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Anyone know of any good TV Listings websites?
- Thread starter ssetta
- Start date
I use TitanTV. It is very customizable, and you can not only select and deselect stations (you can even select them from out of market), but you can move them around, to cluster them as desired.
What would really be cool, would be to have an app that could create TV Guide-style interlocked listings, with channel slugs customized as well (in-market stations in black slugs, out-of-market stations in white slugs, and so on), but I haven't heard of anything like that actually being available. That would basically be a re-creation of what TVG did with their supercomputers up in Radnor back in the day, to create edition-specific listings with a database of program information.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
It might be cool-looking, but viewers would reject it. The grid which started as an adjunct to those listings in TV Guide back in the 1980s was quickly adopted as a default for newspaper television listings, and as those fell by the wayside the online electronic versions found those were easy to duplicate in HTML.
Even the lamented Zap2It was always in that format. (Disclaimer: In the early 2000s I was a beta tester for the enhanced version that was launched in that period.)
Now, having said that, here's what such an app would require. First, it would have to access the same database as the online grids, DVRs, etc., and we do not know if those can be parsed in a way to combine their information in a linear display.
Second, it would have to include -- within the app -- every combination of channel bullets, plus bullets with the names of every listable cable and digital OTA network. And for completeness' sake, that would have to include bullets with OTA subchannels (e.g., 13.4, 22.6, 41.2) and all the possible channel numbers for cable systems, Dish, DirecTV, the fiber-based services from AT&T and Verizon, and any other provider type I left out. You want an app with bloated memory usage? This guarantees it.
Then, because you and I all know most people either don't know how to configure such an app or couldn't be bothered, there would need to be a database of what channels are available, by ZIP code, on all of the above reception modes. That's easy to do with a website, because the database is on their server, but for a smartphone it would have to be either built into the app or use up data to access it from some remote server ... every time you wanted to change your personal channel lineup.
And I strongly suspect that such an app would have limited acceptance, even for "coolness", because the vast majority of people already use the on-screen guide rather than even sites like Titan TV (which I also heartily endorse as I have been using them for over a decade now).
It's a nice daydream, but incredibly impractical and of little consumer interest.
Not just cool, but actually functional for people who prefer that kind of listing. I've never cared for the grids, but then again, I grew up on TV Guide, and I guess it's whatever you get used to.
I had in mind that the user would configure the channel slugs on their own, choosing from an array and then telling the app how they want the slugs to appear.
Granted, the grids are much easier from a programming (no pun intended) standpoint. And I was thinking in terms of the data being resident on the provider's server.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
But that array of graphics would still need to be embedded in the app. I believe the term is "bloatware".
I've used
www.ontvtonight.com
since Zap went belly up. Not perfect but close.
On TV Tonight - OnTVTonight.com - TV Listings, streaming and What's On TV Guide
On TV Tonight TV guide is your local TV listings for what's on TV and streaming across America. On TV Tonight has every TV show airing on television and streaming services near you.
www.ontvtonight.com
You're probably right. Once the localized editions of TVG went away in 2005, so far as I am aware, nobody (unless it would be some local newspapers that already had that sort of TVG knockoff) rushed to roll out a new interlocked-listings TV magazine. Even TV Weekly is all grids, and not all that localized, when I took out a subscription promising "local listings", I got Charlotte grids.
its still around...just a different website
uses same logins and passwords as what you used previously
I use
www.tvpassport.com
Like TitanTV
TitanTV offers fast, customizable TV listings for local broadcasting, cable and satellite lineups. Quickly view program, episode, cast credits, and additional airing information.
legacy.titantv.com
Local TV Listings, TV Schedules and TV Guides
View your local TV listings, TV schedules and TV guides. Find television listings for broadcast, cable, IPTV and satellite service providers in Canada or the United States.
www.tvpassport.com
.
I get that but mainly for the articles.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
When it comes to things like this, personal preferences are important. What works for me might be "off" for someone else. That's undoubtedly why there are several online television listings services.
I only wonder, if television is destined to be replaced with on demand video (regardless of origin), how long those listings services will last.
With a career in journalism and an early satellite TV adopter (1982), I enjoyed getting Satellite TV Week. It was linear listings, as accurate as somethign printed 10-17 days out could be, and was great. That publication and one like it (Orbit?) folded as C-band was replaced by DirecTV, etc. STVW probably listed 100 channels on Life Magazine-sized pages. I probably have a couple stashed somewhere.
In recent years, with cord-cutting rampant, I wondered if a local over-the-air only program magazine would be possible, including main and sub-channels, that would appeal to those with antennae. Here in Chicago, I counted up about 120 OTA outlets, not including subchannels. Printing that in the old TV Guide format would depopulate the forests rather quickly. What's more, one of the traditional outlets for TV Guide for decades, the supermarket checkout line, no longer has room for magazines, at last around here. It's all candy and the like.
In recent years, with cord-cutting rampant, I wondered if a local over-the-air only program magazine would be possible, including main and sub-channels, that would appeal to those with antennae. Here in Chicago, I counted up about 120 OTA outlets, not including subchannels. Printing that in the old TV Guide format would depopulate the forests rather quickly. What's more, one of the traditional outlets for TV Guide for decades, the supermarket checkout line, no longer has room for magazines, at last around here. It's all candy and the like.
My only problem with TV Passport is that it is unstable. Half the time I try to use it I get a database error. It reminds of how unstable the FCC's website is.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
OMG, was that a memory flogger for me?!? I remember STVW well, and also Satellite Orbit (yes, you got the name right). In the early 1980s, I "moonlighted" as the marketing designer for a mail-order C-band satellite equipment direct-to-consumer sales organization and had subscriptions to both.
If you ever find old copies, I would enjoy seeing scans of sample pages.
The point about "shelf space" at the supermarkets is probably the final nail in the coffin for such an idea. What I think hammered in the rest of the nails is the double-punch of the increased number of people who cancelled cable television (or, like me, only get broadband from the cable company) in the early days of OTA digital, and have moved on from there to streaming.
Talk about deforestation: Even if you only used grids, and only included mass-appeal subchannels plus the primary for all OTA stations in Chicagoland, you'd have a few dozen pages at "regular" magazine page size, and even though that could be lessened somewhat with a larger page format (presuming you could find any way to display it at a supermarket checkout line without magazine racks) you would likely be sending a lot of unsold issues every week to the recycler. I doubt the business model would work now (which is probably why no one is doing that).
But it does make one think how shortsighted Bruce Springsteen was when he restricted himself to "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" back in the day ...
Most subchannels are occupied by national diginets whose listings would be generic for all TV markets. The OTA network affiliates (as well as PBS and independents) could appear as they did in the old regional TV Guide editions, and the various diginets could appear in a grid much as cable/satellite networks do in the present national incarnation of TVG.
Most people seem to like the grid format, I prefer the interlocked listings with channel bullets myself, but that's just me, I realize those probably aren't coming back. But if there were interlocked listings, again, the diginets could have channel bullets with abbreviations for their names (e.g., METV, H&I, CCOM, COZI), that worked out well when TVG started carrying cable/satellite listings.
There were also those truncated time zone-specific editions that they created for hotels and the like. Aside from being interlocked rather than in grids, that is basically what TVG is today.
My supermarket has plenty of room for magazines, mostly about Taylor Swift and the Royals, and whatever celebrity just died.
Mine only sells something called The Epoch Times. The competing supermarket across the way sells the three local papers from Hartford, Middletown and New Britain, CT. Strange!