Sometimes press releases will say that a show will premiere on a certain date but in reality it is released a day sooner because of time zone differences. Which date should we use?
Forgive me if this has come up before as I'm sure it has. My instinct for western-hemisphere series would be to use the western-hemisphere release date even though press releases said it would be released the next day in European time.
For example Amazon publishes a press release saying that a certain show will premiere on January 19th. In reality it premieres January 18th because 2018-01-19 00:00:00 UTC+00:00 is January 18th in the western hemisphere.
IMO the date from the press release should be used and TZ differences should not be taken into account, at least while we don't have "premiere airdates in different countries" feature implemented. I think we've already discussed it at some point :)
The Pacific timezone is UTC-08:00, Eastern is UTC-05:00. So at midnight UTC it's 4pm Pacific and 7pm Eastern on the previous day. When it's an American series shouldn't we show the American release date? It makes no sense to have it show the wrong date.
Do Amazon provide an exact release time for it's series, in the press-releases or otherwise? Do they give some kind of public announcement if this time due to change for some reason?
Also, why would US only web channel use UTC time?
I'd say it depends on where the show originates. Something like Grand Tour releases at midnight UK time Friday morning. For me in Colorado that's 6PM Thursday evening. However, the show is produced in the UK, by our current rules, we should be using the UK times.
If the web channel announcing the exact time of the release (e.g. CBSAA and Star Trek: Discovery), the airtime should be entered according to the policy: If the show's network exists in multiple timezones, the earliest timezone should be used.
If the web channel do not mention the time in the media, and only use a premiere date (as Amazon, Netflix or Hulu do) – the time should be left blank, there's no need to guess or calculate or whatever. The policy is clear about that: If there is no exact conclusive time for the episode's premiere, it should be left empty.
Amazon prime isn't tied to a specific country but operates globally.
That means you should simply follow the announced airdate verbatim. "This only applies to broadcast TV shows or Web Channels that operate in a single country; global Web Channel shows should have their airdate set to the exact date that's announced for them." - https://www.tvmaze.com/faq/15/episodes
david wrote:
Amazon prime isn't tied to a specific country but operates globally.That means you should simply follow the announced airdate verbatim. "This only applies to broadcast TV shows or Web Channels that operate in a single country; global Web Channel shows should have their airdate set to the exact date that's announced for them." - https://www.tvmaze.com/faq/15/episodes
Thanks for your reply. Amazon will announce the wrong date ahead of time in its press releases, but then show the correct release date within the platform after the release has happened, which means it's not even consistent within itself. But we should still use the wrong date?
dpratt wrote:
Thanks for your reply. Amazon will announce the wrong date ahead of time in its press releases, but then show the correct release date within the platform after the release has happened, which means it's not even consistent within itself. But we should still use the wrong date?
Give us some examples, please. Is the wrong date off by days or a day either way? I suspect its the second which is a time zone issue, not a press release issue.
Yeah, it's very plausible that Amazon does some kind of automatic timezone conversion for the dates on their website (which means everyone is shown a different date). You can simply apply the sources policy here, which means press release data overrides the data on their website.
LadyShelley wrote:
Give us some examples, please. Is the wrong date off by days or a day either way? I suspect its the second which is a time zone issue, not a press release issue.
You are correct. The press releases show the release date for the Eastern hemisphere which translates to a day earlier in the Western hemisphere. Indeed it is a time zone issue. If you need an example just look at pretty much any Amazon series. Netflix is also known for this.
david wrote:
Yeah, it's very plausible that Amazon does some kind of automatic timezone conversion for the dates on their website (which means everyone is shown a different date). You can simply apply the sources policy here, which means press release data overrides the data on their website.
Thanks. I will do that. It would help if TVmaze would show the date in the schedule/calendar to match my time zone preferences. But it does not.
Another problem with this is that sometimes it's hard to find any original press releases so I only have the streaming services' web site to go on. In that case I don't really know what the press release date was.
And yet another problem is that a lot of TVmaze contributors are not going to read this and therefore are going to use the more intuitive date rather than the press release date unless there is some way for them to enter the timezone meaning that TVmaze isn't always going to be consistent within itself either. Perhaps web series should allow for a release time like other channels, with a note to use UTC to help eliminate confusion.
dpratt wrote:
Perhaps web series should allow for a release time like other channels, with a note to use UTC to help eliminate confusion.
If the web channel do not announce the time of the premiere, where would you get this "release time"?
tnt wrote:
If the web channel do not announce the time of the premiere, where would you get this "release time"?
By looking at the clock of course at the approximate time that the show is added. It could be just left blank until then.
dpratt wrote:
By looking at the clock of course at the approximate time that the show is added. It could be just left blank until then.
Apart from the fact that the idea of using some hypothetical approximate timing is quite wrong itself (and against the policy), what's the reason of this? The only benefit from knowing the airtime is to know it in advance. It's completely useless after the episode was released, who cares about yesterday's schedule? :)
Maybe if we kept track of the release times in the past then we'd know more what to expect in the future. Like when a web channel reliably airs episodes at 12 AM UTC.
I'm just thinking out loud. My main problem is that we know that a release date of January 19th on Amazon/Netflix means it will be available on January 18th in the western hemisphere, but it doesn't seem like we're doing anything to show that to the user. And without a way to show that to the user, I don't think we can always rely on contributors to follow the data policies simply because it's confusing.
dpratt wrote:
Maybe if we kept track of the release times in the past then we'd know more what to expect in the future. Like when a web channel reliably airs episodes at 12 AM UTC.I'm just thinking out loud. My main problem is that we know that a release date of January 19th on Amazon/Netflix means it will be available on January 18th in the western hemisphere, but it doesn't seem like we're doing anything to show that to the user. And without a way to show that to the user, I don't think we can always rely on contributors to follow the data policies simply because it's confusing.
Sometimes, but not always, it depends on where the show is made. Some Amazon shows I get a day early, others I don't. I think David already answered this, anyway: Global Web Channel shows should have their airdate set to the exact date that's announced for them.
dpratt wrote:
Maybe if we kept track of the release times in the past then we'd know more what to expect in the future. Like when a web channel reliably airs episodes at 12 AM UTC.I'm just thinking out loud. My main problem is that we know that a release date of January 19th on Amazon/Netflix means it will be available on January 18th in the western hemisphere, but it doesn't seem like we're doing anything to show that to the user. And without a way to show that to the user, I don't think we can always rely on contributors to follow the data policies simply because it's confusing.
By using the premiere date exactly like it is announced by a web channel, we are following the policy to the letter. There's nothing confusing to it, we're using the first available valid data source, which is usually the series/season trailer/poster or the press release. If it says "January 19 at 9:00PM ET" we're adding episode, airing on January 19, 9:00PM ET. If it says "January 19", we're adding episode on January 19, leaving the airtime field blank. Simple as that. Facts only, no guesswork. Anyone who interested in keeping records or calculating the odds of the web channel reliability are free to do this on their own and welcome to share with the others :)
New contributors could easily become confused as I was which is why I created this topic to begin with. It's clear to me now but I don't think the situation is going to be less confusing for other people unless something changes to show the timezone. This topic certainly helps to clear things up but I don't think we can take it for granted that everyone will notice and read this.
Global webchannel (Netflix, Amazon, etc) airtimes are inherently confusing for now, no matter what our policy is. We actually did store airtimes for them in the past, but it was a much larger mess because people continually added invalid/inconsistent airtimes for Netflix shows and started edit wars between them.
We'll definitely revisit this topic at some point in the future when the landscape is more crystallized, but for now it's very explicit that we don't want to allow airtimes for these web channels.
