Canadian Time Zones

OK, not to beat a dead horse but ... my site preferences are set to -5:00 America/Toronto (and have been from the start) and to display them as such. https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/593/murdoch-mysteries is a CBC show that does in fact air, to me, 1 hour earlier in AT @ 8pm AT / 7pm my time. The show is set @ 20:00 the time it airs in each TZ across Canada. Yet my calendar (link below) shows it airing at 7pm. The next show, Frankie Drake, is also off by an hour, for me ... shouldn't the show airtime be adjusted to "my" TZ preference? I'm not trying to be difficult on purpose, I just can't seem to wrap my head around why the shows are listed on my schedule as if I had access to Atlantic feeds and that's what I watch. Murdoch airs @ 8pm AT, 8pm ET, 8pm CT, 8pm MT and 8pm PT. Even people who have access to channels from other timezones tend, if my friends are any example, to watch shows on their local feeds. Am I thick or is something off? What am I missing? Or is it the system assumes I have access to these shows at am earlier time? I don't. And many others who, like me, don't have cable or if they do, it's basic cable and doesn't include feeds from other timezones also don't have access to these earlier airings. I can't change my TZ to AT since 1. that's not my TZ and more importantly 2. it would throw the rest of the US/worldwide schedules off.

I guess the problem is when a whole country, with 5 timezones (6 but NT doesn't really count) and a mix of national broadcast, local broadcast and cable plus shows airing separately at a set time in each timezone (5 airings), or twice on a few channels with east/west feeds, or just once with a single, simultaneous airing all have to have one timezone designated. No matter how it's sliced/diced the shows from Canada are going to be a dogs breakfast with everything lumped in to a single timezone.

Anyways, if the answer above is yes, the system assumes I have access to Atlantic Time channels, then cool, I'll make the adjustments in my head. Either way, I shan't beat on this deceased Equidae any further. Thanks for bearing with me this long.

https://www.tvmaze.com/schedule?hour=17&date=2018-09-24&Schedule%5Bcountry_enum%5D=40&Schedule%5Bfilter%5D=&Schedule%5BshowType_enum%5D=&Schedule%5Bgenre%5D=&Schedule%5Blanguage_enum%5D=&Schedule%5Bfollowing%5D=&Schedule%5Bsort%5D=1

david wrote:
Not just that - if we wanted to fully track this, each show and episode would have to have multiple timezones and airtimes set.. one for each of a country's timezones. I'm sorry to say that it would be unwise to get your hopes up.

My reply just posted was done before I saw this reply ... bit of a cross posting. Again, sorry to be such a nag, I won't bring it up further.

I don't mind elaborating, it's a complicated topic.

Try to realise that the system doesn't know anything more than what it's told. The only thing we tell it is the world premiere time + timezone for an episode. It can convert that time to any other timezone, which is what it does when you enable "Display airdates in your local timezone".

What it doesn't know is that you might not have access to your country's "premiere feed" (such as the Atlantic feed in Canada, or the Eastern feed in the US) but only to a local feed that uses different airtimes. Since that depends on your TV plan - cable, sattelite, internet-based - and the local circumstances it would be impossible to determine that without telling it explicitly. And even then, it wouldn't know what to show you instead unless we would track all sorts of information about each timezone in a country and its local feeds.

The "local timezone" feature is intended for use between different countries, e.g. so someone from Europe can easily see when a show in America is about to premiere. It was never intended to show correct times for each and every local TV feed within a country. That would require an immense amount of extra work/data so that's not something we aim for either; instead "tv listings" services such as TitanTV or your local TV guide can perform that job.