Earlier today, my wife asked me to look at the TiVo To Do List because it didn't appear that the TiVo intended to record both hours of the finale episode of "Friends". I strongly dislike this show, but I love my wife, so I took a shot at it.

After playing with the TiVo for 15 minutes, I realized that it could not automatically record both hours of the show because:

1. The two-hour finale that is being advertised on NBC is shown on the TiVo schedule as two one-hour programs.
2. The end time of the first hour of "Friends" overlaps with the start time of the second hour.

The broadcast networks have increasingly been playing around with their schedules to make it difficult for DVR users to automatically record exactly what they want. They do this by starting shows like ER at 9:59pm Eastern Time instead of 10:00. This means, if your To Do List has a 9:00-10:00 show on it with a higher priority, ER doesn't get recorded.

If network programmers weren't already playing games, I'd think that they didn't do this intentionally. Maybe it's a clerical error. But, after what they've done this year, I think the schedulers threw in a gotcha to see if were paying attention. Spare us, folks. If you continue to play this game, you'll totally lose my respect.

I finally decided to take the first segment of the "Friends" Finale and have it stop recording 60 minutes after the program's scheduled end. So I'm earning my keep around the house, and my wife will be happy on Thursday. But, why should I have to spend the time verifying that my To Do List is what it should be, when we're talking about the biggest scheduled TV event of the May sweeps?