U.S time zone related stuff?

Americans are generally fat, lazy, and stupid. Not to mention self centered. If someone doesn't cater to them as to what exactly the time an event will happen for them in their time zone, they will be perpetually confused, and even get belligerent about it. That's why the mountain timezone folks are always so grouchy!

I think what time zones are mentioned most depends on where you live. For example, I live in Alaska and our television listings are often listed based off Pacific time. We have the same 8/7 thing going on here where the first number represents Pacific time and the second represents Alaska. Most of the programs that air at 8 Eastern are rebroadcast at 8 Pacific.

I believe in the US things are generally linked to Eastern because it is the time zone in the US which has the first sunrise.

I also see standardization to GMT time through a lot of time zones.

And yes, daylight savings does get confusing. Some states have elected not to follow daylight savings time while most do. That means that while most states always have a consistent gap in time zones, others don't.

While Eastern time to Pacific time spans four time zones, there are more than four time zones in the US. Alaska and Hawaii, both US states, also have their own time zones.

It would confuse too many Americans and they would miss their favorite American Idol episode or some other stupid show.

I'm not sure daylight savings time would throw it off.

When the time sets back in the fall and then ahead in the spring Central follows suit but Mountain and Pacific do not change (I'm pretty sure this is the case but there may be some individual areas that don't).

There are states where the timezone splits right through the state. Florida is an example, it has two time zones. That would make it confusing if you worked in one and lived in the other. What time do you follow?

The times are given in Eastern/Central mainly because the majority of people in the U.S. live in those two time zones. The people in Mountain and Pacific Time zones know how many hours to subtract to learn when the show comes on in their zone. It saves time by just telling the start time in the first two zones.

in the U.S as you know there are four time zones, and from pacific to eastern is 3 hours and four time zones, there fore they cant air the same show at the same time across the nation because if its 8pm in cali and lost is on, people wont stay up until 11pm in miami to watch it. so its basically done on two circuits, eastern and central, and pacific and mountain, this is so the networks can get maxium coverage for primetime shows, excluding sports events, which are strategially timed so the whole nation can watch the best game at a reasonable time

Because we live in a big country---much larger east to west than western Europe. What should we use as the standard zone and why?