"isw" wrote in message
]...
In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:
Much as I'd like to be able to support the view that the BBC's
standards
are falling, I have to advise that I was already being frustrated by
the
BBC's apparent inability to keep to its published schedules back in
the
early 1980s. This is nothing new.

If you give it some thought, it's near impossible to make a prog run
'to
the second', as some seem to want. You could, of course, always make it
shorter and fill the gaps with trails etc - allowing the next one to
start
on the second. But that would bring even more complaints. ;-)

Maybe not with live shows but when shows are pre-recorded the broadcaster
knows the exact length of each show long before broadcast

Live or recorded, it is perfectly possible for broadcasters to maintain
program timing to the nearest second; we used to do it back in the
sixties, when nationwide network switching was synchronized by people
watching Western Union clocks on the walls of broadcast stations all
over the country. What has happened is that broadcasters either don't
care any more, or there is some commercial advantage to playing fast and
loose with the timing. My bet is on the latter.

Isaac

That's my feeling too. It definitely used to be much better here in the UK,
than it is now. If a programme was billed to start at 8pm, then it pretty
much did. Now, it is often several minutes late, after they have finished
showing genuine commercials, and then long trailers for forthcoming
programmes. Even the BBC is now poor, and they only have their own trailers
to factor into the equation. I really don't think that they care too much
these days, as the 'networks' are no longer formed from independant regional
stations, each with their own control centre, which had to synchronise, and
jump on and off the network, as the programming and commercial breaks
dictated. It probably is just a combination of 'no need', someone's
smart-arsed thinking about channel surfing, and the general 'don't really
care' attitude that's pervading everything we do now ...

Arfa