Anything good on tonight?

Posted November 28th, 2006 at 10:34 pm by Sal Taylor Kydd, Yahoo! TV

 332 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

Here at Yahoo! TV, dissecting the latest shows consumes much of our day. It’s our passion, and we know we’re not alone. Last night’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Heroes” is the stuff of many a water cooler chat among coworkers across the country. After all, you just know Meredith is making the wrong choice, right?! And you can’t resist the urge to share!

That’s why the all-new Yahoo! TV, unveiled tonight, places a much bigger emphasis on community and letting you have your say about what’s worth getting addicted to. Bring on the social media!

There’s something so powerful about unleashing your inner Ebert and posting ratings and reviews for all to read. Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Movies, and similar products have all had tremendous success engaging their respective communities so thousands of people can weigh in on this movie or that song.

In the new Yahoo! TV, you’ll get a chance to rate any show or individual episode (new or in re-run) as well as write your own review. We’ve also teamed with Television Without Pity to integrate their fan forums for popular shows, so you can debate to your heart’s content which season of “Desperate Housewives” had the best hairstyles.

In addition to our new community focus, we offer personalization through My TV, which lets you customize your local listings and access them through a handy mini-grid on every page. You can also easily find out when to tune in to a specific show or episode by hitting “When Is It On?.” We’ve added recommendations to help you discover shows you might have missed and made new content much easier to find, including photo galleries and video clips for your favorite shows, episode previews and snarky recaps, celebrity news and gossip, plus an all new actor database. All so you can make the most of your time in front of the boob tube.

Yahoo! TV has come a long way — but this is really just the beginning. Go have a look around and get your opinions on. We’re counting on you!

Sal Taylor Kydd
Director of Product Management, Yahoo! TV

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332 Comments Add your own

Ken Hirsch | November 29th, 2006 at 7:37 am

Urgh. Yahoo TV listings was the only page on Yahoo that I regularly visited. Now it’s too slow. I tried using FlashBlock, which helped a bit, but it’s still slow and sometimes the info doesn’t load at all. I avoided using FlashBlock before because I thought you guys actually deserved the ad revenue, but now…

The “Favorite Channels” feature is (was) great. A long time ago (circa 2001) I created my own version of this using ActivePerl to edit what I wanted from the old Yahoo TV listings–today I’d do it in GreaseMonkey, of course. It was great when Yahoo implemented this so I didn’t have to. Now it sucks. I haven’t visited tvguide.com in years, but today you have forced me to. I see that they now have a favorite channels feature, too, and their listings load much faster.

I’ll check back with Yahoo TV in a month or so to see if things have improved.

(I’m not a regular reader of this blog. Actually, I didn’t even know it existed. I followed a long from Dave Winer, who also hates the changes.)

Tim | November 29th, 2006 at 8:03 am

I’ve been a Yahoo! fan for a while, and I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but there are several things here that I do not find to be improvements.

The listings page took a huge step backwards. The Flash on it is very slow. When I click on any show, I get nothing but a green box showing up underneath. And, all my links to TV listings by genre are now dead. I can’t even show listings only by genre anymore (sports, movies, etc.).

At least you could redirect tv.yahoo.com/grid to tv.yahoo.com/listings instead of giving an error page. No more ratings page? Who would have thought MSN or AOL (!) would be the only major portals with a good TV listings page now?

Tim
10,769 days

Debra McNeill | November 29th, 2006 at 10:21 am

You’re trying to do to much with the expanded information on the TV search level. There’s too much of the wrong information. I just want to know when the next episode is being aired, a summary of the episode and the original airdate (so I can skip the reruns).

I was search for the next episode of NCIS. YIKES! Loads of information (TMI!!) but it doesn’t tell me the DATE of the next show. Not Monday, Tuesday, Sunday, but a simple MM/DD/YY or December 5.

This is simple stuff. Don’t make it so complicated, or I’ll wade through all the junk on http://www.tvguide.com.

Otherwise, I love Yahoo! Use it all the time.

Eric Artman | November 29th, 2006 at 11:46 am

I can’t believe that you are now forcing an inconvenient signin to view localized listings! What a cheap, worthless stunt! You had a near-optimal experience lined up before, where apparently cookies kept track of where a user was and what their TV service was.

You’ve blown it now, idiots. Continue to force a signon for this and Yahoo! will lose not only my eyeballs on the listings page (there are several free and convenient alternatives, you know) but you will also see me reset my home page away from where it’s been for 5 years. I haven’t liked the way you’ve progressively cluttered the Yahoo! home page, but I’ve put up with it.

Not any more. Drop the signin requirement for localized listings, or I’m gone from Yahoo!, both listings and homepage!

Eric Artman

Sal Taylor Kydd | November 29th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

Hi folks, Sal here. Firstly I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for your feedback - we welcome it all both good and bad. I’ve been with Yahoo! Entertainment for over four years working with sites that have a great following but were nonetheless running on painfully archaic back end systems. The redesign you see here is the product of many months of work and was a huge endeavor for our team. We know it’s not perfect and we hear your concerns loud and clear, but we did feel it was important to get the site out there as a beta, get our users feedback - and continue to improve and iterate. This is only the beginning and we’re dedicated to creating the best experience for our users – so please bear with us and help us make it great. Today I’m actively communicating your feedback to our engineering, as well as our UED and product teams - today we’re looking at the performance issues – as well as getting that redirect fixed. Regarding the comments on search and sign in – they are well taken also – we’ll continue to strive to create the best user experience we can deliver. So bear with us – and keep the suggestions coming! Cheers, Sal.

Kiran Max Weber | November 29th, 2006 at 2:35 pm

Doesn’t work in Safari.

Brinke Guthrie | November 29th, 2006 at 4:17 pm

tried to display favorites—-all i get is a white page. toolbar with ‘tv listings’ points to a page not found. not ready for, so to speak, prime time.

chip | November 29th, 2006 at 4:42 pm

After trying to figure out your new tv site, I now know why your stock is falling and Google is beating you…………. Wont be using your tv site anymore, that is for sure…………

George P. | November 29th, 2006 at 5:10 pm

I can’t understand why so many of you are complaining. I never really used the old version, but I just took a run through the new version and it seems great. The TV listings and videos are impressive and I love how the pulse tells me whats good. Agreed the flash is having some issues, but hell stuff like that happens when your launching a new product. I have a feeling some of the comments above are fuelled by short term interest in the performance of the stock — leave that garbage for the stock forums.

piltok | November 29th, 2006 at 6:37 pm

Sal, when i create scenarios when playing age of empires. I plan everything with utmost care and feel the game would go exactly how i have planned but 3 minutes into the game i am sad, confused coz things are going out of control. Now i re-plan, use the resources at hand and still win the game. Thats how it is for god and people like you who have to create things.
I had suggestions but i know how tough it is to code, design and present products. Sal, evolution is fundamental in nature and i am happy for the change at Yahoo! TV.

