
Much in the way that digital video recorders have allowed viewers to wrestle control from TV programmers, the earlier start time of everything has had the same effect for shows that I want to watch live.
Consider these scenarios: Primetime begins at 8 p.m. and ends at 11 p.m. If there’s a show I want to see that begins at 10 p.m., it ends late enough that there really isn’t much time left in the night to do anything — technically, only one hour. But if the end time is at 10 p.m., you suddenly have a solid two hours left in the night, especially if you’re looking to get a late night drink with friends during the work week (and don’t want to stay out too late).
The additional time you have later in the night of course increases the earlier shows end.
In fact, there will often be an 8 p.m. eastern show that I catch at 7 p.m. and I have so much time left in the night that I can still get dinner with friends and hang out for hours. The 8 p.m. start time is late enough, that by the time the first one hour show ends — 9 p.m. — I’ve burned through so much of the night that I might as well sit out the rest of the night at home in front of the TV. That’s why I say the purpose of the 8 p.m. start time is about increasing TV viewing. By back loading the schedule, you sit in your house waiting for 8 p.m., increasing the likelihood that you watch something a 7 p.m. And by 9 p.m. and especially 10 p.m., feel it is too late to do anything else but watch more TV.
This “so much of the night has been wasted that you might as well keep watching” is most prominent with sports. With football, the 1 p.m. start time can leave you close enough to 5 p.m. that in the fall with the sun setting earlier, it feels like your day is over, and again, you might as well keep watching rather than do something else (and folks on Pacific Time get the best deal — you can watch a 10:00 a.m. game and then get a late brunch). And obviously when you get to featured national games that start at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., the earlier start time means games end closer to 11 p.m. rather than midnight.
And let’s say I cared about late night TV. Instead of having to wait until 11:30 p.m. and watching TV as late as 12:30 a.m. or 1 a.m, in Central it starts at 10:30 p.m.
At the heart of this analysis, is my internal conflict between wanting to watch shows live for the benefit of being able to take part in the next morning conversations about episodes vs. wanting more time in the night to devote to non-TV viewing activities.
I suppose that if everyone would just agree to buy Rokus or similar devices, that would largely fix my problem — none of us would be live.
