Shows/series that air in 2 or more countries

There's a pending feature for this, and thus it's definitely on our radar.

We're still not too fond of adding this though. We're not a "listings" site (something listing every airing of an episode, even if it's the 100th time that episode has aired) and definitely don't aspire to become one.

Right now we only track original premiere dates, which is easy to manage and verify. But if we were to add "alternate airdates", the amount of data to be added would suddenly increase a hundredfold! Most popular US shows eventually air in almost every other country in the world; so for each of those episodes there would be up to a hundred alternate airdates to be added. All of this data would be hard to find, hard to verify, so we'd likely end up with large gaps and inaccurate data.

Even if we'd be convinced to add this despite these concerns, it would be a lot of work. Adding this has an impact on almost every part of the site; the schedule, calendar, watch list. A lot of people wouldn't appreciate an episode showing up on their schedule/calendar ages after it originally premiered (and ages after they've already watched it), so we would have to make the behavior configurable in all these areas.

Don't count on this any time soon, if at all.

Recently two USA shows had an episode air a day earlier (original premiere dates) in Canada, how should that be handled?

wmulder wrote:
Recently two USA shows had an episode air a day earlier (original premiere dates) in Canada, how should that be handled?

I f this becomes a pattern that the show always airs earlier in canada we should change the show to the canadian network, if it is just an exception to the rule we should leave it as it is now :)

cheers
Juan

So you're not considering if for an example a show that is primarily an american show might have a premiere airdate elsewhere. Canada is a prime example, it's actually very common, maybe half of the shows air first in Canada, i can give you at least three examples for this season only. It's not uncommon at all. Last kingdom is a UK/US prod, it started in the US, and then BBC2 will air it, but both airdate should appear somewheres same for The game (2014) etc... It's easier when it's the same date, like for Between (Netflix in the US and some network in Canada) but most times, it will differ.

It's a pattern, I promise you.

But it also happens with shows that are being pulled from the schedule. Their premiere date might be Australia or Romania or another country. It happens a lot as well. Less so today because production has become so expensive, networks tend to air everything but it still happens.

World Premiere date should be a must, it's not really about listing, even though it could be, it is something that appears on the episode page itself, not on the episode listing page which, for me, needs a redesign (it didn't take into account long shows at all and i think showing lifetime number is essential). And again, please don't translate "conditional use of verbs" to demands...

You may not have started as a listing website, and your primary goal were "watched" and "API" but that was before tvrage went down. Until that point, your goals could be maintained. But I don't think you can just limit yourself to these anymore. But that's my opinion.

Tonks wrote:
So you're not considering if for an example a show that is primarily an american show might have a premiere airdate elsewhere.

I am completely open to discuss this, let's hear what david, jan and thomas have to say about this :)

cheers
Juan

Gotta say I'm with Jaguar and Tonks on this one.

As they both point out it's becoming more and more common for american shows to sometimes air in Canada a day early, have shows originate in one country and then get picked up for more seasons in a different country aswell as multiple country productions so think we definitely need a way to add premiere dates around the world. I think the way we did it on tvrage was very easy and manageable to work with so would be happy to see something set up similar to that.

To Juan : Great. Thank you.

Also, it doesn't take into account syndicated shows. Crossing Lines season 3 for example is not coproduced by TF1 anymore and has been launched all over the AXN networks around the world around sept 15th (launch dates are staggered up to mid november i believe). The pinkertons started in the US or in Canada, i can't remember, but it's a syndicated show, but there would be a premiere date. That US network by itself would not be its primary network, the Canadian would be, I believe, as it is a Canadian produced show.

Also you have shows like Please like me : coproduction between Pivot in the US and ABC in Australia, season 3 started first in the US because of how the contract was written but it's primarily an Aussie show. The list goes and on about that kind of coproductions and those are on the rise right now because of economics. Last Panthers (Sky/ Canal), Tunnel (Sky/Canal) Spotless (Sky /Canal again) Fortitude (Sky/Canal) and it's not always Sky that has first air date, Last panthers, Tunnel and Spotless started first in France, but Fortitude hasn't aired yet in France though it's a coproduction like the others.

Penny Dreadful is a coproduction between sky and showtime, both airdate should be somewhere. That's the thing that might be missing. There are loads and loads of examples... Sorry, i just wanted to show you it's not uncommon at all and syndicated shows are coming back after becoming a rarity (sometime in the 90s)

EDIt (nothing i've written was in response to Queenie) I just saw his/her reply after i posted mine.

Tonks wrote:
To Juan : Great. Thank you.

If I understand all of you correct, the best solution for you is to go with the premiere date/showing of the pilot and set it to that station/country ?

I could live with that :)

cheers
Juan

Well, yes and no. I think all of us would be happy if we could add alternate airdates to every episode with its country (and network if possible) to have as much info as possible and if the premiere date is not in the country or origin, have a check box for it (yes, i am talking again about adding a checkbox :p) Like right now, Bones airs on Wednesday in Canada, but it airs on thursday on Fox. it's world premiere is a day before its US airdate.

