Idol Screws Tivo Users

...and users of any DVR. The finale for Wednesday night's American Idol finale ran over by 9 minutes (ending at 10:09p, instead of 10:00p). People who recorded Idol on their Tivo or whatever DVR they used missed out on seeing who won -- which was kind of the whole point of that last show, apparently.



I think that's unfortunate for Idol fans who Tivo'd the show, but I don't see this as a big deal really as idol, unlike most other prime-time programming is shot live, at least on the east coast. Still, Idol is not like a sporting event, say baseball that usually lasts around 3 hours, it's a show that usually ends exactly at 10p, even though it's live. With sporting events I know to go in and tell Tivo to record an extra hour. For things that can be off because of my clock, I compensate by starting recordings 5 minutes early and ending them 5 minutes later, but this wouldn't have compensated for the 9 minutes.

I still don't think this is any big deal though, because, c'mon, it's American Idol, who cares besides the 30 million lemmings who tuned in? The bigger deal to me with this is if I did care, as a west coaster, I would have to have had an information embargo before watching the show. Because before the show even aired in California, the winner was all over MyYahoo, Google News etc anyway. I think Fox out to figure out a way to sell the east coast feed to west coast viewers at a PPV rate.

Frothy west coast Idol fans would surely pay $5 to watch the feed 3 hours earlier. And quite frankly, anyone who is willing to do that should be made to pay...but that's just a personal opinion.