[bradsjm]

Originally Posted by mzemina

I LOVE that it now says (Repeat) but I don't know if this a once only occurance, I haven't seen this in other episodes that should also be labeled as repeat

Thanks for pointing this out. The bad news is that this flag is in the original data and I'm just checking it and it isn't reliable. The good news is Zap2it know and have come up with this formula which can improve the detection of repeats but doesn't solve it completely:

Originally Posted by tmstom

After consulting with our editorial staff, I can report to you that we should, in the future, be able to indicate definitively whether shows are syndicated or first-run. In the current release, however, it is unfortunately an unrealiable proposition to glean this from the "repeat" field.

In the meantime, the best way to distinguish first-run from syndicated shows will be with the Original Airdate (OAD) field.

I'll refer to the Section 4's explanation of xtvd/schedules/schedule/@program. ProgramIDs are 12-character strings beginning with a 2-letter string followed by a 10-number code. The ProgramIDs come in four flavors corresponding to four, 2-letter prefixes: "MV" (movie), "SP" (sports), "EP" (episode), and "SH" (show).
OAD is not included with any MV- or SP-records. For MV records, the year indicates when the movie was produced.

EP-records have proper originalAirDate information. The OAD of a program with an "EP" prefix is the OAD of that particular episode.

Where it gets a little sticky is with "SH" records. SH-records are for programs that lack episodic information. OAD is sometimes included in these records, but it can be misleading. Your example of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" above is a good example. The key point to realize is that with SH-type records, OAD refers to the originalAirDate of the show, not the episode. SH-records lack episode-level granularity for OAD.

HOWEVER, this does not mean that OAD is useless for SH-records. It is useful if you look at the showType attribute, an optional field that distinguishes how a program was originally produced. The showType lets you know whether a program is a series or a one-time program, and this information lets you know how to use the OAD.
Programs with showType of "Short Film" or "Special" are one-time programs, and thus the OAD refers to the originalAirDate of the show itself.

Programs with showType of "Limited Series," "Miniseries," "Paid Programming," "Serial," and "Series" have more than one instance, and OAD refers to the originalAirDate of the first show in the multipart series. Thus, the OAD in these cases is the first time the show ever ran. ("Whose Line is it Anyway?" fits into this category.)

Finally, it must be noted that showType is an optional field in the schema. SH-type programs can have an OAD and no showType. In this case, you won't know whether an SH-program is of type "Series" or "Special." Therefore, you won't know whether the OAD refers to the program itself or the first-showing of a series of programs.

So I've added code to use the logic above and I'll put it in the next build for testing