"Damn it, sheep, stay in line."

"It's not my job to make it easy for people..." -- ABC scheduling chief Jeff Bader

Gotta love that `tude. Bader's job, according to Bader, "..is to get people to stay with [ABC] from 8 to 11." To do so, ABC and other major networks are trying to "break" TiVos and other PVRs by scheduling shows to start just slightly off the usual hour/half-hour schedule.

Shows running a minute or more over their scheduled time period for the week ending Nov. 21 according to the USA Today article, included:

- Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS)

-Trading Spouses (Fox)

-Lost (ABC)

-That '70s Show (Fox)

-CSI (CBS)

-ER (NBC)

-The O.C. (Fox)

-Desperate Housewives (ABC)

-The Simpsons (Fox)

Except for Lost, whose storyline I gave up on too, there's nothing there I watch, but I bet the trend is pissing off a lot of people. I first noticed this in action (I think more in WB's attempt to pack as many commercials in as possible rather than to deliberately foil recording), when I started to TiVO the new "The Batman" animated series, which consistently starts and ends as much as 2 minutes off-schedule.