Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 Australian network television schedule (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:46, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

2006 Australian network television schedule

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My major reason for nominating these two articles for deletion is that it seems rather odd/pointless (to me) to have just these two articles out of the 56-year history of Australian television. And the fact that the second of these two articles was created in 2007, but since then (as far as I can tell) nobody has been sufficiently interested to create corresponding articles for 2008 onwards, suggests to me that the remaining articles in the series are unlikely to ever be created. Contrast this with the US and Canadian subcategories of Category:Television schedules, which contain full sets of articles up to the current year. I'm aware that both of these articles have been nominated for deletion before and that those discussions were closed as "no consensus". However, those discussions were 3 years ago, when these articles were a lot closer to being "current", and opinions may have changed since then. DH85868993 (talk) 01:22, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Additional rationale (arising from the discussion, reproduced here to avoid new readers having to wade through the whole discussion to find it): Due to regional variations, and program changes throughout the year, the articles are not representative of the entire Australian TV schedule for the year. Also, I do not believe that Australian TV schedules are notable in the way that American ones are.DH85868993 (talk) 22:01, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. 01:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC) • Gene93k (talk) 01:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. 01:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC) • Gene93k (talk) 01:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. 01:35, 15 August 2012 (UTC) • Gene93k (talk) 01:35, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per previous "AfD" that resulted in keep, also. TBran dl ey 01:36, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The previous AfDs resulted in "no consensus", not "keep". DH85868993 (talk) 02:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a deletion rationale; your problem is not that these don't belong on Wikipedia but that plenty of other such lists also belong on Wikipedia. We don't delete what we've done out of deference to what we haven't. And if the underlying problem is that we don't currently have enough Australian editors interested in covering that country's broadcast media, deleting work in progress just because it's still in progress certainly isn't going to encourage anyone. postdlf (talk) 02:08, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's my rationale for nominating these articles for deletion, so by definition, it's "a deletion rationale". You may not consider it to be a valid deletion rationale, but that's a separate issue. I also happen to believe that this information is insufficiently important/useful/notable to include on Wikipedia, but I was fairly confident that if I listed that as the deletion rationale, WP:IDONTLIKEIT would be quoted in response. And references to WP:NOTDIR and WP:INDISCRIMINATE would most likely have been rebutted the same way they were three years ago. Perhaps I should have made more of the fact that both articles are still completely unsourced. DH85868993 (talk) 02:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced ≠ unsourceable. So no, that wouldn't fly either. But you still chose the worst rationale out of your stated options. There's a point at which something is so bad at being something that it fails to even be that thing. postdlf (talk) 05:24, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. DH85868993 (talk) 09:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as unreferenced, incomplete and misleading. It appears to be a snapshot of a single week in Oct 2006 from Adelaide, judging by the "The 2006 CrowsClub Championship" Friday night special! Other shows like "What a Year" also only ran for a few weeks. Australia has lots of cities and they don't always show the same thing. And very few shows stay on all year long. The-Pope (talk) 03:19, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Setting aside your cleanup issues, are you saying that Australian network programming is not national, and that it is not as stable as American television network programming? See group AFD for U.S. network TV schedules for comparison. I see that a lot of the Australian programming is not original, for example. So please let's substantively discuss that instead of just throwing out acronyms and unelaborated complaints. postdlf (talk) 05:24, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is some degree of consistent programming across the capital cities (regional areas are a different matter - many regional areas have local stations which combine programs from the different major networks), but I believe these articles are not an accurate representation of it. If we look at 2006 Australian network television schedule, Thursday night, Channel 9, 9:30pm: Magarey Medal presentation - The Magarey Medal is a South Australian football award. To the best of my knowledge, that program was broadcast one time, in one state (South Australia). Taking the article at face value, a reader could be forgiven for thinking that program was broadcast nationally, every Thursday night for the whole year.

Regarding stability, Australian TV schedules change all the time. While there are certainly programs which are broadcast at the same time throughout the whole year (e.g. the news, some soap operas, some game shows, some imported series, etc), many other programs (especially reality TV shows) only run for 2-3 months at a time. Looking at the 2006 article, and based on my memory of the time, I'd be really suprised if more than half the programs listed were shown nationally in those timeslots for more than 4 months of the year. It might be even less than that. (In this regard, the 2007 article is an improvement in that it splits the year into two halves).

But now that you've encouraged me to think about it more deeply, I just don't believe that Australian TV schedules are notable in the way that American ones are. As someone who lives in Australia, I've heard of "NBC's 2012 fall schedule" (I may not know what's in it, but I've heard of it) but I doubt that many people outside Australia have ever heard of "Channel 7's 2012 programming lineup". And even within Australia, I don't think viewers attach a lot of importance to the network lineups; I think they are more interested in the individual shows they like to watch. DH85868993 (talk) 09:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The only time people ever talk or write about schedules is in advertising/PR style articles where they promote the upcoming new shows, generally in a related/non-independent publication. Most shows run in 9-13 week slots between the non-ratings periods, with sport changing with the seasons. Few non-news/soap shows would run all year. The 2006 article as it stands is basically a copy (vio?) of a weekly program guide from Adelaide in October 2006. It in no way can be considered representative of the entire 2006 Australian TV schedule. This, coupled with the complete lack of independent references makes this an easy decision to delete, regardless of what other countries may keep. The-Pope (talk) 11:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good comments; you should have led with this. I'll watch what others say in response (and no, a TV schedule could not be a copyvio because it is just factual information—what aired when). postdlf (talk) 15:13, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a summary of the above to the rationale, for the benefit of new readers. DH85868993 (talk) 22:01, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2009 Australian network television schedule (weekday) (3rd nomination). TV schedules are not inherently notable, this one is at best misleading and no one has actually provided evidence of significant coverage (and the article is unreferenced). Jenks24 (talk) 02:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Both. I suppose it's possible to complete a decent schedule article, but this isn't it, or even the beginning of one. There are significant regional variations, and programmes coming on and off the air all of the time. A snapshot of a single week in a single city isn't really all that useful to anyone. Until someone commits to coming up with a decent product that takes all these things into account, we're better off without these uncited and unreferenced articles. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:57, 19 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.