Loading ...Daylight Savings time ends. Y’all get another hour of sleep. Hawaii stays on standard time year ’round. But when we have to deal with the mainland, it plays havoc with schedules. Years ago I worked at a TV station that was ‘cherry picking’ Major League baseball games from some teams that would allow us the broadcast for free. We got to pick which games we would air before the season started. Now MLB had a carriage contract with Hughes Satellite services, so they had to provide satellite service to us for free. But we had to have the exact games, dates, and TIMES we wanted the satellite service. To complicate matters, not all of Hughes fleet of satellites had a signal footprint in Hawaii. So we had to choose carefully… in advance.
So I had to deal with a self-centered A## at the Hughes scheduling desk in NYC. All he would ever say was “New York Time”. His entire operation revolved around “New York Time”. He dealt with feeds across six time zones, and the schedule crossed daylight savings time during the season. No matter. All he dealt with was “New York Time”. All us beggars for satellite service had to do our own time conversions to tell HIM when we wanted a satellite in “New York Time”. So one fall schedule I missed the time change on the schedule, and the day before the game I realized this. I called Hughes and rather than be cooperative for a MLB customer he read me the riot act about “New York Time” and no, he couldn’t change the satellite schedule now. But if I really, really needed to receive the game, they would carve me a hole in their satellite schedule for a mere $1500 to carry the game.
I know New Yorkers are famously rude, but this Pr!#% took the cake. Gimme “New York Time”…. or pay.