Editorial standards

A release date is only useful if it's right. These are the rules every page on this site follows.

How we verify a date

1. Two kinds of show page. Listings pages are built every day from TVmaze's published schedules, and each date shows TVmaze as its source. Editor reviewed pages have also been checked against the network's or streamer's own announcements. Each show page says which kind it is.
2. We start with the platform. For reviewed pages we prefer announcements and published schedules from the broadcaster or streamer. Next come trade and national press that report those announcements, then other established publishers.
3. We record the source. Each date on a show page links to the source it came from and shows when we last checked it.
4. We label the certainty. A date is Announced or Listed when a source states it outright. It is Projected when we worked it out from an announced pattern, such as "weekly on Mondays", and no listing shows it yet. It is TBA when nothing has been announced. We never show a TBA season as having a date.
5. We don't settle disagreements by guessing. If sources disagree, we say so on the page and use the platform's own statement where there is one.

Times and time zones

Networks publish national slots such as "8/7c" (8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, 7 p.m. Central). Sports overruns and local stations can shift those times, and PBS member stations in particular schedule programmes differently. We show the national slot and tell you to check your local station. We don't convert broadcast times into an exact time for your city. Streaming releases that happen at a fixed moment are shown in Eastern Time, and our calendar can convert them to your time zone.

International, anime and K-drama times

For the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand we show local channels' own listed times. Streaming originals that release worldwide at one moment are converted into each country's local time, which is why an Australian date can be a day later than the U.S. date. Anime and K-drama times come from the broadcast in Japan or Korea and are converted to Eastern, Pacific, UK and Sydney time. Streaming services outside those countries usually post episodes shortly after the broadcast, but their exact times vary, so we never present a converted broadcast time as a streaming time.

Video games and seasonal schedules

Game release dates show the platforms announced so far and link the announcement the date comes from. We don't state unlock times unless a publisher has announced them. Seasonal lineups, such as holiday movie schedules, are copied from the network's published schedule and re-checked when the network updates it.

Broadcast is not the same as streaming

A show airing on PBS doesn't mean it's in every streaming library, and an early PBS Passport release doesn't mean the broadcast has started. We list each way of watching as a separate row with its own dates.

Keeping pages current

Our data sources are checked daily for changes. When something changes we update the page, the "verified" date and the page's update history. Automated checks flag possible changes, but a changed date is only published after it has been checked against a source.

Use of automation and AI

We use software to collect schedule data (including TVmaze, under CC BY-SA 4.0), spot changes, and help research and draft text. That text has to match the cited sources before it's published. We don't publish pages made only to target search terms, we don't split one answer across near-identical pages, and we don't claim to have watched or reviewed something we haven't.

Independence

We aren't paid by broadcasters or streamers for coverage, and advertisers have no say over what we publish. The site is supported by display advertising, which is clearly labelled and kept apart from our listings. An ad will never be made to look like an official "watch" button, and we don't use pop-ups or ads that cover the page.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it and note the change in the page's update history. See corrections to report an error.