Policy regarding interrupted episodes

@TomSouthwell wrote:
But f.e. when the queen fell ill and then died me and @TonyMayhew painstakingly kept everything up to date. That wasn't announced? 

The fact is, historical data is already wrong. I'm sure US shows were interrupted when Kennedy and Reagan were shot, when Challenger and Columbia exploded. 9/11 skewered everything for days. None of that is noted in our stuff for the shows airing at the time. All we list are the basic episode information and the air dates. And for what I suspect a lot of people use the site for, that's okay. People aren't going to care that XYZ show was preempted for thirty minutes in 1982 for whatever reason. Likewise, people next month aren't really going to care that Survivor and The Masked Singer were interrupted for 20 minutes. 

That's my point. Are we worried about a schedule in the moment, or are we more interested in the listings for future uses (private servers for example). 

If the concern is the schedule in the moment, then I think there's going to have to be some major reworking of the software to accommodate these things. Splitting a show and adding extra episode numbers (which is wrong per the networks) isn't the answer. If the concern is capturing data for historical reference, then the note feature solves this. Make a note that the episode was preempted for X amount of time for Y reason, and we're done. 

@LadyShelley wrote:
The fact is, historical data is already wrong. I'm sure US shows were interrupted when Kennedy and Reagan were shot, when Challenger and Columbia exploded. 9/11 skewered everything for days. None of that is noted in our stuff for the shows airing at the time. All we list are the basic episode information and the air dates. And for what I suspect a lot of people use the site for, that's okay. People aren't going to care that XYZ show was preempted for thirty minutes in 1982 for whatever reason. Likewise, people next month aren't really going to care that Survivor and The Masked Singer were interrupted for 20 minutes. 

That's my point. Are we worried about a schedule in the moment, or are we more interested in the listings for future uses (private servers for example). 

If the concern is the schedule in the moment, then I think there's going to have to be some major reworking of the software to accommodate these things. Splitting a show and adding extra episode numbers (which is wrong per the networks) isn't the answer. If the concern is capturing data for historical reference, then the note feature solves this. Make a note that the episode was preempted for X amount of time for Y reason, and we're done. 

+1

@JuanArango wrote:
Hi all,

as this has been an ongoing conversation amongst many users here I would like to bring this up for discussion.

If an episode is interrupted due to a presidential speech, an emergency broadcast or something similar, we are right now listing the episode as two parts.

My main argument against this is, that if the creator (network) of the show says it is ONE episode, who are we to say otherwise?
We are only a site who lists other creations and we should list it the way the original source does.

A further argument is that there is no other site that does this. You can look around everywhere, the splitting of an episode in such a situation is not happening anywhere else and for good reasons I say, as the orginal creator does not do it either.

Yes, the schedule is wrong in such an incident, but the schedule does not matter anymore the next day, the episode listing will be wrong and contrary to the official source forever.

Let us hear what you all think about this.

 

I continue to maintain that an additional "SUB-EPISODE" field is needed in the database. Normally, this would be blank, but when needed, it could be "A" or "B". This would allow us to show (for example) S03E01A and S03E01B as two separate parts of S03 E01. This would allow TVMaze to follow its conventions of being able to enter separate credits for each part in the case of a double episode, or split pieces apart in the case of a presidential speech; yet still number things consistently with the rest of the world.