TV listing are pointless.

We all know the TV companies do it, but the question has to be why do there continue to broadcast programmes and junctions early or late? There are only three juctions on ITV which run to time, 06am, 09.25 and 6pm. Every other junction can appear upto 2mins early or 5mins late. Worse case being tipping point which always starts at 15.58.

Again the same can be said with the BBC, Very little starts on time bar the news, with some BBC junctions always appear 2mins early.

It must screw up the recordings of programmes on people boxes.

I think the most notable examples are The One Show and the ITV Lunchtime News, which are supposed to start at :30 but always start at :28. Would be nice if the guide actually reflected that.

I thought the one show started at 57mins thus there can then have next programme at 28min past then have the 90secs news update at 58mins. There was a stv news update at 8pm On monday its can appear at 01mins past the hours but tonight it was 57mins with the next programme starting at 58-59mins.

Most boxes handle it on most channels so it's not an issue - although E4 seems to have dropped out of it in recent weeks, recording to time rather than programme. So annoying when you tape something then to catch the last 30 seconds or so you have to sit through 4 minutes of ads on All4.

Anyway, the listings are just a guide - it's close enough and most people aren't anal about it. In the commercial channels case it is often to do with making the best use of their ad minutes - rolling a minute or two over to the next hour can be beneficial. Similarly I guess it allows some limited flexibility in programme length, though it's probably the BBC most than ITV who take advantage of that. An episode of EastEnders could run 8.02-8.27 one night and 7.28-8.02 the next, still seemingly fitting it's slot but actually gaining 9 minutes of running time. ITV do though take advantage at lunchtime to offer a full national bulletin when strictly speaking it should probably only have a 20 minute slot.

I think the rule is you can start up to 3 minutes early or 4 minutes late. The US is quite particular about it - The Late Late Show is billed at 12.37am for example, whilst the Aussie networks couldn't care less and it's quite common for pre-recorded show to overrun their slot by a good 20 minutes or so.

Yet back in the day TV times and radio times would be honset, ie like the ep of Sons and daughters or Young docs at 15.27. etc

Oops yes my mistake - The One Show usually starts at :58 when it's supposed to start at the top of the hour

Go back far enough and the listings were more inaccurate than what went out, it was mentioned in the BBC Four Bob Monkhouse documentary that he used to scribble out the published times/guests/details and replaced them with the actual start times. The example used in the documentary, I can't remember what the programme Monkhouse re-annotated was called, but I suspect it dated from some point in the early 1960s.

These days Sky+, Tivo and the ability to update the EPG dynamically (that and the fact near enough everybody has access to some form of EPG either through Sky, Virgin, TalkTalk or a Freeview one), what the Radio Times and the EPG says don't need to match anymore as the onscreen one will be fairly accurate.

Sky+, Tivo and BT are smart enough to start recording BGT at 18.57 on Saturday nights? I get the feeling one of these days it going to miss the start.

They were indeed 60s editions of the TV Times, possibly even late 50s. Bob was intrinsic enough to even amend the programme's guests if the line up wasn't as listed.

TV Times launched on 22 September 1955, the same day as the London franchise launched. Obviously a London area publication at first, expanding as the ITV franchises opened.

I was referring to the editions featured in the aforementioned Bob Monkhouse documentary.

When did TV times become a national publication? I seen "The Viewer" a TV magazine which pre-dated TV Times in Scotland. does that apply to other areas?