suggestions for tv programming schedule

[kevinritt]

Hi,
I have a site that is for a local cable station. I upload the schedule in a pdf file each week. Is there a way to set up a way for them to load the programs by day and date? I know I can create a database with days of the week, but it's the hours for each program that's messing me up. If you look here http://saugustv.org/index.php?page=channel8 you'll see how the hours stagger and how they display the schedule. I'm just looking for suggestions/ ideas. Thanks

[bpat1434]

Well, most TV stations will only air on the 30 minutes (so a 7:30 show, or an 8:00 show) and usually won't do a 9:15 show or something like that. So really you're looking at 48 time-slots for the day (00:00 - 00:30 all the way to 23:30 - 00:00).

From this you could set a start and end time to each specific tv show on each day. Then when you build the schedule, just get a listing back ordered by start time and display them.

[kevinritt]

So I would create 48 fields in the database? Not sure I'm following what you're saying.(Keep in mind my level of expertise is minimal)

[bpat1434]

No, you would create a database with at least 5 fields:
1.) ID (a unique ID for each row, typically done with auto_increment)
2.) show (the TV Show Title)
3.) day (the day this tv show will air)
4.) start (the time this show will start)
5.) end (the time this show will end)

Now, say show PFKU runs on two nights at the same time (Tues 7pm - 8 pm, Thur 7pm - 8pm) then you would have 2 rows in your shows table, one for Tues the other for Thurs. The start time would be 19:00 (7:00 pm) and the end time would be 20:00 (8:00 pm).

Then when retrieving the results from the database, you can order by start to get the listing of shows in the order they will actually be shown in.

[kevinritt]

ok - thanks. I will try to figure this out