Daylight Saving Time Begins (3/8/26) and Your MediaStar Schedule

Posted on February 25th, 2026 by Karol Shepherd

Daylight Saving Time will begin at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 8th, 2026, in most of the United States. Now is a good time to verify your station’s programming is listed correctly both before and after the change.

A simple way to validate your schedule is to adjust the grid to end on Saturday, March 7th. This will demonstrate that your schedule is accurate prior to the change.  Next, set the schedule to begin on Monday, March 9th.  Again, this will verify that your schedule is accurate on the first full day after the change of time standards.  

Remember that we actually lose an hour when we “spring forward” with the change to Daylight Saving Time. This makes Sunday’s schedule only 23 hours long. When the change occurs, MediaStar must fit that day’s 23 hours of programming into a 24-hour grid without also affecting the start and end times of all of the other days in the schedule.

The Hour column in MediaStar’s grid is hard-coded to display 24 hour-long rows of programming. When the grid includes the Sunday of the time change, your schedule may initially appear to be skewed by one hour because the affected programmings’ start times will not match the hard-coded hour cells they are displayed in. 

To accommodate the time change, MediaStar displays the start and end times in the cells of the affected cells with an DST appendage to reflect each program’s actual airtime relative to Daylight Saving Time.  The programs in the grid with the ST appendage on their start and end times are those that will air according to Standard Time prior to the change.

Below is a snapshot of a MediaStar Grid View for an overnight schedule for Saturday, March 7th. 

In this example, the hour-long Extra program is listed with a 1:00 AM ST start time and a 3:00 AM DST end time.  The program will air at its regular 1:00 AM Standard Time starting time. At 2:00 AM, Daylight Saving Time begins, and the clock is advanced by one hour.  Despite the program having a 60-minute duration, its end time is internally updated to 3:00 AM DST to reflect the hour that was removed from the broadcast day with the change. 

Judge Judy, the next program in the day’s schedule is shown with the 3:00 to 3:30 DST appendages to illustrate its actual post-transition starting and ending time according to Daylight Saving Time despite it appearing in the 2:00 AM row in the grid.  The DST appendage will only appear on the start and end times of programs throughout Sunday, the 8th. 

If you have any questions on your schedule or need further assistance, please contact us at 1-319-365-5597 or customercare@titantv.com.