Brett Peters | November 29th, 2006 at 7:53 pm

Sal,

While I can appreciate that your team spent a lot of time on this design and that working with an archaic back end can be painful, this is a serious blunder with the users.

Why did you try to fix something that wasn’t, to our minds, broken? Worse yet, why did you break it in the process?

You could have, at least, maintained two versions of the tv.yahoo.com site and shipped your beta in parallel. The mail team did it, and worked out many of the kinks of their new version in so doing. You didn’t, and now you’re left with a buggy site that’s driving your users away not only from tv.yahoo.com but Yahoo! itself in droves.

Buggy? Yes, buggy. Performance problems with the AJAX modules. Overly dependent upon Flash. I can’t get it to work at all in Safari, and Gecko-browsers like Firefox and Camino are still not displaying the personalized listings. How did this make it past QA?

Please, please, please, listen to your users and bring back the old site.

Otherwise, I fear you won’t have any users left.

Cheers,
Brett

Kel | November 29th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

The new Yahoo TV listings suck. Please give us the old one back while you continue to work on this “beta” (hopefully forever). You took something simple, clean, fast and informative and replaced it with a bloated, sluggish, unfriendly mess. Looks like you’ve come up with all kinds of “cross-promotional” crap that is designed to please your advertisers and not your users. It’s not fair to spring this mess on us without giving us the old interface until you clean it up.

What stinks:
I like to type in the exact time as previously and not just scroll through 3 hour blocks. Just moving up and down a page causes a incredibly slow refresh now. Logging in every time stinks. It takes a detective to find the link for listings you stuck at the bottom of the main TV page. Information like original air dates and whether something is a “rerun” is not easily found and often missing. Too many graphics.

Also, you claim to want feedback but there is no link on the TV page or anywhere else for that matter. I found this blog by going to ‘company info’ on the main page and luckily this is a current topic.

Chrevnir | November 30th, 2006 at 9:44 am

These new listings are a nightmare. The page is way too slow (I have been waiting 5 minutes to get just my favorite channels to pop, they have yet to finish), much harder to read, and has rendered the functionality completely useless of what until now has been a clean, efficient and highly useful page. Please let me have a choice of resetting to the classic layout. I LIKE this page and use it everyday. If I am not able to go back to the old format, I will be going to another provider.

Also, I had to search to find this place to provide feedback, it took me 20 minutes of hard searching to find any place where I could share my horror at the travesty done to the TV listings. Please provide a link on the page when you make such draconian changes with no warning. It would lessen the blood pressure of your customers greatly.

Rebecca | November 30th, 2006 at 11:53 am

I really like the old TV schedule that I set up on my home page at my.yahoo.com. Now even though the listing stays it doesn’t show all the programs for the time frame and I have to click edit to go to your TV Guide pages which aren’t set up the way I want, take too long to load and are so large I can only see a few at a time. Am I missing something? Is there a way to display what I want on my homepage?
Thank you

robotslave | November 30th, 2006 at 5:01 pm

I’d like to second all the calls for giving us the option of using the old site while the problems with the Beta are resolved.

I don’t like having to sign in, but I can understand you’ve got reasons for it. I did have an Yahoo! account, so it wasn’t too much trouble, but still an inconvenience.

But signing in was the least of my difficulties.

once I’d signed in and re-set my listings, I discovered that you’ve gone and failed to get my time zone right. I’m on the West Coast; I shouldn’t be seeing listings for 9pm when I check your site at 6pm. My Yahoo! account has a time zone setting of PST. The old site managed to get the right time zone for my local cable and broadcast providers. Why on earth did you launch your beta without functioning time zone code?

And then there’s the problem of selecting the block of time I’m interested in. As others have noted, scrolling through 3-hour blocks is a definite downgrade from the old drop-down box. I usually check prime-time listings early in the evening, and I like to look at those three hours as a single block. There’s no way for me to get that view now, apart from checking at 5 or 2 or some other multiple-of-three offset from 8pm, and then scrolling.

And that’s not even the worst of it.

The very worst problem with the new site is that the stations are not listed in numerical order. What in the name of all that is holy are you people thinking? The listing starts with channel 11 and goes up to 25 in the first block. The second block starts with channel 4, re-lists channel 25, and then goes up to 41. the next block starts with channel 5, re-lists 41, and goes up to… oh, hell, it’s just too painful to keep describing it. And my local PBS station isn’t listed at all.

Slow servers on launch I can understand. Flash I can tolerate, if it’s done well. But wow, you’ve got much bigger problems. You need to fire whoever was responsible for the decision to roll out this broken, seemingly untested product.

The new site isn’t just a little buggy here and there. It’s not even just bad. It’s Waterworld bad, it’s Iraq-occupation bad, it’s ‘62 Mets bad.

I dare you to put feedback forms on the front page and the listings pages, and see what sort of responses you get, instead of hiding your only public-response outlet here in your press-release-reprinting “blog.”

I’ve switched to http://www.zap2it.com for now. I don’t like some aspects of their listings, but at least they’re not forcing me to use a horribly broken alpha release.

jay | November 30th, 2006 at 8:29 pm

yahoo your new tv guid listing format suck. the old one was much better.

Dan | November 30th, 2006 at 8:39 pm

I hate the new Yahoo TV. I just want to be able to find out what is on and when.

Teresa | November 30th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

I would like to suggest to Sal Taylor Kydd that, since there is no way for us betrayed Yahoo! TV Listings users to easily share our grievances regarding the overnight changes to your page, maybe you could put up a Poll area where we could share how we feel about the whole thing!

Thank you for your consideration.

Joe | November 30th, 2006 at 11:31 pm

Got it wrong. Try again!!!!

piltok | December 1st, 2006 at 1:38 am

Yahoo! tough decisions are tougher when delayed. Hey i am happy to see this blog got so many comments, hey it is true controversy creates buzz!

Sal, i re-read your original post and felt bad but for me challenges are opportunities.
Let me compare it to a car which we take for granted and are so used too and lets say i bring in a new car with joystick and which i have to drive sleeping. It would be a shock to everyone. Y! tv is something like a car, its been the same for a long time and users are in their comfort zone. If you want to move a sleepy person from a couch, have a bed ready.
Now you can reach out to people within and outside Yahoo!, this is a good opportunity to study Y! users and Y! workplace. If you wanted anytime to re-plan, re-organize and re-access teams under you, this is a good time.
Sal, remember leaders learn from battles and then win the great war!

