Friends finale and NBC Tivo-b0rking -- TiVo Strikes Back, episode for sale on Amazon...

Following up on yesterday's post about NBC's apparent attempts to b0rk potential TiVoers of the Friends finale, BoingBoing reader Douglas Clark says,

I am a loyal Tivo user and Tivo did send out a message alert to users about the Friends episode. It was more along the lines of "if you manually extend the time of a recording, you may miss the beginning of the friends final episode." I find that Tivo is pretty good about catching unusual start times and other wonky tricks the networks play. The previous comment about HUT and ratings was right on the money...

Link to previous BoingBoing post.

Tech maven Meg Hourihan adds, "Even weirder is that I got a message on my Tivo warning me that the finale of Friends would have abnormal times. The message warned that if I wasn't just using the automatic "start on time" and "end on time" settings (i.e. I manually set the start time as 8 PM) that I might miss some. What makes things weirder and worse is that Tivo still didn't record the whole show! I made sure my settings were what the message instructed, and happened to watch the show live. Tivo kicked in to record at 8:59 PM (which is what it listed the start time as) but stopped at 9:59! According to the time on my digital cable box, the program didn't end until 10:03 PM. So if I hadn't watched it live, I would have missed the last four minutes. Seems like a major screw-up on Tivo's part, especially after sending out that message!"

Mindjack's Donald Melanson wonders, "This is just a thought, but since NBC was selling 30 second ad spots during the Friends finale for $2M (the same as the Superbowl) is it not possible that they were just trying to squeeze in a few more by starting the show a minute early and ending it a few minutes late? An extra four minutes of advertising would be an extra $16M for NBC."

BoingBoing reader Ran Li says, "I'd like to point out that this new NBC strategy is reminiscent of how Japan ended up with its crazy TV schedules. This is from the Japan SAQ:

Q. Have you ever noticed that Japanese TV shows start at odd times? One show starts at 6:58, another at 7:00, and another at 7:05. Why is that?
A. Until several years ago, most Japanese TV shows did start exactly on the hour, but because of the TV ratings war, some stations decided to get the jump on their competitors and start their programs a little earlier. The networks realised that because most programs ended a little before the hour, people would often start channel surfing, but they would be more likely to start watching a station that wasn't airing commercials at that time. Similarly, if a program runs until a little past the hour, viewers are more likely to watch the next program because they have missed the beginning of programs that have already started on other stations. Now that every station (except NHK) does it, there is nothing to be gained from starting programs earlier or later, and the stations have become trapped in a vicious circle where starting times are getting earlier and earlier.

I really hope American TV doesn't end up like this because of some dumb execs who think this is a good idea."

BoingBoing reader Duane says, "This isn't really new...NBC has been doing it for weeks now, and Tivo sends out a message every time. The real killer is not wonking with the times -- it's simply providing bad times. Just because NBC puts into the guide that Friends would end at 9:59, that doesn't mean they can't run over to 10:01, which I believe it did last night. So even though I had 'manually record nbc from 8-10' I still almost missed the actual last scene. Had something else been in my todolist for 10, something on a different channel, I would not be writing you today because my wife would have killed me."

Matt Goyer says, "Don't worry -- if you missed the last 5 minutes of Friends, on May 11th you can buy the DVD from Amazon. Is setting the time a little later a way to get all those Tivo/DVR users to buy the DVD?"