Dear dimwit on the phone

Depends on the sport. When I put it together, I grab all of the college football and American pro sports no matter where they are because the last thing I want is someone to call in upset because we left out Podunk State vs. Backward College on Fox College Atlantic. Easier to just take the time to put it in. European and South American soccer, rugby and volleyball can and often do get left out.

 

If I did the TV listings at my place, I would try to put everything in. I notice some things left out every time I look.

 

Used to track them all down, but it was getting to time- and space-consuming beyond basic and all the split-feed games.

 

and at some point doesn't it become increasingly likely that the people with the expanded sports package (a) have a digital guide and (b) are going to be the people interested enough to seek out the info online on their own?

 

I'm the one who types up our TV schedule each week and I just use Comcast's basic cable lineup since we have so many other companies in this area.

For stuff like which college football games are on each Saturday, Matt Sarz's website is a huge help -- and so is ESPN's regional TV listing site. Since some Dish and Direct packages offer stations like Big 10 Net and Pac-12 Net, I list those as well.

 

We run the basic cable lineup plus regional interest, although SPEED was part of basic cable here.

You'd think so. Still get plenty of calls from people who complain that a game isn't on ESPN even though no one said it was on ESPN and our listings clearly show another station. But I guess the self-reliant people who can do things for themselves don't call a newspaper.

 

For our daily, we list just about every station that carries predominantly sports and the major events on the networks. For the weekend, we do a bit more, listing stations like Big Ten and the like. And we run a separate list of college football games that shows every game that is on, including those on PPV. Glad I don't have the task of compiling that.

 

Dear Grandma who's all pissed off because we ran a photo of the hometown quarterback crying after a 53-51 loss decided on a field goal as time expired:

I understand your concern in the matter. BUT: 1) I do not take photos; 2) I do not select which photos run; 3) I do not determine where photos are placed in the section; 4) I didn't even see the page until the next afternoon.

Every photo in the paper is credited to the photographer that shot it. The photographer's name will be right there next to/underneath the photo. It's called a "photo credit."

I am a reporter. My byline pertains only to the article that is packaged with the photo. If you have a problem with anything I wrote, I'll discuss it with you. If all you want is to bitch about something you don't like and that I was in no way involved with, take it somewhere else (i.e., call the photographer, editor or paginator, not the reporter).

Your behavior would be akin to me going off on the offensive coordinator because the defense sucked.

 

This!

 

I do. It's a bit of a beast. Takes me about 30 minutes every Tuesday.
Luckily, my cable system carries most of the pertinent channels that aren't on the main AP listings (ESPNU, Big Ten, Pac-12, CBS Sports Network, and a few others), so I go to titantv.com/, plug in the zip code and scroll through.
It's really not that difficult once you get a system down. Figure out when the broadcast windows are -- for football, it's usually Noon, 3:30, 7-8 and 10 p.m. EST -- scroll through the channels, find the games, then go to the next window. The hardest ones are the ABC/ESPN2 regional games, because they don't always announce those right away. That sometimes entails a call to the local ABC affiliate.

I do the same thing during basketball season. That can take a bit longer than football, because the broadcast windows are shorter and more random, and there's more games on regional and deep cable outlets. Whereas there's around 20 college football games on any given Saturday, there can be as many as 30 basketball games.

This website is also very helpful for doing TV listings. I still mainly use Titan TV because it's more specific to our area (this one below has a bunch of anonymous, mysterious regional cable outlets), but it helps fill in some blanks and it's updated early in the week. Next week's schedule is already up.
http://lsufootball.net/tvschedule.htm

 

The TV listings have gotten out of control. Now, with new networks like Fox Sports1, NBC Sports Network, CBS Sports Network, etc., there is even more than just a few years ago. It is not an exaggeration to say that, depending on what system you have, you can get 30-40 games on some Saturdays.

We would normally start with the national AP listings. Most every day that I wasn't in the office, I would email a list of "extras" to our desk person to add in. I also had to add in local/regional broadcasts and the regional NBA/NHL/MLB telecasts. I figured if I got them on my system (I had basic cable plus one sports tier with stuff like Golf Channel, NHL Network, SPEED, NFL Network, etc.), a lot of others would as well.

I tried not to overlook the "niche" sports, especially in season. But we NEVER ran coaches' shows, talk shows, highlight shows and only ran taped stuff if it was the FIRST time shown (not a rebroadcast of something shown live earlier).

On some Saturdays, our TV listing package got so large, it would barely fit in the allotted space.

 

We only list live sporting events. I'll add in the extras if it's one of the big four leagues, or if there's already something on the AP list (like a baseball game on MLB or our regional FSN) to go with it. The only niche sport I go out of my way to add is college baseball, which is big in our region. I could see people up north doing the same with college hockey.

On weekends (Thursday through Saturday) we'll separate the college football and basketball and give them their own box on the agate page. Keeps the main TV listings from taking up a column where we include a briefs package, and makes it easier for people to find.