Can you really blame TIVO, or Networks when shows go over?

Question

Think about it. All our lives we never worried about a show going over. If the show was on from 8PM-9PM and went over five minutes we were there to watch it...no big deal. But now everyone is fussing how TIVO (DVRs in general) cut off the last few minutes of American Idol. Well, it's not the networks fault. As I stated above, for decades before DVRs were available, networks didn't worry about going over, and consumers didn't complain. Now that DVRs are here everyone wants to complain? And you can't blame DVRs either. They do their job. If they are supposed to record from 8PM-9PM, they do. And most of them, if not all, have an option to record anywhere from one minute to two hours after a show ends. This will protect you from missing any part of your show. If you weren't smart enough to set your recording for 5-10 minutes over it is YOUR FAULT. Especially after all the episodes of American Idol have been going a few minutes over this year. It's a live show people!!

Answer 1

To some extent, it IS the network's fault.  They do lots of "live" shows that don't run overtime - don't tell me that Idol or Dancing are so out of control that there is no-one watching the clock!

And networks are purposely offsetting their shows (including pre-recorded stuff like Law & Order or Lost) by 2 or 3 minutes, to make time-shift recording more difficult.  Why?  Because they get paid for their commercial time based on the number of EYEBALLS watching, not the number of PVRs.  The advertisers know the PVR users are just going to skip the commercials anyhow, so they want the networks to make time-shifting as difficult and wasteful as possible.

Answer 2

Unlike the US, where shows do show up and finish on time, to the rest of the world, it can be very unpredictable. However, stations do have the mechanism to send side info (invisible to users, but visible to VCRs, PVRs, and local stations) that specifies updated start/end times.