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Why the Program Schedule is Not Timely

The Access SF program schedules are currently available as:

• A time grid on the Access SF web site.
• A tabloid grid on the Access SF web site.
• A daily TV Guide listing on the Access SF web site.
• A TV Guide scroll on cable channel 30.
• An interactive TV Guide on Comcast Digital Cable.
• A grid on the TV Guide web site.
• As a periodic ON AIR SCALA-based schedule during the interstitials between programs.

With the exception of the periodic SCALA-based schedule, these schedules are updated once a month and show the assigned timeslot for each producer series, and reserved timeslots for specials and community announcements. All unreserved space, to shown as "to be announced". All of this information is based on the commitments made at the monthly timeslot selection meetings. Considering the monthly timeslot selection meetings are held a month in advance, there is absolutely no excuse for not having the monthly web-based program schedules posted on the web site on time.

Overnight replays and schedules are not scheduled with enough lead-time to update TV Guide. The SCALA-based schedules shown on channel 29 between programs are intended to be updated throughout the day as the station is programed. This is the only program schedule that is capable of being updated in a timely manner, yet lately even this schedule is not being kept up-to-date. I am often seeing either last week's listings, or today's listing without the replay and specials listed.

TiltRac is the primary datastore for program information, since it controls the robotic tape loaders. TiltRac has a feature that provides a web-based program guide to "guest" users. This feature is not implemented at Access SF, because the TiltRac server is not assessable to the Internet. To provide this capability, SFCTC would need to deal with their lacking computer infrastructure security issues, which Zane does not consider a priority.

Questions/Comments?