Dare Obasanjo | December 1st, 2006 at 8:14 am

Thanks for taking something that worked and turning into a molasses slow version of itself. Who asked you for this?

Joe W. | December 1st, 2006 at 10:06 am

Sorry to pile on, but…

The partial loading of the page is an awful idea. For one, if there’s 80 channels on the page, I don’t want to page down, scanning them all, I want to use my browser’s Find in Page. That doesn’t work now, because the page hasn’t loaded any channels I’m not directly looking at. Also, now instead of waiting for one page to load (less than a second or two) I get to wait a second or two for every screenful.

Sal Taylor Kydd | December 1st, 2006 at 10:22 am

Hi everyone - some updates for you:

* Safari issues have been fixed. There are still some bugs but we have the CSS issues addressed.
* Slow load on listings - this was an unanticipated back-end load issue that our team have been working overtime to fix. You should find it improved today.
* Regarding listings UI concerns - we’re evaluating these right now and working on improvements as a top priority. The listings did go through usability testing and if these concerns had surfaced we would have of course addressed them, but to everyone’s disappointment they didn’t.

Thanks again for all the feedback folks, I understand your frustration, we are responding and working to address your issues asap.

Sal

cman | December 1st, 2006 at 11:19 am

I personal think the site looks great - kudos to you and your team.

Tis far easier to criticize than to actually do.

Erik Schwartz | December 1st, 2006 at 11:28 am

I ran the Yahoo! Entertainment group when Y! TV first launched back in 1998. The design goals for that product were;

1 - Finding what’s on TV now, and finding it fast.

2 - Customizing the experience so that you only see channels you care about.

3 - Building something that we could easily integrate into My Y!

The success of the product was based on how little time you spent there. If you were there you wanted to be watching TV. We were not concerned about being the “be all, end all TV destination”.

You need to focus on solving your users problems. If you do that, everything else will follow. If you fail to do that, nothing else matters.

In the old days if you built fat, slow pages Filo used to come to your cube and tell you to build leaner pages, not so much anymore I guess…

Erik Schwartz | December 1st, 2006 at 12:02 pm

You want a suggestion?

Keep the ajaxy stuff only on the favorite channels grid. Use fast loading tables for the entire grid.

The smaller dataset of favorites will load/render at a reasonable speed with all the ajax enhancements.

Most users only want programming details on stuff they’re likely to watch. They’re most likely to watch things on their favorite channels list.

Just a suggestion from a Y! from long ago…

Charlie Wood | December 1st, 2006 at 1:26 pm

I have to say I’m amazed and dismayed by the tone of these posts. “This sucks!”, “I hate it!”, “Cheap, worthless stunt.” I’m sorry, but would you people talk to the people at Yahoo like this if you met them in person? Of course not.

piltok | December 1st, 2006 at 3:23 pm

Yahoo! I was happy to read about Filo giving suggestions, hope he is helping Y!’s even now. It was nice to read Erik’s post, its nice to see suggestions after feedback.

Sal, I was happy to see product updates from you and i also liked the fact you kept the users updated ever since the original post.
I think the basic constraint while creating a new product is the balance betwen yahoo! user and yahoo! workplace. From user point of view. It is a must to study them, their technology(computers and access) and skillset(computer knowledge) balancing it with yahoo! workplace technology and skillset(how good your employees are at coding). Communication and interaction can solve and create anything, if we have history of people like Filo coming to a developers desk to suggest then what is happening now!

Sal, i totally agree with Charlie, its easy to comment but its also good they do! As i have said before we are living in a time were everything is forgotton quickly and sadly even achievements but the deal is during this period you learn so much and thats the perk! Well this was a tough project and i am glad some one worked on it. I hope to see, a year from today Y! tv being the most popular destination at Yahoo!

Ps Yahoo!: That special page about Aids was good but the location, i dunno!!

Charles | December 1st, 2006 at 3:54 pm

The Yahoo TV listings have become the poster child for everything wrong with Web 2.0. Everything that people loved about the old listings service has been eliminated, what was easy has now become difficult or impossible.

I wrote a lengthy description of my dissatisfaction with the new services on my blog.
http://weblog.ceicher.com/archives/2006/11/yahoo_tv_beta_suicide_by_web_2.html

Perhaps Yahoo should listen to their (previously) happy users and consider that their dislike of the new system is reasonable and correct.

george girton | December 1st, 2006 at 5:47 pm

What happened to the content of the shows? all it shows now is the channels! WE KNOW THE CHANNELS BUT WHAT IS ON THEM? As an infrequent TV user, I used to depend on Yahoo listings. I hope you guys put it back to where it remembers your ZIP code and puts up the right channels. Otherwise, someone else will come along who does it. It was great before, too bad.

Greg Spira | December 1st, 2006 at 5:47 pm

Yahoo was very careful in rolling out its Yahoo mail beta, letting users keep using the old Yahoo Mail while the new version is in beta. Why not do the same thing here.

The bottom line seems to be that Yahoo has traded utility for looks. There has been a huge loss of functionality. It’s not just the listings, but the searches and almost everything else that have reduced utility. It’s as if someone ordered the designers of the new site to make it far less useful. And what does work is slow as molasses.

I don’t think this is fixable, frankly; I think Yahoo needs to start from scratch. I understand that Yahoo wants to build community around the lists. But it should’ve started by keeping the basics and building around them. You don’t build a community by first burning it down.

Brett Peters | December 1st, 2006 at 7:43 pm

Thank you and your team for addressing the CSS issues in Safari and the AJAX page loads, albeit not quickly. (At least now I can see all what all the UI fuss is about.)

I’d like to second Erik’s advice that improving page load speed is paramount. I want to be able to check channels in about 5-10 seconds: Ctrl-Space (launch Quicksilver), “t” “v” enter (launches tv.yahoo.com listings), space, space, space, done. That’s it. This now takes 15 to 20 seconds, not counting the time it takes to get the cursor out of the search button so space works. If you halve the page load speed your UI improvements might stand a fair chance for acceptance.

I would still like to see the old site return. Dare we keep hoping that it could still be made available, or is the backend already dismantled?

(P.S. I don’t know about other people, but I would be absolutely delighted to have users who are this passionate about a product.)

Rich C. | December 2nd, 2006 at 4:49 am

The new Yahoo!TV is terrible. The partial loading of the TV listings is annoying. The layout is vastly inferior to the old version. The program detail is inadequate. There is nothing about the new version that I like. I’ve removed Yahoo!TV from my Favorites, and am now using Zap2It. Their clunky listings are vastly superior to your misguided efforts at improvement. I’ve been a Yahoo! faithful user since the very first day you turned on the lights, but this is disappointing enough to make me dump the whole thing. I hope Google finishes their TV listings page soon. Good luck and goodbye from an old friend.

