One of the reasons why TV listings magazines continue to sell so well, when all other sectors of the magazine publishing industry find it an increasingly competitive environment, is that taking in what’s on at a certain time of day is so much easier on paper.
Open up the print edition of the Radio Times, for example, and you easily what’s on TV tomorrow evening on the top five channels, complete with programme summaries and limited production credits. Ever since the magazine’s latest redesign, you can also see summaries of the primetime schedules for some of the bigger digital channels.
Even in print, the method of listing each channel’s schedule as a vertical column is far from ideal, though, especially now that most households have access to digital television with far too many channels to comfortably fit side-by-side in print.
In the States, where multi-channel television has been a reality for far longer than here in the UK, they pioneered the grid system, with channel schedules running horizontally across the page along a time axis, so that you can see what’s on at, say, 9pm just by finding the time at the top of the page and scanning downwards. The grid format has started making its way into UK newspapers, but most print publications retain the traditional column format.
The grid format has picked up online, though, especially on sites like RadioTimes.com as well as many on-screen programme guides such as Sky’s EPG use the grid format as one of the main navigational tools. Personally, though, I find these online grids can be next to useless for perusing the schedules: while they may be okay for comparing a select few channels’ programmes within a window of a couple of hours, they’re really bad for looking at what’s on throughout a whole weekend without lots and lots of scrolling.
Very few websites have managed to crack the problem of presenting large amounts of schedule information across both axes (time and channel) effectively. One (US-based) system that came closest for me was Evoke TV, which used a grid that you could drag around the screen in the same way that you can drag Google Maps. So while only a small segment of the overall schedule was on screen at any time, the rest was easily — and, more importantly, quickly — reachable, so it felt less of a challenge to explore what was on television. Unfortunately, Evoke has disappeared into the ether.
Recently, a couple of companies have started looking at different ways of treating programme schedule information. UK web design firm PoGdesign has come up with CAT - Calendar for TV, which presents key episodes of US shows on a standard month view calendar grid. When you first visit it looks a bit confusing, but when you select which shows you want to see on your calendar, the whole thing looks a little less cluttered. It could be useful for keeping tabs on your favourite series. To be honest, though, while the month-per-page view is a standard way of looking at date-based information, at times (such as this week) it means that current information is well down the bottom of the page, and the first information you see when you visit out of date listings information from the start of the month.
Another company has taken the personalisation route far further, by allowing bloggers to concentrate on a particular show, actor or even episode. You may have spotted large boxes (such as the one on the right) from LocateTV crop up from time to time. Enterprising souls who’ve clicked on the graphic for more information may have been disappointed, however, to find that the site is currently running in a closed beta — that is, only a select few (including Mark and I here at TV Today) have been allowed to get full access to the system.
From next week, Locate TV opens its doors to a public beta, so clicking on our embeds will show you more information, and allow you to vary what you see on our site. From Monday, you’ll be able to go to LocateTV’s site and set whether you have Sky TV, Freeview, Virgin, etc. — and the part of the graphic that says when the next episode is due to be broadcast will adapt to suit your requirements (e.g., if you only have terrestrial analogue channels, you won’t be shown any E4 programme info.). Clicking through will also take you to episode guides, price comparisons for buying DVDs, and where possible a list of shows that are available for online viewing.
The system is far from perfect at the moment. Most problems I’ve encountered seem to stem from inconsistent information being delivered by the people providing the schedules in the first place: while you can search for an actor’s name, for example, they have to show up in the truncated cast lists available to the system. Also, slight variations of programmes — e.g., the singalong/dancealong versions of High School Musical, or the updated versions of Location, Location, Location showing Phil and Kirsty returning to former househunters — sometimes get classed as completely separate shows.
But both Locate TV and CAT are showing that people are looking at schedule information and trying to help shape it to fit individual users’ viewing habits. As the concept of appointment-to-view ‘linear’ television begins to recede, and especially as one edition of a programme can often be transmitted multiple times over the course of a week, finding new and exciting ways of finding when your favourite programme is next available to watch is going to be more of a challenge.
