TV listing are pointless.

Well, I'm not saying they would never be precise. I like this billing - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0b5c466d54b6443cb54beb55e39235c7 If you only want the football, there's no need to turn on at 9.35, you can save three minutes of your precious time. And for a long time the Radio 1 and Radio 2 shows would be billed as starting at 7.32 or 4.31 after the news. But it would almost never happen in primetime.

To this day, the Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw is billed as starting at 6:33, after Newsbeat at 6:30.

The news was always at about 6.27, back timed to the pips when Moyles was extended to start at 6.30. One of the only half past the hour GTS pips to be regularly broadcast.

One of the latest examples I can remember (outside schools) that always appeared accurately in the Radio Times was the Saturday lunchtime weather on BBC One, which until summer 1998 was always billed precisely three minutes before the start of Grandstand. Usually at 12.12pm.

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1998-05-02

Later that year the 1pm Saturday news was moved to before the weather, at 12.10pm, and was billed 'News and Weather'.

However that meant that Grandstand, still billed to start at 12.15pm, never actually started until 12.18pm!

Sorry. I'll get my coat.

Doesn't RTE's news start at 6.01because there is a short religious/reflective piece before it?

A curiosity with TV listings is how newspapers would write 6.00 as 6.0 and 6.05 as 6.5, which I don't remember seeing anywhere else.

Another curiosity that I've never understood is how come TV listings and schedules aren't in the 24 hour clock?

That's right: The Angelus, a Catholic devotional prayer traditionally recited at three intervals during the day: 6am, 12noon and 6pm. RTÉ Radio 1 also carried this, but according to Wikipedia, it's been recently stopped, which I wasn't aware of.

Indeed, RTÉ use this scheduling quirk to their advantage; it's been commented on here, and in other places, that viewers switch over to alternative bulletins to catch their headlines, then back over to RTÉ One at a minute past, for the entire Six One bulletin.

I don't think it's gone from RTE Radio 1, that would have been news!

Radio 1 airs it at 12 noon and 6pm, RTE One at 6pm only. Never heard the 6am thing before!

Well, the Radio Times tried that in the thirties, and even gave away a conversion chart, because it was part of a government drive to get more people using it. But nobody liked it and it was swiftly abandoned.

There was a period in the nineties when in the film guide, times would be in both 12 hour and 24 hour format to assist you in setting your video. But I remember someone writing to ask why the listings weren't like that, and Nicholas Brett said they'd do it when The Nine O'Clock News became The 2100 News.

It seems a 'British thing', I've only noticed it here, and of course the US, (where they seem incapable of adopting the 24hr clock for anything )

We don't use it in Ireland either. The Americans associate it with the armed forces, hence the expression "military time"!

Though it was very commonly seen promos on UK based satellite stations in the 1980s, sometimes with dual CET and GMT/BST listings. The old one-channel Sky did it up until 1989, I think, with several others continuing into the 1990s. CNBC Europe still uses it, but only in CET, and *I think* (but couldn't swear blindly) Eurosport.

Ha yes ! They also can't bear to use the expression 'GMT' or 'UTC', instead they refer to 'ZULU'