Quiddity | December 2nd, 2006 at 5:26 am

Sal,

I know new product rollouts are a challenge, and there is excitement about a new release, but I have to agree with many of the commentators here:

It’s way too slow.
Text is a not-very-readable light blue on a white background (and the font seems larger than it has to be - resulting in inefficient use of screen area).
Order of channels is bizarre, and not in a sequence as the user would expect. (appears to be neither ordred by number or name).
“Partitioning’ content into groups of 10, requiring user action to access the subsequent group of 10, is slow and distracting.

And then there is the whole response-time to the active elements (like that blue slider bar at the top). One quickly get into a situation where you have to literally walk away from the computer so that the display ’settles down’ in order that you can confidently make the next user selection.

Steve Cornelius | December 2nd, 2006 at 7:30 am

In the “old” Yahoo! TV listings, I could save a show in my Yahoo! Calendar so I knew when it was on. It appears you’ve removed that feature. Please bring it back!

Pauline Parrott | December 2nd, 2006 at 9:22 am

Yahoo, thanks for working on the problems, but they are not any better, I see great potential when you get the bugs out. I use a lot of beta product and they ALWAYS give the user the choice of going back to the original product, you guys should have gave us the choice of whither we wanted to test your TV BETA product.
1. we still cannot add tv movie listings to our calendar
2. we still cannot view by channel
3. it still takes forever to load
4. we still cannot search the Yahoo Tv Listing database for movies or series, or whatever coming up, the only way to search is to search the WWW and that takes FOREVER
I have used Yahoo TV only for several years but now thanks to the unasked for BETA I am forced to use some inferior product. Whoever is in charge of releasing Yahoo TV Beta to the public should be addressed about releasing it Prematurely

Steve | December 2nd, 2006 at 1:46 pm

You’ve got to be kidding …. this new site is terrible … tv.yahoo.com has been my favoirte source of TV listings for years and now this !!!

I’ve been looking for Terry Siemel’s e-mail address for an hour to register this complaint.

K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) — bring back the “vanilla” option .. and don’t get me wrong … I’m running IE7 under Win XP on a new Thinkpad with plenty of memory and mips.

What a disappointment !! Who is in charge of QA’ing this ….. I’ll stop here.

Roy | December 2nd, 2006 at 2:33 pm

I agree whole heartly with Pauline. Do NOT release Beta to the public with out an option to go back to the old version. This is what you did with your email. I still use the old version because it is faster. The version of yahoo-tv you currently have is completly unacceptable as it is very SLOW and is MISSING most of the valuable content. The person that fored this beta on the general public desires a significant dressing down.

Vaporgator | December 2nd, 2006 at 2:58 pm

Strange, but other than this blog there seems to be no other way to contact Yahoo about user concerns.
Anyway, I really liked the old version of TV Listings much better than the new version. I could go forward a week or so in TV schedules (also backward a few days to see what I had missed). It was usually fast and to the point with no glitter. I don’t need glitter, I only need to see what TV programs are coming on, and what the time will be, and a short description. I also like being able to click once and see the whole day of programs for one channel from My Yahoo. As far as I can tell none of these features are in the new TV Listings. I am in the process of trying to find another source for TV Listings now. If you don’t go back to the old TV Listings, I will be visiting Yahoo much less often in the future.

Alex | December 2nd, 2006 at 4:44 pm

Awful! Slow loading, ugly, bloated, confusing… You really had a jem with the old TV listing page. Won’t be using Yahoo or Yahoo TV listings anymore.

GOVNERCUBE | December 2nd, 2006 at 6:02 pm

I would just like to say that I visted the old version of Yahoo TV listings at least once a day. I was able to see what was on TV at the moment and also the shows I wanted to see at night, with just a couple clicks. Now, I have to muddle through TV news (that I can get on Yahoo news) and wait for the TV Listings box to load. When I try to use the TV Listings box, my IE browser just times out and closes. I am very disappointed in the new format and will not be returning to the Yahoo TV site for my TV listings until the format changes. I hope this will not be the case for long!

Chicago | December 2nd, 2006 at 7:21 pm

The Yahoo TV Beta is terrible. If the TV listings stay as they are, I willl use TitanTV and the listings on my Windows Media Center PC and wont bother with Yahoo TV. If Yahoo want to find out what us users think of the beta, you should allow us to return to the old interface and see what percent of us switch back.

I just checked out Titan TV and I like it. Its a quick loading simple TV listings grid.

Good-bye to Yahoo TV for a while.

blogcruiser | December 2nd, 2006 at 7:34 pm

So far I give the TV listing side of yahoo an awful rating. If it doesn’t change or improve, I will not use the listing anymore. It’s slow loading and doesn’t give the channels just the networks. I have to wait each and every scroll for it load literally. I know change is always difficult and people will complain about change sometimes because it is change. However, my complaints are with usability for me. It is slower and doesn’t provide me with the information I’m looking for. It is a cool look and I’m sure there are some items that I might like but it gets to annoying for me that I’m off to somewhere else for the information before I will look for the plus side. Sorry for the negative response but so far I just don’t like it or see the benefit to the changes.

Blogcruiser

Melissa | December 2nd, 2006 at 7:58 pm

Ugh, the new tv.yahoo.com site is horrendous. I realized that Yahoo was trying to “change the focus” of the site to encourage more discussion, but I don’t see why the old site had to go. Go back to the old site and add a big Yahoo TV Community banner that users can click on to experience this new site.

The TV Listings simply doesn’t work. Maybe it’s my computer, but I’ve tried using Mozilla and I.E., neither of which worked. And even if it did work, I can’t search the listings from the homepage. I have to go to a new page just to do that. I’m switching to Zap2it until this disaster is cleaned up.

Darrin | December 2nd, 2006 at 8:18 pm

Why do you keep changing everything on your site for the worst? Loved the Tv section before..Now it is just a cluttered mess!!!

Joe | December 2nd, 2006 at 10:49 pm

Excellence:
We are committed to winning with integrity. We know leadership is hard won and should never be taken for granted. We aspire to flawless execution and don’t take shortcuts on quality. We seek the best talent and promote its development. We are flexible and learn from our mistakes.

Customer Fixation:
We respect our customers above all else and never forget that they come to us by choice. We share a personal responsibility to maintain our customers’ loyalty and trust. We listen and respond to our customers and seek to exceed their expectations.

You failed miserably with this feeble attempt called YahooTV.

