A system and methods for acquiring scheduled television programs with coinciding program times. One method includes initially identifying that a conflict exists to acquire the scheduled television programs. Once the conflict is identified, the method identifies one or more alternate sources that contain the scheduled television programs. Acquisition schedules are generated and optimized. Then, at least one of the scheduled television programs are recorded from one of the alternate sources. A user may set user preferences to customize how the system will generate potential acquisition schedules.