TV listings (television listings, also sometimes called a TV guide or program/programme guide) are a printed or electronic timetable of television programs. Often intended for consumer use, these provide information concerning programming scheduled to be broadcast on various television channels available to the reader – either via terrestrial, free-to-air, cable, satellite or over-the-top MVPD – indicating at what time and on what channel they are due to be broadcast over a period usually encompassing about seven- to 14-days in advance.
Overview Since the early days of television, such listings have been printed in local newspapers, newspaper inserts, or magazines (including specialized listings magazines), but are now often viewed as electronic program guides available on set-top boxes and most digital TV sets. Most print listings publications originally displayed programming information a text-based format modeled after program logs maintained by local broadcasters, which organized programs first by their scheduled airtime and secondarily by channel, a format that allowed complete program titles and synopses of reasonable detail to be incorporated into the guide. With the formation of other broadcast and subscription channels in subsequent years, set space requirements resulted in detailed synopses being gradually restricted to series and specials – usually those airing in evening timeslots – as well as movies. Since the 1980s, grids – which organize listings primarily by channel in correspondence to airtime – have become the common format for displaying listings information, as it allows more space to display programming data for an expanded lineup of channels. Many national and local TV listings magazines (such as TV Guide in the United States) originally incorporated grids to show prime time listings, but would eventually begin expanding them to encompass the full broadcast day during the late 1980s and 1990s. For print publications, space requirements have largely limited the availability and detail of programming information that can be incorporated into a grid format; however, because web- and application-based APIs can fit more information into such a structure, the format does allow for detailed synopses to be included into a grid. However, most websites and mobile apps offering program listings usually incorporate synopses and other information concerning a specific television program in a clickable or swipeable dialog box. Program listings data is compiled by various metadata providers throughout the world, which provide data to specific regions or countries. The most prominent provider of television program metadata is Gracenote, which assumed most responsibilities for program metadata dissemination from Tribune Media Services, following Tribune Media's acquisition of Gracenote (now owned by Nielsen), in 2014. Gracenote's On Entertainment service provides TV listings and synopses for approximately 85 countries – including the United States and Canada – and 35 languages, and maintains a database of program data for approximately six million television series and movies for guidance for various websites and electronic programming guides. Within the United Kingdom, Press Association, Red Bee Media Broadcasting Dataservices, REDNI and DigiGuide serve as the major providers of television listings metadata.
History
United Kingdom On 1 March 1991, the monopoly on listings magazines ended and the market was opened up. Before this, there were two magazines on the market: Radio Times, began in 1923, for BBC listings and TV Times, began in 1955, for ITV and, from 1982, Channel 4 and Welsh-dubbed S4C listings. A number of magazines appeared on the market at that time: TV Quick, What's on TV and the short-lived TV Plus. By the mid-1990s, What's on TV was UK's best-selling weekly magazine, but in 2008 a rival publication, TV Choice (began in 1999 by Bauer Media Group) achieved a higher circulation. TV Choice has a similar design and format but at a lower price. Traditionally these have been simple broadcast programming lists of what appears in chronological order on the various channels available, having been designed for an age in which there were only a few channels, and where the only medium was paper. Today, with 600 channels in the UK today, the Internet offers different formats and possibilities for TV listings and television is starting to appear in both mobile and internet formats, so the whole approach to TV listings is changing. In addition, most UK newspapers publish a full week's listings guide in their Saturday and Sunday editions.
United States
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