Ryan | December 3rd, 2006 at 12:36 am

Eesh.. tv.yahoo.com was one of last things I was happy to use Yahoo for. This is horrible. Mandatory sign in to simply view listings? Unnecessary, over-the-top Ajax usage? Only can “Web 2.0″ mess up a simple TV listing table.

Something tells me zap2it.com got a rather large spike in users lately. That is until Google develops their own TV listing pages.

Search Engines Web | December 3rd, 2006 at 2:38 am

Tested the site on several systems:

Basically, it is optimized for those with high powered systems a minimum: 512 MB RAM, high high L2 Cache, and 1.5MB bandwidth/

It is probably assumed that only those with state of the art systems and top bandwidth would be more apt to be frequent visitors.

perhaps a link for low bandwidth could be offered

garg | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:01 am

I like it!

Frank | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:16 am

Agreed with all of the above. This new listings site is a major step backward. Too slow, too clunky, bad colorscheme, flash, partial loads…well, it’s all been said above. I’m off to find a new site.

Ernie Oporto | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:18 am

Any chance you guys will ever use .ics or RSS to make this useful? Once upon a time Yahoo stated that they were going to fully work those types of automation technologies into their products to be ahead of the curve. Instead, the idea was dropped almost immediately after the announcement, when work on that awful “new” Yahoo Mail beta was being ramped up.

Instead, please concentrate on getting the flashy Web2.0 garbage out of your product line and going back to a simpler time. As it is, most of the Yahoo line of products is now bordering on being unusable.

Kathy Oliver | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:32 am

Sorry, but i really HATE your new version. LOVED the old one and used it all the time. Imagine my dismay to find this new ‘beta’ which in my opinion is nothing but a lot of busy stuff which i’m not interested in and the grid is as difficult as can be to get the info i want to get to. PLEASE, PLEASE bring our ‘old yahoo’ back. If I can’t find any better tv listings than what you now have to offer, i will be back to buying the hard copy tv guide from the store. thank you.

Runny | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:59 am

As someone who’se working on rolling our a new site this discussion is invaluable to me. I would like to thank Yahoo for making this possible. And the posters for taking their precious time and actually caring.

Mr. Semel obviously does not see the value of being directly in touch with his users, or he’d have a link right on him impressive (I mean it) profile page, and assign someone to listen to users (aka customers). I have a feeling someone on the BOD would be interested in hearing what users think since they have this email listed: CorporateSecretary@yahoo-inc.com.

Just think about this: For every person who posts here there are thousands more that will stop using your product without saying anything.

Gregory Talon | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:32 am

Where is the program, i can’t find it?
You missed the opportunity to improve, you’ve killed the product.

sean | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:07 am

I’m going to echo what robotslave said about time zones. I’ve got my time zone (US Mountain) set correctly in my profile, and I’ve selected a local provider for my listings, and the listings show everything starting two hours later than it should.

Isn’t the point of TV listings to show what’s on and when? You guys have really dropped the ball on the “when” part.

Steve | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:23 am

New TV listing product is absolutely horrible.
Slow to load, horrible layout.
Please go back to the old version!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

kevinc627 | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:47 am

I don’t care about the tv.yahoo.com site. BUT why doesn’t my TV grid on my homepage work anymore. THE only reason I use Yahoo has now been destroyed. 5 or 6 channels work, the rest are totally f@cked up. The are black, and the entire 8-11pm grid is showing 1 show, none of which are 3 hours long. Goodbye Yahoo homepage.

T Basket | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:49 am

It’s funny, Yahoo! has the option to go one of two ways with respect to their web products:

The Google route - quick and fast, people actually want to use the product.

The MS Live route - slow and painful, trying too hard to be ajaxyweb2.0y.

Please make the right choice… Speed is an important part of usability, and you guys are 400 times cooler than MS & the Goog.

Shii | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:59 am

Isn’t going from a final release to a beta technically a step backwards? When Google did this with Google Groups, they put the beta on a separate server for users who wanted to test out the new features, and judging by the names of the servers they will keep it there until the bugs are worked out.

Daring Fireball had a word to say about “betas”:

http://daringfireball.net/2006/11/beta_excuse

I appreciate that the new Yahoo TV listings are very pretty and have a lot of gradients and AJAX but not much else. You sacrificed backwards compatibility… for what? I don’t get it, honestly. You could implement those community features without the scrolly bar.

ArmIndex | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:06 am

I am unsuccessful in getting the TV schedules to show the correct times. I have edited my Yahoo account for the correct time zone(EST), but they show up at the wrong time on the TV Listings page. Please instruct.

Ed | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:38 am

Even though I have configured my source (RCN - Boston) and chosen my favorite channels, YahooTV! does not display the correct choices for channels even though the correct ones are checked. For instance 4 should be WBZ not MTV and 5 chould be WCVB not BET as displayed. It is a mess and now worthless to me.

Scott | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:35 am

Sal, thank you for posting and listening to a hoard of people who actually use(d) the product.

As a ‘typical’ end user, most of what I’d like to complain about will just be redundant now. The 3 major points I will repeat are the following:

1. Without the ability to save a show in Yahoo!’s own Calendar, the new site is worthless.

2. Without the advanced search function that worked beautifully until last month, the new site is worthless.

3. Please, please listen to all the replies that ask for an option, especially while you’re in Beta, to view the old pages.

Taking away features is not a step forward. The reply I received when emailing ‘Yahoo! TV Help’ was “the new site is more fun!” I don’t think so.

Ricardo Barrera | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:42 am

Social, smocial. I don’t watch Gray’s Anatomy and I don’t care if the rest of the world does. My TV viewing is minimal, private, and selective. Give me a listing page which honors those parameters.

Matt Burris | December 3rd, 2006 at 12:09 pm

I find it very hard to believe the Yahoo TV listings went through usability testing. Who were these people, your everyday average joe who may use this service? If so, then all of this could’ve been avoided if an actual UI expert was consulted, and within a few seconds red flags would’ve been raised by this expert about the new Yahoo TV “beta” site. That’s just sloppy management.

Slapping on a beta label to a site does not mean you can get away with bad web design decisions. Whoever organized the focus testing for this service fell way short of their job.

I’m all for using the latest technologies and conventions to make a website better. But it has to be done in a smart manner, especially when you’re dealing with AJAX. I applaud Yahoo for wanting to keep up with the competition, but they pushed all the wrong buttons on this one. I also think it’s great they’re addressing the complaints publicly, but I also think they’re going about it all wrong.

From the comments, it looks like you’re trying to salvage the mess by sprucing it up. That’s just polishing a turd, there’s nothing good about the current listings service implementation. Yahoo needs to go back to the drawing board, and create an efficient, slick, design and UI that makes it easy for the users to enjoy. Make it work good first, then dress it up and make it look snazzy, not the other way around.

