Another missed TV show

Published on 23 January 2008 in , ,

The last couple of weeks I’ve had two infuriating moments. First was when I managed to screw up the timer on my PVR and as such, missed the first episode of the second series of Primeval on ITV1.

The second was finding out that More4 started showing the sixth series of Curb Your Enthusiasm with barely a whisper.

Both of these were compounded by something extra. Neither had a repeat within the week of broadcast.

More4 is, and lets be honest here, a channel filled with repeats. I mean, its chocca with them. How many times do they need to re-show Location, Location, Location or Jamie at Home? Yet somehow they managed to schedule just one showing of a brand new episode of a brand new series. If you missed it on Monday, well tough.

Meanwhile hoardes of big name ITV1 programmes get quick repeats. Harry Hill’s TV Burp gets about four showings a week. Emmerdale and Corrie get so many repeats its insane. Yet ITV1 didn’t opt to show its flagship Saturday night drama show more than once.

Primeval is a bit of an isolated incident, but I regularly miss the first episode of a new series that I want to watch because it’s frankly almost impossible to keep track of what’s on TV. There’s too many channels, too many programmes. About the only way I manage to track some programmes is by subscribing to an RSS feed for it from mightyv.com – but stil things get missed – like Curb.

The trouble is that the broadcasters are frankly missing a trick. Whilst lots of money has gone into starting up +1 hour versions of channels, where are the +1 day, or +7 day versions? Wouldn’t they be far more useful in the long run?

Incidentally I know I could probably watch both online but to be frank, I have a nice TV and a sofa and my computer isn’t near either of them. Watching via my PC is frankly not a relaxing experience. Until on-demand comes to the TV set via a nifty box, it just ain’t happening in my home.

7 Comments

  • Andy says:

    Argh!! Curb has restarted?!?

  • Andrew Bowden says:

    Yep. Monday nights on More4.

  • William T says:

    As a fully-paid up (~ £9 a year) Digiguide user, I must say I don’t know what I’d do about it, partly because of the alert/reminder settings, partly because of the level of detail you get in listings, and partly the fact all radio channels are included.
    I’m still patiently awaiting the launch of Sky News -1…
    ‘The Daily Show’ (renamed ‘A Daily Show’ during the strike) has now started again too, in case anyone watches that, although I note More4 managed to show the same Global Edition two Mondays in a row, a mistake presumably..

  • Jem Stone (BBC) says:

    there is a curb repeat but oddly its on sunday night and from an earlier season. primeval is repated on itv1 on saturday afternoons. tomorrow its 2.15pm.

  • Andrew Bowden says:

    My plan with Curb is to try just recording them all on my PVR and hope they start showing the first episode again at the end of the series!
    Hadn’t spotted that they’re reshowing Pimeval on Saturday afternoons. Shame they didn’t do that from the first episode. Instead they were too busy showing Harry Potter. Which I just checked thanks to a cool feature of tvplanner.co.uk. It enables you to search the schedules for the last two weeks of broadcast, as well as what’s coming up. Very handy in certain circumstances!

  • Paul Garrard says:

    We recently bought a Humax digibox recorder and it’s fantastic. No need to set the time, it does that. You just select the programme you want from the menu and it all happens. Magic.

  • Andrew Bowden says:

    I’ve a Hummy myself – love it to bits. Diligently sit there with my copy of the Radio Times every week, setting it!
    Shame it’s not got Tivo-esque properties though (okay, shame it’s not a TiVo!)