For example, right now, all of HBO shows air one day after its US date on OCS City in France, i'd love being able to add these to each episode..

It's a request to be able to add alternative airdates that encompasses when a show premieres elsewhere and adding as many as airdates as possible. Two stones in one go.

Tonks wrote:
Well, yes and no. I think all of us would be happy if we could add alternate airdates to every episode with its country (and network if possible) to have as much info as possible and if the premiere date is not in the country or origin, have a check box for it (yes, i am talking again about adding a checkbox :p) Like right now, Bones airs on Wednesday in Canada, but it airs on thursday on Fox. it's world premiere is a day before its US airdate.
For example, right now, all of HBO shows air one day after its US date on OCS City in France, i'd love being able to add these to each episode..
It's a request to be able to add alternative airdates that encompasses when a show premieres elsewhere and adding as many as airdates as possible. Two stones in one go.

Yes, the alternate airdates thing is a request that is up for voting and it would solve the issue you pointed out.

cheers
juan

An episode premiering in Canada a day before it's shown on its original USA network is quite a mess. I knew episodes occasionally aired one hour early there, but a whole day is new to me.

In such a scenario, I think we definitely shouldn't mix up airdates from two different countries/networks together in the same episode list. To that end, I propose a rule something like "within a season, all episode airdates should be based on the original/primary (to be defined more clearly) network".

In this light I can definitely understand your calls for alternate airdates, but the downsides and complications I mentioned are still there, so for now we'll have to focus on how to handle such a scenario in the current system.

I don't care one way or another, but wouldn't the simplest solution be to set the calendar/schedule of the individual user, by the country they're in?

(Simplest from a presentation standpoint: I don't know what the programming involves. :) )

In other words, if I indicate my country of origin is France, it shows me the French dates on my calendar if those dates are present. The UK dates if I'm from the UK. The US dates if I'm from the U.S. Or alternately just let me see it in the country-less view that currently exists.

You'd have to sort out the calendar view to indicate what country the show was airing in then. Maybe at that end of it only, have the system put in (US), (UK), (Fr), etc. at the end.

On the episode page, use the standard view with maybe one of the mostly-hidden tabs showing alternate airdates. On the episode list, don't list the alternate airdates, but just the airdates of the country of origin. Then you can use the rule suggested above to figure out what dates those are.

I'm not talking about a listing (at all). The episode listing should be the original country in which a show is aired. It would be horrible to add listing in such a way, and i don't think anyone is arguing for this or i misunderstood Jaguar's post.

I'm talking added information on episodes pages, it's not the listing at all.

If it were based on whatever country we are from, this would be a nightmare.You're totally right. i can't even fathom what Gadfly is suggesting in a feasible way but yeah if you'd want to make calendar personalized upon each country air date, why not but that's an entire different part of the website.

You'd have to pull data from other websites to get it too because you can't rely on people from around the world to maintain episode listing for their countries the same way you rely on americans/brits/canadians to do it.

Alternative airdates on episode pages are :

It's columns in your database, that would deal with displaying this date for this country with a network if it was added or that date for this country and if it's world premiere, then there is that checkbox. It happens a lot.

It can be displayed in a collapsing section (something that expands or don't display at all if no info is entered)

The reason rage and imdb have the alternate airdates is exactly because of this : some shows will air a day or weeks before even starting on its primary network. For example, You, me and the apocalypse is airing right now in the UK; NBC came on board a coproducer i think (it could be only a, acquisition), NBc will say it's an original show while it had aired entirely in the UK by the time it hits NBC. And netflix has a way of shirking with the truth around the world that is quite amazing. For example : Penny Dreadful is listed as an Netflix Original Creation in France... as Fargo and a few other "acquisitions". I'm guessing they might have done the same with peaky blinders in the US.

I'm not saying it is easy to script at all. Or that it should be done yesterday, or done period. But it should be there, it will only make the site better.

The calendar would be a way to see the accumulated alt-airdates for a current show in one place, and only by the people who want to see them. Having them on the individual episode pages and nowhere else is not very helpful for anyone trying to see the "big picture" of when a block of episodes airs, how often it airs, and so on.

Part of David's concern seemed to be how the information would display on the calendar. If for instance the calendar or the episode list showed multiple dates for the same episode.

I'm not against it at all. If a calendar can be that customable, i'm all for it, it would be a great feature. And I totally understand David's problem with the episodes listing and that's why i said i didn't think alternate dates should be displayed there. I don't know if these are interconnected or not here. If they are, then you'd need options in our profile to choose a default display.

Gadfly wrote:
In other words, if I indicate my country of origin is France, it shows me the French dates on my calendar if those dates are present. The UK dates if I'm from the UK. The US dates if I'm from the U.S. Or alternately just let me see it in the country-less view that currently exists.

It's even more complicated :)

1) An episode from a US show airs in Canada a day before the normal US premiere

2) An episode from a US show airs in Canada a day after the normal US premiere

Person A would only want to see the dates from #1, person B both #1 and #2, and person C neither.