Your semiannual Daylight Savings Time warning

Today in most of the US is the day when we set our clocks back an hour before going to bed. Overnight is the official time change, but not many people are up then. And besides, with the time change in the Eastern time zone being at a time when a greater number of people out west might still be up, there might be an issue for them if they look at the TCM schedule.

The TCM Underground schedule has the movie Deadly Friend kicking things off after The Woman on Pier 13 (starting at 12:30 AM and in a 90-minute slot). Now, this should lead up to the official time change in the east, when 2:00 AM becomes the second 1:00 AM. My box guide points this out, although the TCM schedule has Deadly Friend beginning at 2:00 AM. That's not such a big deal, since in both cases one move directly follows another.

The problem comes with the second film, Swamp Thing. My box guide has it immediately following Deadly Friend (which is in a 105-minute time slot), so it should be at 2:45 AM. TCM, however, lists the 1950 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Story as taking up the extra hour, and coming between the two Underground movies. (TCM's schedule sticks it in a nominal one-minute slot.) The box guide has this after Swamp Thing and the shorts that round out the Underground schedule, or at 5:00 AM EST.

Back when I started listening to short-wave radio when there was no streaming audio on the internet, I learned about UTC, which is pretty much the same thing as GMT, and why all the international broadcasters use it. Days like today I tend to think having UTC for a TV schedule might not be such a bad thing. Eastern Time switches from UTC -4 to UTC -5, while last week most of western Europe switched from UTC +2 to UTC +1; the UTC time remains the same for all time zones.