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Late List: January results

Nine has topped the Late List entries submitted for January.

2013-02-05_2358Here are the latest results of TV Tonight‘s Late List trial, a crowd-sourcing destination for you to name the shows that never start on time.

There were 40 entries in January:

Nine: 23
Seven: 11
Other: 4
ABC: 2
TEN: 0
SBS: 0
Foxtel: 0

The Big Bang Theory Advertised time: 8:30pm / Actual: 8:38pm
Santos Tour Down Under Advertised time: 11:00pm / Actual: 11:11pm
CSI: Miami Advertised time: 9:32pm / Actual: 9:38pm
The Mindy Project Advertised time: 9:30pm / Actual: 9:44pm
Today Tonight Advertised time: 6:32pm / Actual: 6:36pm
Packed to the Rafters Advertised time: 8:45pm / Actual: 8:51pm
Qi Advertised time: 8:00pm / Actual: 7:58pm

Nearly half the entries for January were submitted in the last week of the month.

You can file an entry here.

NB: The Late List is a crowd-sourcing trial and is not scientifically conducted. It relies on the trust of readers to resource information

11 Responses

  1. Yes David and I am glad you made the “Late List” which has been truly helpful to know who has not made the late list and who has. The networks are getting the message besides the ones that ar on 0

  2. David I think the network besides SBS and TEN are getting way too slack and they just go over time by around 2-3mins or even beyond that. We should be a lot more harder on them now

  3. Thanks David. I appreciate that the data is crowd-sourced and not rigourously controlled (and you’re up-front about that). I guess I was thinking that there is a general trend for the advertised start times of a particular program, with those appearing in weekly printed TV guides being the least accurate, then daily printed guides, online guides, and, finally, station-provided EPGs being the most accurate. (On-air promos seem to vary between print and on-line guides for accuracy).

    So, how late a program appears depends on which source you use.

    I agree that reporting on the most frequent entries makes the most sense, and only when you have sufficient data points; eg consolidating all of January’s data. Good to have some hard data in one place instead of just anecdotal comments and complaints spread throughout the blog / net.

  4. David, quick question – on the form you have slots to record start times advertised via four different methods but only report a single, unidentified start time above. Are people generally providing more than one advertised start time and do you have any plans to do anything with this additional data?

    1. The form requires some mandatory info then optional info. The Actual Time is mandatory and I ask people to supply at least one of the Advertised Times. Many will give me all 4 (which is above and beyond really). Of course a show may run in a different time in a different city, so what I publish above is a sample of some of the entries. I try to represent the most frequent entries, but it is a bit of a snapshot really.

      The Late List is still a crowd-sourcing trial on the site. December / January entries were fairly modest, but there has been a lift with big shows returning, so I will continue it in February to see if it’s role is warranted. I don’t plan to do anything else with the data other than publish results as I have been doing. People can make up their own mind whether it is worth reading or has any effect. For me, it is what it is: a snapshot of programming misdemeanours that warrants improvement.

  5. @cnrmlj I can probably forgive Channel 9 for starting the movie early…from memory the cricket finished about 4 hours ahead of schedule last Friday. There was only so many Big Bang repeats that they could play…

  6. What about the early list. Last Friday night nine advertised lethal weapon 3 as staring at 10pm and it started at 830pm. You would be annoyed if you had set the VCR to record that.

  7. Are these results presented to the networks at any stage? They may or may not care, but they’ll definitely do nothing if they aren’t.

    9 seem to have lifted their game quite a bit. 10 are reasonably good lately as well, but now and then they fail to issue EPG accuracy updates at all, then they’re very bad. 7 still treat the viewer like something that fell out of a dog’s bottom, when it comes to guide accuracy.

  8. Congratulations David, because I think that this is actually working. Seven are now advertising close to start times instead of 8.30 they are actually advertising 8.45 where as before they were advertising 8.30 and the next show would start at 8.45. Keep up the good work!

    I do not watch Nine much so I can not comment there and over on ELEVEN Neighbours starts every evening around 6.30 .

    TEN ELEVEN and ONE are usually pretty good with their timings.

    ABC TV are usually pretty good also

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