TV Guide Mobile and GetGlue reinterpret the program guide

“What’s on?� used to be an easy question to answer -- all you had to do was look at a TV program guide and scroll through the channels. Now, however, television programs are being delivered not only by hundreds of broadcast and cable networks, but also by websites and services whose inventory is available on demand. It used to seem as if reruns of the “Law & Order� franchise were always on, somewhere on the dial; these days it’s literally true.

Dozens of companies are now offering program guides for the online-TV era, replacing the familiar two-dimensional list of shows -- channels listed in rows, times across the top -- with something more personalized and interactive. Over the last week, two companies from opposite ends of the business -- TV Guide Mobile, whose name is synonymous with program guides, and start-up GetGlue -- offered new versions of their apps for discovering what’s on. The former uses the listings grid as a jumping-off point; the latter simply ignores it.

TV Guide Mobile’s affinity for the grid is understandable -- the company is a descendant of Gemstar, the firm whose patent over the listings grid made it a dominant provider of electronic guides to cable operators and set manufacturers. (It’s current owners are Lionsgate, a film studio, and JP Morgan’s private equity arm, One Equity Partners.) But Christy Tanner, executive vice president and general manager of TVGuide.com and TV Guide Mobile, argues that the grid is the right place to start because it’s familiar and because linear TV is what’s most in demand.

“This is a product that people want. This a product that people ask for,� Tanner said in a recent interview.

The new version of the app, which is available only for iOS devices for now, enables users to do several things from the listings grid. Tapping on a program calls up a description, along with the ability to post a check-in with comments on Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo; set an alert to remind the user when the show or future episodes are about to air; or add the program to one’s “Watchlist� of personal favorites.

Alternatively, users can see lists of the new programs on that evening and the programs with the most check-ins by TV Guide users (Thursday night’s leaders: “Big Brother,� followed by “Rookie Blue� and “Saving Hope�). The latter is TV Guide’s version of a guide shaped by social media. Users also can display lists of programs featured by TV Guide’s staff; the current options are Emmy-winners and nominees, and season premieres. And they can browse through various lists of TV shows available online, for free or for pay, and play them if they have the appropriate app installed. The listings and links are supplemented by an impressive amount of news stories, clips and photo galleries produced by TV Guide’s editorial staff.

The app doesn’t provide personalized recommendations to help sort through the haystack of programs available online; instead, it offers lists of the most popular programs, editors’ picks and selections made by a weekly guest curator. Alas, many of the editors’ picks and the guest curator’s choices are available only to subscribers of HBO or Hulu Plus, or for a fee from the iTunes store.

Where things get really interesting is the Watchlist. This is where users can find the episodes of their favorite programs that are now available online, as well as seeing listings for the time and channel they’ll be broadcast on over the coming two weeks (with the option of checking in, setting an alert or, if you’re a Comcast subscriber, instructing your DVR to record the show). The Watchlist will also indicate when the programs are available from Netflix on DVD.

Tanner said the Watchlist will become smarter over time, offering recommendations and TV Guide-produced content related to the programs chosen by the user. The Watchlist will be the foundation for a highly personalized guide, she said, one that maps the massive amount of data aggregated by TV Guide to each user’s preferences and profile.

But it’s a work in progress at this point. The company is still integrating online video sites and services into the app; Tanner said the app has eight at this point, compared with 120 on TV Guide’s website. Some of the sites, such as Fox.com, rely on Adobe’s Flash technology, which Apple doesn’t support. Others, such as Netflix and Amazon, present other challenges that haven’t been surmounted yet.

GetGlue, by contrast, offers no grid on its new iPad app (iPhone and Android versions coming later). Instead, it starts with its version of TV Guide’s Watchlist, which it calls the Guide, displaying the shows the user has identified as favorites. Picking those favorites involves either searching for shows by name or combing through lists generated, opaquely, by GetGlue. It’s cumbersome at first, but once you’ve picked a few, GetGlue’s suggestions help fill out the listings.

The Guide takes the form of a scrollable calendar, with shows currently airing listed first, followed by shows broadcast later in the day, then new shows from your favorites airing tomorrow. Scrolling further brings up recommendations for new movies in theaters, listings for new shows in the coming week, then noteworthy events in the future -- for example, the season premiere of a favorite show or the theatrical debut of a new film you might like. Each listing comes with a description and links for checking in and adding or removing the title from your favorites, as well as thumbnail images of the GetGlue members you’re following (typically, your Facebook friends who are also GetGlue users, plus anyone else you choose) who like that program. Movies in theaters are accompanied by a link to the online ticketing site Fandango.

Users can go from the Guide to an Explore screen for TV, movies or sports. Here’s where users can find programs that are available on demand as well as the rest of the programs on TV, displayed in one long column in chronological order. They can also set reminders to watch programs airing later. Users can also pick favorite teams and leagues as they scroll through the sports listings, which causes any relevant telecasts to be included in the Guide.
A third way to browse through programs is the GetGlue Feed, which provides clips, comments, check-ins, tweets and the like gathered from GetGlue, YouTube and social networks. It’s personalized -- you’ll only see content related to shows you have an affinity for and the shows a friend has checked into. Clicking on the “Trending� tab calls up feeds for each of the 20 shows attracting the most check-ins by GetGlue users. You can also call up a feed for any show from the Guide or the Explore listings.

Alex Iskold, GetGlue’s chief executive, sees his app as both a better program guide -- “the first truly social guide,� he called it, because you can see which programs are attracting your friends -- and a TV companion, delivering content curated by one’s friends to an iPad while you watch a show on a bigger screen. With 3 million users and more than 500 million pieces of feedback on programs, GetGlue is “in a pretty unique place to re-imagine how people discover content,� Iskold said in a recent interview.

His app is a work in progress too -- although it integrates Netflix’s video streams, it offers too few other sources of online video at this point. The version I installed crashed often as raced through the Explore and Feed pages. I frequently found myself unable to navigate out of a content dead-end, forcing me to quit and restart the app. And the app isn’t nearly as rich in program-related news and clips as TV Guide’s. But GetGlue does a much better job with personalized recommendations than TV Guide’s app, and I like the calendar motif, the ability to follow specific teams and the integration of theatrical movies into the calendar.

The apps have plenty of competition -- most notably from Clicker and Fanhattan, both of which focus on online programming rather than broadcast and cable networks. But Tanner contends that TV Guide is far ahead of the field in the only metric that really matters: generating advertising dollars.

“We have 25 million unique users on our website. We’ve had six consecutive years of double-digit growth.... We’re profitable,� she said, adding that the “social TV sponsorships� the company sells to advertisers have alone added “several million dollars� to the company’s bottom line.

“We’re probably the only company making money on social TV,� Tanner said. “We don’t do anything that doesn’t have a business model behind it.�

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Healey writes editorials for The Times. Follow him on Twitter @jcahealey