Jim Howard | December 3rd, 2006 at 12:57 pm

This is major suckage! Why did you break my bookmark?!??

Ajax is really kewl, but the old fashioned no-login plain old html worked really well.

You’ve a solved a problem nobody had.

Fire everyone connected with the redesign and go back to the old tv.yahoo.com .

Clearly you are overstaffed if you have people with nothing better to do than break things.

JohnB | December 3rd, 2006 at 1:01 pm

Your TV Page re-design is a great example of fixing something that wasnt broken. The new design is slow, less flexible, and you have deleted several features that made the page very useful in the past; namely:
1. Used to be able to see future airings of a show, so you could tivo it or ….
2. when viewing sports, for example football games, you used to show other similar games as well
3. the date of a movie has been deleted
4. different shading for sports and movies was helpful, now it’s gone.

In addiiton, I agree with many of the previous poster comments, ie too slow, cant view a specific time window, etc, etc, etc

Please change it back. I see NOTHING of incemental value in the new design. You need to backup and ‘un-beta’ this release

Frankly I will switch to some other listings because of this incredibly poor design.

rchoi21 | December 3rd, 2006 at 1:07 pm

I like how I click on the “Select a provide to choose your favorite channels” and it takes me to a blank page.

You guys are right. I *shouldn’t be wasting my time with TV. I keep forgetting.

Klark | December 3rd, 2006 at 1:13 pm

Man, the new version sucks.

Impossible to find anything.

dasspunk | December 3rd, 2006 at 1:22 pm

Thank you Yahoo. If you hadn’t screwed up your tv site this bad, I may not have found http://meevee.com for some time. I shant be back.

karen | December 3rd, 2006 at 1:59 pm

I appreciate the effort to continue to improve Yahoo! However, the new page format is less user-friendly — the old version of my favorite listings page worked well and I visited whenever I wanted to see what’s on TV. The new listings pages don’t display so well in Opera (my default browser), and I’d love if if Yahoo were to enable both the old version of the favorite listings page, as well as the new version. Until then, I guess I’ll need to find another site to reference.

Thanks for listening.

Eric Artman | December 3rd, 2006 at 2:05 pm

Vaporgator–there’s a reason there is no other way to contact Yahoo!–they want to limit the negative feedback! I wonder what level of negative feedback it takes for these poopheads to realize that their “months of work” is all WORTHLESS and COUNTERPRODUCTIVE? I’m sure that all the little worker bees are trying to figure out how to pitch the dropoff in hits as a “success” to management. More importantly, the apparent total failure of upper management to realize that a major screwup has happened causes me to doubt Yahoo!’s long term viability against its competitors. You can bet Google would never let some workgroup screw up one of their popular features and have it stick around in a screwed up fashion this long! Frankly, we’re past the point where the “team” could “pull back” and “rework” for a while–they’re committed, no matter how terrible their product is. Time for management to step in, fire the “team”, and go back to what worked!

S Canfield | December 3rd, 2006 at 3:13 pm

So far, I’m not very impressed with the changes. Too s-l-o-w… And I’m not crazy about having to sign in. Did your user testing really show that people preferred having to log in?

I much preferred the old simple grid layout. I’m not sure how the new version can be considered an improvement. Sal- do you think it’s better? If so, please clue me in. What am I missing? How is it better.

Since this is beta, I guess these sins can be forgiven. What I think is harder to forgive is the premature removal of the old non-beta site. Unlike some of your competitors, you actually *had* a non-beta product. Then you got rid of it. *sigh*

Also, it was way too difficult to find a place to complain. During the beta period, why not put a link to a place to comment right on your front page?

sc

Scott | December 3rd, 2006 at 4:00 pm

Like others, I’m also looking for a new TV grid on the web. I like a variety of features, but honestly, the site is worthless if you can’t easily find what is on and when it is on.

Teresa | December 3rd, 2006 at 4:19 pm

PLEASE GIVE US THE OPTION TO USE THE PREVIOUS VERSION OF Yahoo! TV Listings!

The withdrawl I have been forced to go through is quite unfair, and I do not understand why this change was forced upon us.

Q: Why did you decide to take away all of the features that made your site superior to any of the other TV Listings sites available?

Tim | December 3rd, 2006 at 4:54 pm

Nearly as soon as I saw the new Yahoo! TV Listings page, I started looking for an alternative. (See second comment above.)

A search for “TV Listings” on all the major engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN) did not immediately turn up a good alternative, or anything close to as good as what Yahoo! has now jettisoned.

MSN was the next closest thing, so I moved the links I had here to MSN:
http://classicconcierge.com/tv

However, I just remembered that Ask.com has a property called MyWay that has an excellent TV listings page:

http://tv.myway.com/grid.jsp

On second look, this TV listings page is even better than what Yahoo! TV had before!

So, now I’ve moved my links to MyWay. TV listings are once again happy on the Web thanks to Ask.

Tim
10,773 days

sjk | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:03 pm

Before the recent changes YTV was one of my favorite TV listing sites that I’d semi-regularly visit. Not anymore, primarily because now:

• it reliably crashes Safari (one of the few sites that does), as of Dec 2nd
• it requires login to access local cable provider listings
• it’s sloth-sluggish compared to the old site
• it’s an example of gratuitous use of technology with no added value (for me) over the previous grid/search version

Whoever the changes are intended for definitely excludes me.

Mike | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:12 pm

I started using MeeVee because of the new Yahoo changes. I would return to Yahoo if it reverted to the previous version of the site.

William | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:15 pm

Well I’m going to say something different from the above comments, it is this, Great Work guys! I really like the site I can get to what I want easily, I now watch TV shows I would never watch before, because of Yahoo! TV listings. The My TV is great and TIVO online scheduling is amazing!

I also like the design of the website very sleek and sexy.

Good work guys and gals, keep it up!

Kevin | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:16 pm

The change forced me to find another site, just so I could show people what yahoo tv used to look like:

http://tvlistings5.zap2it.com/tvlistings/GridAction.do

Pretty close.

Chris ZS | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:18 pm

The new TV listings are absolutely terrible. The load takes forever, but the real problems are much subtler. If TV shows start before the view you’re on you can’t see what’s the name is. The view can only be on predefined 3-hour blocks so heaven help you if you check at 3:10 and half the TV shows start before 3. You have to switch to the previous 3-hour block and then switch back to see the shows that start at 3. It’s ridiculous. Much better would be a continuous or 1-hour blocked timeline instead of one broken up into 3-hour blocks so that when you open it up it shows the hour before and the hour after the exact hour it is now. Also it would be much better if shows start before the beginning of your view there’s some indication of what they are without scrolling back in time. Fix this and the load times and maybe you’ll get me and my ad clicks back.

