epstewart

As I intimated in my reply to ValentineXavier, I imagine TCM inserts such things as Now Playing and MGM Parade in part as a way to gain scheduling flexibility, given that the basic schedule is set some months in advance. Ditto, the 15-min. scheduling "granularity." TCM and its fans clearly want as many movies as possible in any given day. Movie intros and outros by Messrs. Osborne, Mankiewicz, and others are not to be missed, either, when they are available. Would the typical TCM fan want to lose an Osborne intro, if an there was an MGM Parade or a Now Playing already on the schedule? I don't think so ... While MGM Parade and Now Playing may be must-see items for some, they are padding for others. TCM has to juggle any number of conflicting priorities here. Hold the "padding" down so that as many movies as possible can be shown ... give themselves a fair amount of time-slot flexibility ... get those schedules out two or three months in advance ... use Osborne/Mankiewicz/Guest-Programmer intros/outros where possible ... Some things have to give, firm commitments to time slots for MGM Parade et al. among them ... Also, ending movies "on time" per the indicated time slot ...

I've thought about the problem some more. Given that the TCM schedule's "granularity" is 15 minutes -- every time slot begins on the hour, half hour, or one of the two quarter hours -- movies that slop over the end of their time slot are pretty much inevitable. TCM could conceivably avoid the problem by always padding out to the next granularity increment with filler items such as short subjects, so that no movie ever runs past the end of its slot. But let's assume that the average amount of padding per movie slot would turn out to be 1/2 x the 15-min. granule used in scheduling. Then on a day in which TCM wanted to schedule 16 movies, there might be 16 x 15 min. x 1/2 = 120 minutes of padding! In other words, one of the intended 16 movie time slots would vanish, and TCM's serious fans would howl at the loss. Get rid of the filler and give us more movies, they would say. TCM could alternatively avoid the problem by using, say, 1-min. or 3-min. or even 5-min. time slot granularity, instead of 15-min. granularity. I imagine they don't want to do that because they would have less flexibility, after the basic schedule is announced some number of months in advance, to stick in a lengthy guest-programmer intro and outro for a given movie. These kinds of programming additions, including the "ordinary" intro/outro contributions by Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz, are marvelous, but I'm thinking TCM needs the flexibility to use them or not to use them, while possibly _also_ responding to situations that arise "at the last minute," such as, say, the passing of an Elizabeth Taylor. So I am assuming TCM relies on 15-min. slot granularity to ease such scheduling flexibility. Accordingly, if a "minimal padding/maximal flexibility" programming policy is the best available compromise, movies running over their time slots are inevitable! It's too bad a TiVo can't be programmed to always add 15 minutes to recordings made from a specified channel ... But even that might be problematic. If I wanted to record two TCM movies in a row, the "end" of the first would overlap the "start" of the second, meaning the TiVo would have to use both tuners. If I also was recording something from, say, Encore HD at the same time, there'd be a scheduling train wreck ...

I record TCM HD movies on my TiVo. Lots of them. Then, when I get the time, I download the recordings to my Mac and convert them for use by my Apple TV. Most of the time it all works fine. Recently though at least two of my recordings were missing the last few minutes of the movie: "Carnal Knowledge" on 3/18/2011 and "Jules and Jim" on 3/19/2011. "Jules and Jim" was in a time slot beginning at 12:15 AM and ending at 2:00 AM: 1 hr. 45 min., or 105 minutes. According to IMDB, the movie's running time is itself 105 minutes. A tight fit indeed. The real problem was that the first 1 minute and 8 seconds was devoted to Robert Osborne's intro. I conclude that the "official" time slot was too small. "Carnal Knowledge" had a time slot from 3:00 AM to 4:45 AM on 3/18. It started 11 min. 57 sec. late because the prior movie "Seconds" overran its time slot, and then there was a "guest programmer" segment with Robert Osborne. IMDB says the movie's running time is 98 min. If I add the nearly 12 min. of extraneous material prior to the movie, the time slot needed to be 12 + 98 = 108 minutes ... but it was only 105 minutes, and the last 3 min. of the movie did not get recorded. The "official" time slot was again too small. I know that I can add time to a stated time slot when I set up my TiVo to record the movies, but I record dozens of movies a month, and doing that for each one is a royal pain in the tush! So I'd like to ask TCM to give the TiVo folks (and also everyone else) more accurate time slot information in the future. Thanks.