Resource use - timer event vs. listen

I'm doing a build where there will be a lot of objects on the parcel that behave differently during the sim day vs. night. I originally scripted each of the objects to have its own timer event that checks the sun direction, but I'm assuming that if there are say 20 objects that do this it will cause a lot of lag.

I am thinking that I could just script *one* object to be the "master" timer and when the sun changes from day to night and vice versa, it could send a chat command and the other objects could simply be listening for those commands, rather than each having its own timer. I assume that a listen event is less of a resource hog than a timer. Is this assumption correct?

Use a "tight" listen on a negative channel, listening for the "transmitter" prims key and or name.