Tom C | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:22 pm

I thought I was the only one upset about this, until I found this page. I agree with almost everything said above.

TheKing | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm

The amount of negative feedback is overwhelming. Did you even do any user interface testing whatsoever? The majority of people hate, and I mean hate, your new and improved web site. How this was not able to be discovered during your internal testing is just plain pathetic. What are you guys doing. People want results and they want them the fastest possible way. By bogging them down with flash and partial information page loads is just bizarre and makes me question the competence of the person leading the makeover of the new site.

You have dropped the ball, yet again. How many times must you drop the ball before someone actually does something to prevent fumbles after fumbles. Stop smoking the Web 2.0 weed and learn proper user interface design.

You should be ashamed.

TheKing | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:36 pm

Yahoo has a penchant for ruining things so this is no surprise. Look at what they did to Meedio. They totally ruined that also. Congratulations, Yahoo. Everything you touch is driven into the ground.

colin g | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:38 pm

Not a fan of the new site.

Listings, the biggest reason I visit tv.yahoo.com, is way down on the second page of my screen like it was just another ad. The page is so cluttered with active content, it regularly locks up Firefox for several seconds.

On the actual listings page, the scrollbar reacts choppy and only allows movement in whole grid page, or 3 hour increments. It should react smooth, allow at least 1 hour move increments, and pop a text box up showing the time range it will move to when the mouse button is released from the scrollbar.

Finally as others have pointed out, it loads slowly and only when you page down. It is a neat idea of the grid loading incrementally from top to bottom. But it should continue to load the grid even before you try to move down, so it will seem almost instantaneous.

jmchez | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:39 pm

I see that I’m not the only one that has stopped visiting the Yahoo TV page. It was so easy to check the lates TV listings before. Now It took me a whole 5 or 6 minutes to find the link at the bottom, then the listings wouldn’t load and when they did the scroll so badly I gave up.

This reminds of Polaris software and their Packrat PIM. They had like 50 or 60% of the market some ten years back, and then they decided to release version 4. On paper it sounded great but it had so many bugs that even a little product like Outlook 1.0 beta them. The rest is history, as they say.

Robert | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:48 pm

I have already stopped using yahoo tv, and switched. Yahoo needs to get their act together or they won’t have anything good left

John | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:49 pm

This new version is really bad, if you guys keep it you’ll probably lose a good amount of the existing userbase.

Did this spur from a move to copy microsoft (msn)? The layout/colors look very similar to theirs.

Can you maybe add a dns redirect like tvy.yahoo.com or tvo.yahoo.com to the old design? (Or maybe move this new design to yahoo.com/tv)?

J Klein | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:57 pm

It would be nice to have the option to use my old TV listings page. I’ve found the new one unusable, I don’t use it. I miss the sports specific coloring for easy identification. Somehow my HBO channel listing got dropped from my favorites. What happened?

Steve | December 3rd, 2006 at 5:59 pm

This was my first time trying to use Yahoo TV and unfortunately it will be my last. I’ve used zap2it in the past for a Beyond TV PVR and found the listings ok, but found true love with http://www.titantv.com. Fast, simple, straightforward. I find what I want without all of the gradients, slow-loading flash, confusing flow, forced logins, and general disarray. I would recommend that you follow their example. From a human factors standpoint, the current iteration of Yahoo TV is unusable. Sorry Yahoo, but I’ll stick with TitanTV.

Matt | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:06 pm

I would also like to comment that I hate the fact that all the grid isn’t shown at the same time. Load the grid quickly and I can scroll down thru 250+ channels. Now, you have to wait while each group of 10-20 channels is loaded. Takes too long to see what is on. And I don’t like the new search results. Just search the listings, not everything else please!

Please bring back the old site.

analogking | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:07 pm

New site sucks. Why does yahoo keep changing their site? Everything was perfect a year or two ago.

I made my first trip to TVguide.com today. Their linup is a bit bloated too, but much better than this.

I’ll just open SnapStream from here on out.

Bill | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:08 pm

99.9% of the time, I went to tv.yahoo.com solely to look at the prime time TV grid. Now it is squashed into a too-small space that I have to scroll to get to, and it is slow. Even worse, I have to click twice just to find out whether or not the TV show is a rerun. The first click gets me a one-sentence summary of the show (nothing else of interest on the whole page), then I click on “Full Episode Info” to find the original air date. If you really want to improve tv.yahoo.com, bring back the old page and add “rerun” next to shows that are reruns — that would make it a lot more useful than this glitzy garbage.

M Schade | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:14 pm

I’m sure it hurts your the Y! teams egos to get so dissed on this product, but these users are absolutely right - FUBAR. The constructive (and negative) feedback is a lesson learned.

Relax people- I know your pissed, but things will get fixed.

Thank you Y! TV for enabling feedback. You know what you gotta do from here on out…

Thank you for many years of an excellent past product…I hope we can get the best of both worlds back on the table…

victor | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:28 pm

As a long-time Yahoo user, I’m disappointed to see the Beta REPLACE the old version. You’ve done great work with most of your Beta offerings (mail, maps, myweb search, …), but haven’t replaced the old versions. This one is too slow and cumbersome.

If it’s 8 PM, I get a listing from 6 - 8.59 PM. When I move it forward, I get 9 - 11.59 PM. At 8 PM, I expect most people would want to see listings for 8 - 10.59 PM, but that doesn’t seem possible. If it is possible, I haven’t found that option.

Furthermore, if a show started before the start time of the listing, the title’s not listed. So again assuming I’m looking at the listing at 8 PM and I switch to the 9 - 11.59 PM view, I have to remember what had started before 9 PM or click on the blank box to get a description of the show with !!! No Title !!! and then try to guess what it was.

Finally, although AJAX works well for mail, it works less well in this context. In mail, I sort messages into the order I will read them. With channels, I often look for a couple at the top, some in the middle, and a few at the bottom. Doing so takes too long. I can limit the channels displayed by selecting favorites, but that doesn’t help. I want to see a select few first…my “favorite” favorites. This Beta doesn’t give me that option; at least not unless I see that horizontal, blue, barbershop icon enough times to dislike the changes.

I like some of the new features, like the drop down descriptions. But these features aren’t worth the lost conveniences.

modred | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:33 pm

Sort by channel number - at least for over the air listings.

Dan | December 3rd, 2006 at 6:45 pm

It appears that some new team took over the old yahoo tv site. I go to the tv site to see a classical tv guide style listing, not some flash/ajax @#$@#. Give me the old site back quick, before I get hooked on an alternative.

