More schedule madness

TCM is showing two more Mack Sennett films tonight between 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM: Mickey, and Hearts and Flowers. When is each of these movies airing? Well, that's a bit of a mystery.

TCM's database as well as the IMDb seem to be in agreement that Mickey runs a little more than 90 minutes, while Hearts and Flowers runs a little more than 20 minutes. That's about all the agreement there is, however. TCM's printed monthly schedule, which I downloaded at the beginning of the month, has Hearts and Flowers first, followed by Mickey. (Interestingly, the printable schedule doesn't list a running time for Hearts and Flowers; it's only online where you can find that it's 21 minutes.) The two films together should come to about 113-115 minutes, which when you add Ben Mankiewicz's intro and outro should just fit into that two hour slot. However, TCM's online schedule claims that there's going to be a 16-minute short at 9:42 PM, called Gems of MGM! I don't think there's any way all three can fit into that two hour slot.

IMDb, my satellite box guide, and the online listings site I checked give a different story. I've pointed out before that there is a limited number of providers giving this information to the various listing service, and I believe all three of the sites I listed above are getting their listings from the same ultimate source. They've got Mickey first. But they've only got it running from 8:00 to 9:00. That's followed by Hearts and Flowers from 9:00 to 10:00 PM. It's possible they've got the running order correct -- I think that they had the correct running order in previous weeks. However, it seems fairly certain that they've got the wrong running times.

The upshot is that if you want to catch these movies, you're going to have to watch as they air, or else DVR the entire two-hour block. Although I haven't checked the rest of the schedule for tonight, I would guess that the same holds true there.