@joeynotjoe said:

can someone go ahead and add the rest of the airdates for the remaining episodes, since they're locked?

The currently listed dates are the only dates that, as of today, have been officially announced by the BBC.

@gbdematos said: P.S.: TheTVDB is not really well-known for its super logical and friendly mods or rules, it looks like you guys are following their footsteps just right.

The TVDB is well-known for their mods being rude to the users, in addition to being unwilling to change rules. TMDB, especially in this case here, has mods who communicate without being rude. That's a huge step up. Further, @superboy97 offered to bring other mods in to weigh in on whether or not the rules should be changed. But, surely you can understand why the rule is in place the way it is? Take a look at other shows that split time like this. There's no cut and dry easy solution for them. And if you really go in and start flexing rules one by one based on your own personal feelings, you're going to end up with a really disorganized, inconsistent, and thus unreliable site.

I think that the point Superboy97 is trying to make here is that we cannot alter the rules for one series. I always assumed that this might be what Episode Groups are used for, but I think those are just for different ordering, and not airdates?

At any rate, this is a complex issue and I think that the mods are correct for following the rule vigilantly, it makes sense. We need consistency here.

It's clear the original network for Season 3 is HBO. It would be best to handle this similarly to other shows that have changed networks between seasons. Whatever date an episode first aired should always be the correct listing for databases like these anyway. I never complained when the other seasons listed the BBC dates, because I knew those were the first airings, so it made sense. Those episodes had been aired, as the database indicated, even if they had not been aired in my region. It doesn't make much sense to lock to a single network if that network no longer is the first airing for the show, and therefore no longer should be viewed as the original network. The idea of original network absolutely can change from season to season.

@morphinapg said:

It's clear the original network for Season 3 is HBO. It would be best to handle this similarly to other shows that have changed networks between seasons.

The idea of original network absolutely can change from season to season.

We do this type of change only if the original broadcaster doesn't anymore broadcast the series. This is not the case here.

If we list the HBO dates, you will not complain anymore, but the BBC One users will complain as they don't care that the episodes are already available on HBO as they can't see them and should wait for the BBC broadcast.

Just to add to the confusion, BBC iPlayer (the BBC's online service) released every episode on 18th December 2022. So is "original network" the BBC where all the episodes have been released on iPlayer, or BBC One which isn't really considered its own "network" here in the UK, just a TV channel. Also, if you went with "whenever the episode was first released anywhere" then you'd have episodes 1-4 use the HBO release dates then the rest use BBC iPlayer's! It's confusing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's impossible to choose a single answer that works for everyone. The only real solution to this would be to add the ability to define multiple release dates for different regions/networks/platforms, but I imagine that causes other confusing problems I haven't thought of. Having a consistent rule even if it doesn't give the "best" solution in every situation is really all any site like this can do.

The origin network is determined by the original broadcast of the complete series, this one took place on BBC One.

If I'm being pedantic here... BBC One cannot be "the original broadcast of the complete series", since the series has not finished airing. And what's more, BBC One will not even be the first network to finishing airing the complete series.

But I do get what you're saying. The trouble is that, as many others have pointed out, strict adherence to this rule undermines its own purpose. I agree with this:

It's clear the original network for Season 3 is HBO. It would be best to handle this similarly to other shows that have changed networks between seasons.

HBO will be the "original brodcast[er] of the complete series", ahead of BBC One.

There are also problematic downstream effects of this, for consumers of TMDB's APIs: applications like Plex and Trakt show already-aired episodes as to-be-aired in the future, which creates UI/UX problems. In Plex, it's not nearly so severe (it just claims the episode that's already in Plex is airing at some point in the future), but in Trakt, the next episode to watch doesn't come up in "Up next to watch" on the Dashboard, either on web or in their mobile apps, making it harder to log episode watches. (Disclaimer: I pay for HBO Max and have legitimate access to this content.)

the BBC One users will complain as they don't care that the episodes are already available on HBO

I don't think this is as legitimate a complaint, since being behind on access to an episode released earlier on a different platform is not as problematic as being told an episode I've already watched hasn't aired yet.

And that really gets to the crux of this issue: The plain, common-sense interpretation of "airdate" is not necessarily some technical rule, but "When did this episode first air anywhere to a public/commercial audience?". That strongly suggests to me that the rule that ought to be adopted by TMDB should be that on a per-episode basis, the actual first airdate, regardless of network or region should be the airdate. And then, if y'all have the development cycles to implement this, you could attach additional metadata per episode to capture original airdate by network/region. There will be some interesting things to figure out there for API consumers, but I have confidence in their product managers to figure that out.

Although I agree that having an actual "first airdate" per episode is the best solution, sadly there might not be an argument that is worth the time/work to implement it. The solution that TMBD currently has covers effectively more than 90% of the cases. His Dark Materials is a particularly rare exception due to the odd way BBC and HBO decided to air it, one that will definitely screw up TV guides and TV tracking apps.

Problem is, this might well become a bigger issue in the future, the way that TV producers now freely look to switch networks/streamers once a show is canceled somewhere, something that was used to be rare. Imagine a show is canceled on network A after the first season, but network B picks it up and airs a second season, which proves popular enough for network A to negotiate rights to re-air season 2. By the TMDB rule, the dates on the season 2 repeat on network A would become "first airdates".

For now, is best to leave the case for His Dark Materials closed, since it's a bit late for a fix, but maybe this is something that TMDB might want to include in their development wishlist for 2023.

Hey, @mklopez --

I'm not sure if your comment was intended to reply to mine, but I'm not sure that it really addresses what I'm getting at. I'm not proposing any work to implement any solution beyond beginning now to use the existing airdate field to refer to the (actual) original airdate. Start using the existing field in the way that 99.9% or more users already expect it to work.

Backfilling other shows can happen through crowdsourced efforts. And having additional airdate fields per network/region is what could go on a "development wishlist for 2023" (or beyond, as far as I'm concerned).

Zero development effort can bring that "90% of cases" coverage up to nearly 100%, through a mere documentation and intention change.

As a product manager in tech myself, I can appreciate why something that works for more than 80% of users/situations doesn't easily find a justification for further improvement. So I'm not recommending that. Even 2023 seems premature, unless someone wants to take on a weekend project.

But the "fix" here is to simply start using the existing airdate field correctly. And I don't think there's a valid consistency argument here, either: By hypothesis, there's no conflict for 90% or more cases, so it'll be a few marginal stragglers here and there where the original network's episode airdate incorrectly postdates the actual original episode airdate. But we could start doing the right thing now, with His Dark Materials season 3.