I don’t watch reality TV. Don’t care the least bit for it. As bad as the singers (term used loosely) look in the commercials for the first episodes of American Idol I still can’t be bothered to watch it. But someone was playing the following clip at work today and it made me laugh.
And I also came across this news article which made me laugh. (And therefore the title of the thread.)
‘American Idol’ Fans Complain: TiVo Ruins Finale–Again!
“The winner is . . . David . . .” Argh!
That’s how last night’s “American Idol” finale wrapped up for some viewers who had taped the show on TiVos and other digital-video recorder devices. Because “Idol” ran slightly long, some DVRs cut off the show before the winner was revealed–leaving those viewers hanging at the most suspenseful moment.
The poorly timed cutoff has become something of a tradition for the Fox program. Viewers who timeshifted the show with DVRs were denied the climactic moment last year, too.
If anything, this year’s incident was worse. The “Idol” finale came down to two contestants, both named David. Some viewers report that their DVRs stopped recording just after host Ryan Seacrest uttered the words, “The winner, by 12 million votes, of ‘American Idol’ 2008 is . . . David”—but before he revealed the last name. (The winner was David Cook, who bested David Archuleta.)
How can this problem be avoided? If Fox fails to ensure that the show ends as scheduled, DVR owners must pad their recording times to catch the overrun. That’s a common tactic for recording football games and other live shows of indeterminate length, but it isn’t usually needed for regularly scheduled primetime programming. (Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this blog.)
TiVo ruined the finale again? Apparently these people have never heard the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Seems they’re the fools. Any “important” shows (to me) get padded with extra recording time on my DVR. (Lost gets an extra fifteen minutes.) And anything on Fox automatically gets padded at the end and the beginning because the Fox starting times always seem to be slightly off from the time settings of my provider (satellite now, but even when I had cable) and every other channel in the line up. Stupid Fox.
