★★★★★ 0/5

Networks support South Australian time zone change

Networks are recommending South Australia change its timezone by 30 minutes to be in sync with East Coast programming & social media.

17
Leave a comment

tz

TV networks are recommending South Australia change its timezone by 30 minutes so that programming and social media can match activity on the East Coast.

SA Trade Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith is leading a state-wide consultation process on whether to change the state timezone. So far the proposal has support from the restaurant industry while TV networks have also expressed their desire for change.

“The Restaurant and Catering Association, which represents 2,000 restaurants, cafes and caterers, highlighted that a change to Australian eastern standard time would provide surety to tourists, recreational and business travellers when planning itineraries and events,” he said.

“South Australia’s commercial television networks have also provided a joint submission to support aligning with the eastern states, which highlighted the benefits of up to the minute national news and current affairs, and live social media interaction with popular programs.”

Viewers in South Australia are regularly subjected to unique viewing delays as part of the many timezones across the country, including limited voting in some Reality shows and being subjected to Sports and Reality spoilers.

But regional residents have expressed concern about a change to morning daylight hours for school children.

Public consultation ends on April 10th.

Source: ABC

17 Responses

  3. Not sure an areas time zone should be based around the ability to avoid spoilers in reality shows.

    TV wise they could just do what happens in the US Central zone and just run shows at the same time as the East Coast, but of course scheduled half an hour earlier. Everything there is advertised as 8/7c for example, so no reason why shows couldn’t be billed as 7.30/7s. It may mean a bit of a rejig from 4.30-7pm to get the news as an appropriate time, but all the networks have plenty of time to play with.

  4. As a fellow South australian I would like to be on the same line as the east coast. I would hate it if they put us back with WA, as they said was an option

  5. I’m sick of people complaining about time differences, in 2015 it should hardly be an issue to work around. SA networks could easily amend their broadcasting strategy and simulcast live with the easy coast if they wanted to. In an era of multichannels, we could have one channel that broadcasts across the country according to AEST and another channel that broadcasts the same content later according to local time (similar to a +2 channel). So for example, WA viewers would have the choice of watching MKR at 4.30pm live with the East Coast on one channel or at 7.30pm local time on another channel.

    1. I love this idea. I think there would be a minor problems when it comes to 6:00 (or 5:00 for Ten or 7:00 for ABC) and its time for the local news bulletins. But other then that I think this is a good alternative to the current model.

  6. Such a change might be appropriate for Adelaide and areas east of it, but it would put areas to the west very much out of sync with solar time, which SA is already well and truly ahead of.

  8. So the TV networks won’t change anything they do – they expect everything else to change around them! How hard would it to be for them to drop half an hour before prime time or just air everything half an hour earlier local time? Like the US with 9/8c?

    The timezone change would result in a sunrise in Adelaide of 8.00am on the day before daylight saving ends, 7.54 in the middle of winter – then even later for any city to the west – like half an hour later in Ceduna say…

  11. That seems like a bizarre thing to do. It means when you cross the SA/WA border in summer, you lose three hours just like that. TV delay issues aside, surely if they were to change their time zones, they would move to UTC+9 in winter and UTC+10 in summer (i.e. an hour behind Melbourne and Sydney).

  12. Why not keep the time zone but the networks attapt their programming to fit the Timezone (example in America, the Eastern (New York) and Central (Chicago) are an hour apart but air their programming at the same time, hence the reason shows are billed as “@ 8/7 Central”)

    2. Mainly for classification reasons. You can’t show M rated programming on the primary channel at 7:30pm. It’s probably the main reason that Queensland don’t already do this, along with wanting to show the news at 6pm when people are home.

    3. I agree with you – if networks were so concerned with this problem they would change their broadcasting strategy for SA rather than force the entire state to change their clocks to suit them. A half hour broadcasting change is very minor and wouldn’t have a huge impact on the evening ratings anyway.

Leave a Reply