Why isn’t there an official “CBC time”?!
I used to like taking holidays on cruise ships. And if your port-of-call was in a different time zone than the ship’s time, the crew always implored you to “Stay on ship time” while you were ashore, lest the boat sail away without you.
Sometimes, I think we need an official “CBC time.”
This morning I had scheduled an exit interview with outgoing CBC president Robert Rabinovitch, to post on this blog. He was prepared to go into a studio and everything. It was scheduled for 12:30 p.m. ET. And in my crazy brain, I added three hours (I’m in Vancouver) instead of subtracting three hours. Since I’m on the air all Wednesday mornings, I missed the interview. Of course, I realized this just hours before the scheduled time.
Crap.
It’s surprising, though, how often stuff like this seems to happen around here. Toronto people (sorry) often don’t even put the time zone in their emails/instructions, I guess assuming everyone in “the regions” would just adopt ET.
With five six time zones in this country, maybe we need to adopt an official “CBC time?”
The watch manufacturer Swatch introduced a concept known as Internet time some years ago. Essentially, the day is divided into 1,000 “beats.” Each beat is equal to one minute and 26.4 seconds. This way, you could say “The conference call will be at 885 beats,” a measure of time shared across all time zones.
I dunno. But there’s got to be something better.
What accidents have happened on your watch thanks to the time zones?
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Working in saskatchewan was difficult, because unlike the rest of Canada Saskatchewan does not switch clocks twice a year for dalight saving time. This meant twice a year there was a week or so of screwed-up regular tapings with syndication etc.
I think I’d rather live in tea time than lunch, but I’ll get over it.
I really wish Swatch would stop taking credit for “base10 time”. I first heard of this concept back in the 1970′s, and even made a clock faceplate divided off in chrons.
1 day = 1000 chrons = 1 kilochron
wake up at 300 chrons
lunch at 500 chrons
Bedtime at 900 chrons.
A radio show could be 50 chrons long, which is over 8 chrons longer than most shows today!
–Bob
So I’m the team lead for the web site support (MPS) staff, and I’ve considered, only partly in jest, putting some Les Nessman-style tape on the ground as an ‘all times GMT’ border. No DST, no time zones, etc. I see no reason why the CBC shouldn’t use GMT as ‘CBC time.’ After all, it is the time the BBC uses …
Krohn = a good name for a guy working on time…
To be fair, the UK is about half a timezone across.
As with the default for the weather widget, I vote for Winnipeg time. But I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose this one too.
There is a CBC time. It’s called Toronto time!
I propose NFLD time as our adopted time zone.
I recall the folks in Radio Master Control using UTC (or Zulu, or GMT0 Greenwich Mean Time) or whatever you want to call it) to coordinate broadcast times with the delay centres in regional stations. That was over twenty years ago, but i was under the impression that it’s still done when people are dealing with things like booking satellite time.
Of course, it might be dandy for internal communications, but I’m not sure I would want to arrange an interview with someone and tell them “we’d like to do this at 1400 UTC, is that all right with you?” – because there would still be the step of having to explain to them how to translate UTC into their local time.
*sigh*
The morning show in Labrador has the joy of broadcasting across two timezones that are half an hour apart. Time checks are fun…”It’s currently 12 minutes before 8, 18 minutes after if you’re south of Black Tickle.” (lots of mental math on the fly)
It would be easier without that half hour newfoundland time issue…an hour would be easier to deal with. And I’m sure people on the island get tired of “The World at Six” coming to them at 6:30.
Booking interviews with cabinet ministers and the like in Newfoundland always get confusing. You end up getting calls half an hour earlier or later depending on how one of you or the other has messed it up. And a lot of people don’t know that Labrador is on Atlantic time, not Newfoundland time.
@PC: I am adopting that as my new catchphrase. “I feel south of Black Tickle.”
This is an quote from the above article.
“WITH FIVE TIME ZONES IN THIS COUNTRY, MAYBE WE NEED TO ADOPT AN OFFICIAL “CBC TIME?”"
As far as I know, Canada uses SIX primary time zones. From east to west they’re Newfoundland Time Zone, Atlantic Time Zone, Eastern Time, Central Time Zone, Mountain Time Zone, & the Pacific Time Zone.
Nevertheless, it would be interesting if Canada had only one time zone. No more “RED EYE” specials.
@Prof.: AAGGHHH… you’re right of course, thanks. I’ve made the change.