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Post by e knight on Sept 18, 2021 23:55:19 GMT -5
It's not any advanced math here: If we were dealing with the 48th or the 52nd anniversary, the weekdays would remain the same, as the leap days would follow the same pattern. However, 50 isn't divisible by four, so we get the extra day at different places in the calendar. There are commands in Microsoft Office that can tell you the weekday of any date (which is how I checked this out).
Someone's 50th birthday or 50th wedding anniversary would either have no weekday offset, or one weekday's offset, depending upon the event year. Happens all the time.
The only question is to retain the exact day within a month by using Wednesday, or shift it to keep the Thursday tradition. No big deal.
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Post by Easton on Sept 19, 2021 7:16:29 GMT -5
Here is a website with all of the original episodes and all of the original air dates: epguides.com/Waltons/
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Post by e knight on Sept 20, 2021 10:25:52 GMT -5
I extracted the data from the site that Easton linked to, and put it all in Excel spreadsheet. I used the Excel functions to (1) compute the exact date after adding 50 years to the air date; (2) compute the gap, in days, from the previous episode's air date; and (3) format both dates to include day-of-week. It would appear that The Waltons was determinedly scheduled for Thursday evenings. The only exceptions were a two-part episode, "The Children's Carol"" which aired Monday, Dec 5, 1977 (Season 6). Earlier, I had only checked the season starting dates, but the spreadsheet confirmed that I was essentially correct: sometimes the plus-50 date fell on a Thursday, but about as often on a Wednesday, in a predictable pattern. From Sep 14 through Feb 21 of 1972, all of the dates change from Thursday to Wednesday when shifted 50 years. However, things fall back into line for March 7, 1974/2024, as we got back the extra day (at last!) on Feb 29, 2024. Things stay in sync up through Mar 4, when the extra day in 1976 doesn't show up in 2026. Similar shifts occur each time either year has a leap day. We can worry about this later on, if indeed our anniversary project goes on that long. One could argue that "add 50 years" is somewhat ambiguous, as you're adding on a mixture of 365-day years and 366-day years, so that adding an extra day (by bumping a Wednesday event to Thursday) to retain the pattern of weekdays is entirely justifiable. However, people don't customarily do this with other anniversaries, so there's a counter-counter argument. The computed "gap" between shows is a steady stream of 7 (days), with the occasional zero (when a two-part episode aired in one day), and the occasional 14 when the show got pre-empted by some special broadcast. Each season opener has, of course, a long gap, since last season's finale, typically 180-odd days. Season 9 must have started late, with a 259 day hiatus. There was also a five-week break in April-May 1981. The record was a 6-week break in March-April 1973. Maybe a writer's strike wherein they had to resort to re-runs? The show didn't manage to hit a Feb 29 air date, though they had only two chances to do so. Had that happened, there'd be no equivalent date 50 years later. I'll be happy to provide the spreadsheet to the Golden Anniversary Committee to aid in their planning.
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Post by e knight on Sept 2, 2022 19:29:36 GMT -5
The 50th Anniversary of the first Waltons broadcast is upon us: September 14th. I was hoping that someone would set up a weekly discussion on the anniversary of every show. Check the earlier posts in this topic for my ideas.
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