TV listings

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.

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[1] and DigiGuide[2] serve as the major providers of television listings metadata.

[4] First sold on 14 June 1948, The TeleVision Guide was founded by MacFadden Publications and Cowles Media Company circulation director Lee Wagner.

Wagner's publication served as the prototype for TV Guide (originally adopted as the renaming of the New York-based TeleVision Guide on 18 March 1950), which Triangle first released as a national publication on 3 April of that year, with a cover story about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's newborn son Desi Arnaz, Jr., who was referred to under the headline: "Lucy's $50,000,000 baby".

The channel – which eventually evolved into the general entertainment network Pop – was developed with the creation of a software application sold to cable television providers in the United States and Canada to provide 24-hour-a-day program listings in a scrolling grid format to their subscribers on a dedicated cable channel.

It had the ability to display programming information up to 90 minutes in advance, utilizing raw listings data supplied via satellite to a computer unit installed in the headend facilities of participating systems to present that data to subscribers in a format customized to the system's channel lineup.

An "optional" software upgrade released for the Amiga 1000-based EPG Sr. in 1987, incorporated a modified listings grid that was confined to the lower half of the screen.

Users had to turn off the guide once they found a show they wanted to watch, and then change the channel on the satellite receiver to the appropriate service.

An upgraded version of SuperGuide was released in March 1990; integrated into the Uniden 4800 receiver,[14] this version – the first commercially available unit for home use that had a locally stored guide integrated with the receiver for viewing and taping at the touch of a button – included hardware that allowed storage of up to two weeks of programming information and permitted users to access the channel carrying the show they wanted to watch or set it to record (controlling a VCR unit via an infrared output) by remote.

Originally developed by the News Corporation-MCI joint venture Delphi Internet Service Corp. as a web portal, it initially featured a mix of comprehensive television listings, news content, TV Guide editorial content and a search feature called CineBooks, which allowed users to access detailed information on about 30,000 film titles.

[19][20] In January 1997, iGuide was relaunched as the TV Guide Entertainment Network (TVGEN; later renamed TV Guide Online in 2002), refocusing on television, music, movies and sports listings and information, along with wire news and features from Reuters, Daily Variety and The New York Post, free e-mail updates for registered users, and a chat room that was developed to accommodate 5,000 users simultaneously.