I'm working on a script which fetches metadata based on the title of a show and the Date & Time of the recording. I understand that the TMDB database only stores the Date. That's fine, but there's a usage edge case which is ambiguous. For example, in the United States, late night TV shows such as The Late Late Show With James Corden and Late Night With Seth Meyers air after midnight (12:35am) in the Eastern and Pacific time zones, but before midnight (11:35pm) in the Central, Mountain, Alaska, and Hawaii time zones. Technically there are two dates on which each episode airs, so the TV Bible Air Date documentation should be clear on which one should end up in the database.
I researched the TMDB database and found that both of these example shows are assigned to the earlier date, as if they were aired before midnight. It's hard to find other TV shows with new episodes starting at or after 1am, but I tracked down Last Call with Carson Daly which used to air at 1:35am in the Eastern time zone. There's only metadata for one episode (Season 13, Episode 57) in the TMDB database, but it is also assigned the previous date.
I've found similar Air Date assignment conventions in the TvMaze and TVDB listings databases for these types of late night TV shows. In https://www.tvmaze.com/faq/15/episodes they say
Special care should be taken when episodes air at or after midnight. To ensure that the episode airdates on TVmaze are in line with the dates used by TV guides and listings worldwide, episodes that start airing at or after midnight but before 5:00 are considered part of the previous day. For example, if an episode airs after midnight between Monday the 1st and Tuesday the 2nd, the airdate should be set to the 1st; even though technically the proper date would be the 2nd.
Could a similar statement be made for the Air Date assignment in the TMDB database? Based on my research so far, it looks like episodes airing between midnight and, at least, 2am are considered part of the previous day. Is this a safe presumption worldwide?
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Reply by superboy97
on February 14, 2023 at 1:55 PM
Our rule use the example of the anime shows to explicit this case. I quote : "Anime often airs in the middle of the night. Japanese TV listings frequently use a 24-hour clock system that goes beyond midnight (24:00). For example, "2017-05-12 26:00" is 2:00 AM the next day. The correct air date would be 2017-05-13."
For regular TV show, we apply the above rule based on the date/time advertized by the original network.
A special case is Amazon Prime and AppleTV shows. Amazon Prime release its new content at 0h GMT and Apple TV at 0h Ireland Time on the advertized date, which means that the content is available in the evening of the previous day in the United States. If its a United States show, the recorded date is this previous day and if its an European show, the recorded date is the advertize day. There are a few exceptions for shows advertized with a specific airtime: for these ones, we take the first date/time (with application of the above rule) the show is available in its country of origin.
Reply by SteveErl
on February 18, 2023 at 4:09 PM
You're suggesting that for regular late night TV shows, if they start at midnight, we should pretend that they start at 24:00 with the previous date, like anime shows? According to wikipedia, late night anime is usually aired between 10pm and 4am, so that aligns with the TvMaze policy I quoted:
Could we establish that as the standard policy for regular TV shows in TMDB?
Reply by superboy97
on February 19, 2023 at 4:22 AM
Absolutely not. I'm saying the exact reverse. As for anime, we should list these shows at their correct date and time.
No.