Up-front: I love Ellen DeGeneres - not everything she's been in, but I love her daytime show (which is technically named The Ellen DeGeneres Show since her sitcom These Friends of Mine was renamed Ellen after the first season, a confusion not helped by the fact that the daytime show always refers to itself as "Ellen." I'll call it TEDGS for short). I love her personal style, her stand-up specials - basically, I just love Ellen.

I think Ellen did a fine job hosting the Oscars® last night. Dori (Smith, not the fish Ellen voiced in Finding Nemo) thought she could be a bit edgier, but "edgy" comedy anymore is just "pissing some people off," and I don't necessarily agree that the Oscars is the place for that. I thought she was funny and self-effacing and in love with the movie business, and that's what the host ought to be.

Ellen's been hyping her hosting gig incessantly on TEDGS, and that's fine and dandy. For all that time, she's also been touting her live Monday post-Oscar show, with all the behind-the-scenes info. The Warner Bros description for the show:

It's the day after the first Oscars hosted by Ellen, and we're LIVE! Today, Ellen shares with her viewers the most exclusive, the most behind-the-scenes and the most personal highlights of the biggest event in entertainment! See the Oscars as Ellen saw them, as our cameras document every move, every meeting, every rehearsal. It's your chance to see the Oscars in a way you've never seen them before. And, don't be surprised if more than one winner chats with Ellen about how it feels to take home Oscar gold! Get ready for behind-the-scenes clips, highlights of your favorite winning moments and Oscar night photos from backstage! Then, go inside the hottest Oscar parties in Hollywood, including the Vanity Fair party, the Governor's Ball and Elton John's traditional Oscar blow out! Plus, the famed dance troupe PILOBOLUS, who lit up the Oscar stage with their physics-defying moves, bring their inventive and astonishing performance to Ellen's stage, and Ellen even takes part in a most unusual element of their performance!

I have been thinking to myself, "Wow, this woman has stamina!" TEDGS tapes a lot of shows several days in advance (Oprah Winfrey was on the show on February 22, but they were showing promo clips from it 10 days earlier), but of course, you can't pre-tape a live show. TEDGS is syndicated, and under the clearance rules for such things on network stations, it can't air earlier than 10AM Eastern time, or 9AM here in the Central time zone, here at the Crossroads of America. That's 7AM Pacific time! The Oscar ceremony ended at 9PM Pacific time last night, so with after-parties and finishing up, I thought, "Geez, Ellen will spend all weekend preparing for a live Oscar show in front of a billion people, then stay up all night to do a live talk show! That's amazing!" I was really looking forward to seeing that.

Understandably, the Tuesday show is pre-taped and in the can - it's a "Best of Ellen" show going behind the scenes at TEDGS:

How many laughs can one episode of Ellen's show have? Find out when Ellen takes a seat with her audience and looks back at her favorite moments from her favorite shows in her first-ever BEST OF SHOW! Watch Ellen in priceless moments with BILL CLINTON, JENNIFER ANISTON, OPRAH WINFREY, ANGELINA JOLIE, HEIDI KLUM, TOM CRUISE, JIM CARREY and more! Relive one of Ellen's favorite comedy bits – her "Backpacking through Burbank" adventure. Plus, if you missed Ellen crashing Jennifer Lopez's music video shoot, now's your chance to catch all the hysteria. And, no one has more fun with kids than Ellen! Watch Ellen's interviews with adorable tykes, including the one-of-a-kind MATTHEW SAWCHUCK, 8-year-old piano prodigy MARC YU and 8-YEAR-OLD SKATEBOARDING TWINS Tristan and Nic Puehse. And, a look back at some of the funniest people and heartwarming stories from the show, including Terri and Bindi Irwin, Ellen's Spanish teacher Monica Pena, 88-year-old Gladys Harper from Austin, Texas, the woman who "loves Jesus but drinks a little," Subway Superman Wesley Autrey and Sharon "Shay" Karriem, who lost her business in Hurricane Katrina and was given a Quizno's Sandwich Shop by Ellen. Plus, appearances by the smiley potato chip, "Kitty," a special collection of Ellen's favorite dancing clips and much, much more!

"That makes sense," I thought, "as that will give her time to recover after Monday's live show before new shows have to start." It looks like the rest of the week's shows contain re-runs as well. But today's, Monday's, show? That's gonna be live fun!

You probably see this coming before I did - when I got into the office today and turned on the TiVo for the normal "let's get things started" daily run, TEDGS was "Best of Ellen." It was the Tuesday show, with a crawl saying that Ellen's "Post-Oscar special will air tomorrow at this same time." (The crawl was part of TEDGS, not provided by local affiliate KOCO-TV, and you know this because it didn't have the "5" logo on it. Every local TV station puts its logo on everything, probably even on the sandwich bread in the station's vending machines. If it was their crawl, it'd have their logo.

The post-Oscar show is live sometime this afternoon in California, probably around 4PM (7PM ET) when TEDGS airs in Los Angeles. Every market that airs TEDGS earlier than that sees the pre-taped Tuesday show on Monday, and gets the "live" show one day later.

This was obviously the plan from the very beginning, but in a month-plus of hyping this show, never once did I see Ellen mention on the air that since TEDGS airs at different times in different places (something she did mention at least once), the "live" show would be live on Monday in some markets and aired pre-recorded on Tuesday in other places. This is an easy thing to explain and everyone would understand it, but they didn't even try. Instead, upward of 75% of Ellen's audience will tune in on Monday for a "live" show they've been promised for a month and instead see the pre-taped show planned for the next day, with no warning and despite all advertising saying it was coming on "Monday."

I understand why, but the audience should have been told what was planned for 75% of the country instead of tempted with a schedule that was never going to air except in a few West Coast markets. We all know shows are pre-taped and there's a schedule involved, but a month of saying something will air "today" when you know full well it will not is crossing the line. For shame.