Re: Zap2It's TV Listings Are Gone

On 2025-03-27 10:42 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

Apparently, within the last day, Zap2It's TV listing site is gone - it now directs to a NewsNation schedule (which nobody wants!).
 For now, it seems to still exist on Gracenote:
 https://tvlistings.gracenote.com/grid-affiliates.html?aid=lat
 But who knows how long this will last...
 FTR, TitanTV's guide also still exists:
 https://www.titantv.com/
 But they're another one that I wonder how much longer they can survive...
 So, are we soon heading to a time when online TV schedule guides no longer exist?!!...
 

I find that very strange. As a consumer of TV - as most of us are - I would think TV listings would be a fundamental aspect of the TV experience. After all, unless you're someone who merely uses TV as a source of background noise as you go about your time at home and you don't actually care what's on, you're probably going to want to know what's on and when so that you can watch it (or set your PVR to record it for you). If no one publishes listings, you're left to just flip the channels until something catches your eye.
Could it be that the cable companies and streaming services are gradually buying these listings services to shut them down so that their customers don't even see - and maybe don't even know about - competing shows? It would be interesting to contact zap2it to see why they stopped producing listings. Were they having trouble getting information about what was on? Were they finding that almost no one used the service so they couldn't justify the cost?
Some years ago, I actually toyed with the idea of starting such a service myself. I never did it but I could definitely see a market for a reliable way to find out what's available to watch on whatever cable or satellite or streaming services that people used. In fact, I still toy with it. I would love to make definitive listings of every show on every cable, satellite or streaming service in any language around the world so that people could find out what's on wherever they are. Wouldn't that be a cool and useful service? It ought to get use wherever people watch TV, which is pretty much everywhere.
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Rhino