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Radio Times

and its relationship with the Beeb today (December 2016)

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SW
Steve Williams
In 1993-4 they included New Year's Day so it was a "15 day guide", however when it was repeated in the following issue there were some changes - one of which being a special second edition of Noel's House Party with the results of "Mr Blobby's Blind Date" later in the evening*, that clearly wasn't planned when the festive fortnight was taken to press.
In 1999-2000 they went up to lunchtime to cover the end of 2000 Today, and then the New Year issue was an 8 day guide to get the whole thing in one issue.


Indeed. That 1993/4 one was interesting because, as you say, some of the BBC1 programmes had changed around, so clearly it involved doing it too early for accuracy. Some of the other channels on that brief New Year's Day 2000 schedule had changed by the next issue as well. 1982/83 was also a 15 day edition, it ran Friday 24th December to Friday 7th January, which included far too much non-festive stuff. I also have the 1989 Christmas TV Times where there's half a page devoted to brief listings for Friday 22nd December, just in case that was the only one you bought.

In 1977, mind, the Radio and TV Times picked different fortnights, RT ran 24th December to 6th January, while the TVT went for 17th-30th December.

Alternatively do a 16 day edition, change the deadline dates and delay the publication date, nobody really needed to buy it last Saturday!


Given we had a 27 page thread speculating about when the BBC1 Christmas ident might be launching, bemoaning there were no "leaks" in early November, this is surely the wrong forum to be suggesting the Radio Times is coming out too early. As mentioned, it is much more complicated now because there are umpteen publications all with their own systems, many of which have presumably been created with seven day operation in mind.

Also with New Years Day being only second to Christmas it makes sense for the publishers to get another flagship issue out of it. It only happens when New Years Day falls on a weekend - based on previous years next years edition should run from the 23rd Dec -5th Jan.


Yes, the first time since 2006. In 1995, however, when Christmas was on a Monday, it actually ran from 16th-29th December. Presumably this was some kind of experiment, meaning they could do another issue for New Year (and Hogmanay in Scotland of course) but it meant week one was more or less a normal week, and they didn't do that again.

That was also the case in 1972, although in those days New Year's Day wasn't even a Bank Holiday in England.
BU
buster
In fact Genome has got very confused by the 01.01.94 situation and has got both 1925 and 1855 start times for House Party - the first without the Blobby competition, the second with it added.

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1994-01-01
Last edited by buster on 6 December 2016 8:55pm
AN
Andrew Founding member
based on previous years next years edition should run from the 23rd Dec -5th Jan.

Which of course will result in pretty much exactly what this year's dates were planned to avoid.
BR
Brekkie
I've not seen any of the usual free "TBA" guides in the newspapers this year but usually they have run for what they consider to be the 12 days of Christmas TV - 21st December to 1st January. Presumably as provisional listings for New Years Eve and New Years Day are still to be released they to would have had to stop on the 30th - after all newspapers would never just make anything up.
WI
Wicko
Several posters on Digital Spy have received confirmation Emails from a Mr. Hodges of Radio Times stating that, weeks 51 and 52 conclude on 29th December 2017 and that week 1 starts on 30th December in 2018. Therefore next year's Christmas issue will be from 16th December to 29th December. There is always two consecutive years of a Christmas only issue.
SW
Steve Williams
Wicko posted:
Several posters on Digital Spy have received confirmation Emails from a Mr. Hodges of Radio Times stating that, weeks 51 and 52 conclude on 29th December 2017 and that week 1 starts on 30th December in 2018. Therefore next year's Christmas issue will be from 16th December to 29th December. There is always two consecutive years of a Christmas only issue.


That doesn't mean anything, though, they can still put Week 52 and Week 1 in the same issue. The numbers don't matter.

They only usually have two consecutive years of a Christmas only issue because it's usually on Saturday one year and Sunday the next. But not this time because of a leap year.
tightrope78, London Lite and Brekkie gave kudos
JA
JAS84
I've not seen any of the usual free "TBA" guides in the newspapers this year but usually they have run for what they consider to be the 12 days of Christmas TV - 21st December to 1st January. Presumably as provisional listings for New Years Eve and New Years Day are still to be released they to would have had to stop on the 30th - after all newspapers would never just make anything up.
The Sunday Mirror had it's Christmas TV guide a couple of days ago. Not a TBA in sight, though it didn't list any more than the paid TV mags are (i.e. no 31st Dec or 1st Jan) - it's 12 days were 19th to 30th Dec.



The Sun's will be in this Saturday's paper, alongside the normal TV Magazine.
WI
Wicko
[quote:0188298989="Steve Williams" pid="1037127"][quote:0188298989="Wicko" pid="1037126"]Several posters on Digital Spy have received confirmation Emails from a Mr. Hodges of Radio Times stating that, weeks 51 and 52 conclude on 29th December 2017 and that week 1 starts on 30th December in 2018. Therefore next year's Christmas issue will be from 16th December to 29th December. There is always two consecutive years of a Christmas only issue.[/quote:0188298989]

That doesn't mean anything, though, they can still put Week 52 and Week 1 in the same issue. The numbers don't matter.

They only usually have two consecutive years of a Christmas only issue because it's usually on Saturday one year and Sunday the next. But not this time because of a leap year.[/quote:0188298989]

Well, we'll know a year from now who was right and who was wrong. But Week 51 and Week 52 will be the week's that the TV mags will publish, and as it stands, that means a 16th - 29th edition of the RT. I hope you're right because I don't see the point of a Christmas issue that ends on 29th December. Week 1 will have its own issue of the RT as it's the week the new season starts and the BBC will want the New Year shows heralded in separately to Christmas.
SW
Steve Williams
Wicko posted:
Well, we'll know a year from now who was right and who was wrong. But Week 51 and Week 52 will be the week's that the TV mags will publish, and as it stands, that means a 16th - 29th edition of the RT. I hope you're right because I don't see the point of a Christmas issue that ends on 29th December. Week 1 will have its own issue of the RT as it's the week the new season starts and the BBC will want the New Year shows heralded in separately to Christmas.


If you look at the calendar, in December 2018 week 52 is 22nd-28th December, and Week 1 is 29th December-4th January. That was also the case in 2012, and they certainly didn't run 15th-28th December that year, or any year when Christmas was on a Tuesday.
DA
davidhorman
In fact Genome has got very confused by the 01.01.94 situation and has got both 1925 and 1855 start times for House Party - the first without the Blobby competition, the second with it added.

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1994-01-01


Looks like almost everything is listed twice, and at the top it says:

Quote:
We're aware that the listings on this page are duplicated and are working to resolve the problem.


No idea how long that's been there, of course. They've been "working to resolve the problem" of Channel Island Android users being unable to install iPlayer for the last five years...
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member


Looks like almost everything is listed twice, and at the top it says:

Quote:
We're aware that the listings on this page are duplicated and are working to resolve the problem.


No idea how long that's been there, of course.


That'll have been there since the original scan and it is referenced in the FAQ:

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/faqs posted:
Also, some duplicate or empty listings are a result of the details for a day being printed in two consecutive editions of Radio Times.


It probably isn't the only example and there are probably all kinds of weird and wonderful "errors" in the project.
JA
JAS84
So someone needs to go through them and manually amend it to only use the second version of the listings, right?

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