FCC Creates Program Guide Rule for Broadcasters: Why Your Guide Doesn't Always Match What's on the Air

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the program guide on your digital television doesn't always match what is actually on the air?

If you are a Tivo or DVR owner, you may have seen a guide description that says "DTV Programming" without any information as to that programming was. Or worse, you may have scheduled a recording of one show, but it recorded something entirely different.

According to a recent article in broadcasting industry magazine TV Technology, a new rule by the FCC hopes to correct this problem so that people can have their favorite programs recorded the way they expected them.

I've personally noticed this problem when trying to watch The Amazing Race this season. Sometimes, (quite a lot, actually) the NFL game that was on before the show would run long and The Amazing Race wouldn't actually start on time - sometimes the start would begin up to 30 minutes after it was scheduled, which meant that I had to fast forward through a show I didn't want to watch, just to get to the start of the program. Then, unless I planned for it, the recording would end long before the program had finished. Tivo users try to get around that by setting up recording options where they shift the record time to several minutes past its scheduled time. However, this process is a gamble as you never really know if you are going to record the entire episode.

The reason this happens has to do with the electronic program guide (EPG - in TV speak) on the digital television signal. Broadcasters like DIRECTV get the information for their guide from services like Tribune Media Services, which provide not only the title, description of the show and the scheduled time of the program, but also key "meta data" such as V-chip ratings, that tells the television when and when not to allow a program to be viewed based on its rating. The information for the program guide is sent to the content distributor sometimes a week or more in advance. The data is then combined with the broadcast video and sent over the fiber (or cable, satellite, whatever) to the home.

However, If the network decides to change its programming - such as when a football game runs long or when a particular episode of a program has to be removed from the schedule because an operator spills his bottle of overly-cafienated soda on the tape an hour before its supposed to air (just an example, not taken from actual experience or anything) the result is that there is no way to change the program information in the guide. The result for the consumer is a recording of something they weren't expecting, or no recording at all.

To fix this problem, a new rule has been adopted by the FCC. The Advanced Television Systems Committee is an organization founded in 1982 and charged with the responsibility of developing the technical standards for digital television. These new ATSC standards will replace the older National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) standards that have been in place for television signals since 1940. The adoption of the new standards are a key component of the DTV Transition, scheduled to take place February 17, 2009.

The new ATSC rule, known as the "Program and System Information Protocol," (PSIP) states that should there be any change to a program's scheduled time, broadcasters whill be required to modify the EPG to reflect the change. To accomplish this, all information used to generate the program guides will have to be combined together to allow the updated information to be sent out at the time the program airs. This new rule is set to go into effect in May.

If the distributors of multiple television signals manage to follow the new PSIP protocol correctly, it should make it easier for Tivo and other DVR users to catch their shows the way they expect.