The Time Zone Penalty

This is not a complaint, just an observation. America is Eastern Time-centric! Until now I was one of the 140,000,000+ million living the good time life. No more.

Cable news live programming stops three hours earlier here. It seems awfully early to ‘close down the store.’

When an event is promoed, like an upcoming press conference, we have to do the math. Wolf only gives one time. It happens more often than you’d think.

Most ‘scheduled’ television networks have West Coast feeds. Clockwise we see episodic shows when you do. I real time you’re three hours ahead. We see your spoilers on Twitter and Facebook long before shows air.

Don’t do that.

As a sports fan it’s interesting watching daytime baseball games before noon. We’re looking forward to the NFL Sunday mornings at 10:00, with the late games over around 4:00 PM.

More than once I’ve gone to call friends and realized it’s late back East. Apologies in advance for those I’ll surely wake.

11 thoughts on “The Time Zone Penalty”

  1. Think about Arizona and them being on Mountain STANDARD time year round! Both Newfoundland Island and the state of South Australia have half hour time zones (Adelaide is 13.5 hours ahead right now, 15.5 when it’s November-early March here). The hour time difference was actually a good thing when I visited Chicago and Nashville, in terms of TV. 🙂

    P.S. My sister is in San Diego right now. However, she’s only a temporary Connecticut transplant.

  2. I moved from Cheshire to the Central Time Zone nine years ago. To this day, I STILL miss shows because I turn them on just as they are ending! I just can’t get used to 8:00 PM not really being 8:00 PM (for those of us no longer on the East coast.) Just so you know, it may take YEARS for you to get used to it. Especially when you experience your first New Years Eve. It’s anti-climactic when the ball goes down in Times Square and it’s not yet midnight where you are.

  3. My sister lives in Oregon and has mentioned some of the “challenges” that you mentioned…..including “premature” New Years Eve…..it makes me happy to be in the eastern time zone! 🙂

  4. That makes me think of how weird it was to head for an Oscar party before 5pm!! It was sooo confusing!!! & even at the end of my 2yrs & 2 mths in San Francisco, I think I still had to sit & do the math for Tv shows. Don’t think I ever woke anyone up though…? 🙂

  5. Moved from CT to AZ and love MT time. Didn’t take long to get used to it. Shows are on earlier and it’s more convenient. And Geoff, watch TV but don’t do Twitter and FaceBook during that time. And I love that we confuse all our friends and family who don’t live in MT time. We’ve been here 5 years and they still haven’t figured it out!

  6. Geoff, with your night owl life style, you could almost call people on the East Coast just before you go to bed. They’d be getting up shortly, anyway. 😉

  7. Did you ever notice it’s always “Back East” and “Out West”?

    Think of the advantages: For Super Bowl Sunday you don’t have to wait until 6:23 p.m. for kickoff. You can watch Monday night football and actually finish watching it on Monday night!

    1. Actually, my friends who grew up in Phoenix say “Out East.” I was shocked – utterly shocked!!!!

  8. The time zone difference works both ways. Years ago, when it was cheaper to call before 7 AM or after 11 PM, I got several calls from my family at 4AM PST. They didn’t usually stay up after 11PM. Now when I call out there, I have to decide if it is supper time there (9PM here)–or just too late for any other sane person. Being a night owl,makes it easy for me–here in the East.
    It used to be that on New Years Eve, here, we night owls could stay up til 3 AM and watch the ball drop in Calif. Haven’t seen it past few years as they cut off the coverage here by 1AM
    Watching regular programming out there used to be strange–like you say–the Main Networks hold the news for their regular newshour. but now, with Computers–I guess you can watch whenever—now to be able to project it on the big screen!

  9. You have perfect weather. I guess you’ll have to suffer with the time diff. I knew it was too good to be true.

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