Sarah Palin's Alaska
The Learning Channel
Sunday, 9PM Eastern

Prager: Why do they always give Eastern and Central, and never Mountain or Pacific?

Very easy answer, which I've gotten from actually reading the screen, and drawing a few conclusions from the knowledge that lives in my fantastic brain. Programs are rebroadcast for the Pacific zone, so all the PST people have to do is read the number given first to see what time to watch.

Central is given because there are so many people in that zone. Giving central time as one hour behind eastern tells the watcher that the network didn't schedule a different time for the next time zone as well.

Mountain is not given because there aren't a lot of people in the mountain time zone, and those who are there enjoy a superior intelligence which allows them to add the number 1 to the time given for "Central".

Concluding with Pacific, the networks assumed, mostly correctly, that the pacific people would be ablet to read the leading number, which also applies to themselves.

Easy.