Shelly | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:00 pm

I have to agree with the other users. One look at the new design and I promptly headed over to tvguide.com I definitely preferred the old version more!

Flamm | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:12 pm

I’ve tried it for three days now and really dislike it. As noted by others, too much work to check something out and it’s not user friendly. It’s hard to tell if a listing is a movie, sports event, or what and the three hour block takes up too much space.

I’m looking for something else to use. This is very disappointing. The previous format was excellent. It didn’t have bells and whistles, but it was quick and easy and hey, let’s be honest, it’s just to check what is on t.v., right? I’m not looking for fun, excitement, flash or dash. If I want to be entertained I’ll watch t.v., assuming I can find when something is on t.v., or I’ll go to an online site that is supposed to be interactive and fun.

Your article asks: “Anything good on tonight?” Using your new t.v. listings, it’s hard to find out!

Blake | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:18 pm

I have to say that I am not *at all* happy with the new changes. In fact, I so much dislike them that I’m moving on to a different site. The display is so awefully slow it is pitiful, and no, there is nothing you are going to do that will speed that AJAX junk up enough that it will be acceptable to me, period. I *LIKED* the way it was before. I *LIKED* the fact that it loaded quickly. I *DON”T NEED* AJAX for TV listings. I *LIKED* being able to go to tv.yahoo.com/grid and having it load up my listings _with only my favorites being shown_. I *DON”T WANT* to have to go to tv.yahoo.com/listings and then click the check box so that it will display my favorites, and I certianly *DON’T WANT* to have to either type in or set a bookmark so that it would remember to go to tv.yahoo.com/listings?showFavorites=true. You’ve taken what was possibly my favorite listings page to go to, one I went to frequently, and you have ruined it. Runied it so bad, that you’ve lost me as a customer.

Jason Schramm | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:18 pm

The nicest and cleanest I have been able to find is from AOL at http://tvlistings.aol.com

Peter B | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:22 pm

As Joe W. mentioned above, I liked to be able to use my browser’s find function to search the page. I have digital cable with the channels going up to the 900s. I generally searched by station name or just by the number.

In the old version, I could use my browser to search, for example, channel 707 by doing Apple-F then “707″, return. Now, I need to scroll down in 10 channels with about 2 seconds of load time in Safari. What before was a great page, is a burden to use. I’ll have to find an alternative.

- Peter

MW | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:23 pm

I can’t figure out to get the listing grid to display 8pm - 11pm. It only shows 6pm - 8pm or 9pm - 11pm — I want to just see the 2 hour 8pm - 10pm primetime block.

Also I’m getting a Flash security error:

javascript.parent.YAHOO.ads.darla.__getTemplateForJsUrl(”SKY”)

is trying to communicate with this Internet-enabled location:

us.a2.yimg.com

Robert | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:28 pm

but we did feel it was important to get the site out there as a beta, get our users feedback

Sal:

Why is this important? I’ve been invited to participate in beta programs before, but the key word is “invited.”

This is only the beginning and we’re dedicated to creating the best experience for our users – so please bear with us and help us make it great.

Again, why? There’s no need to “bear with you.” I’ve been with you for years, not out of loyalty, but because you’ve met my needs. Now I’m using TV Guide.

Before you made the change, Yahoo TV was better than TV Guide. Now TV Guide is better, at least for me.

While I won’t be back, consider this improvement:

I used to use Yahoo TV and right click a few listings to evaluate later. You’ve eliminated that.

Rich | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:29 pm

About three years ago, I was using a great tv listing web site called Gist TV. This site would allow users to save upcoming shows to a calendar but would also let user save specific shows or episodes. Wwhen that specific show or episode was rebroadcast, it would auotmatically go to your calendar. Unforunately that site went offline. Since then, I have been stuck using Yahoo TV, as it was the best alternative. But that was three years ago and this is now. In my opinion Yahoo TV is no longer around. This new version is a bloated People Magazine, E Channel, and TV Guide channel all wrapped in one. It is pure bloat. For example, I can no longer save a show to my calendar.

I am lokoing for alternatives and started using Zap2it. Its better but not the best.

Google - if you are listening, here is a need that would further your portfolio. Sorry Yahoo but I am done with you guys.

mack | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:33 pm

Man what’s with all these nerds? zOMG TEH PAGE 1Z BROK3N. I LIKE OLD UGLY LOOKING WEBPaGEZ. Just shut up and get a computer better than a pentium 2 and stop using some stupid program like linux.

Anyways, WOW, the new page looks awesome and it works flawlessly. Good job.

eric | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:35 pm

yahoo tv listings was one of the few yahoo pages i still used (i still like yahoo sports) but i’m going to have to find something else.

who makes the decision to turn these things live? my god, the new tv listings are terrible. the old one was not fancy…and by all means go ahead and have an intern or two spruce it up, but the new tv listing page is an abomination. it’s like someone looked at the old one and said, “yeah it works, but it’s just not ajax’ey enough”.

most of the time it doesn’t even load, even on broadband…and when it does it’s slow, doesn’t seem to know my local time and toggling through multiple times is just too much to bare.

Carl | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:47 pm

You TRUELY missed the mark with this new product. I’m sad to say that I’ll go elsewhere to look up my tv listings from here on. So sad.

Perry Kohl | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:50 pm

Great. This was the only site I ever visited on Yahoo in the last three years. Now, there is no reason to visit it either. Its so sad how the mighty Yahoo has fallen.

jane | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:57 pm

this site is more like simple old yahoo: http://www.excite.com/tv/grid.jsp

Perry Kohl | December 3rd, 2006 at 7:57 pm

Thanks to the user who posted the alternate website. It took me just two clicks to get to the listings on that site. Thanks again.

Kyle | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:01 pm

I find it hard to believe that in usability testing many of these issues did not arise, possibly equability’s testing needs to be evaluated as well.

I don’t really care for the main page, but I just have always bookmarked the listing page, so that is not much of a concern for me. I have been using Yahoo TV for a couple years because it was fast, to the point, allowed me to customize my listings, and displayed all on one page, in one load. This new Ajax dynamic 20 at a time loading is irritating to the point of me not using it anymore.

The channels I tend to watch may be 40 channels apart. When I scroll from one to another I must then wait for it to load. Annoying. Also, sometimes the channels in between will never load, requiring a refresh of the entire page, and then the entire process again, being sure not to scroll faster than the AJAX can handle. Irritating.

I expect the first column listed to be what is playing right now. At first I thought your data was wrong when what was reported was not what was playing. But it was 11pm, and the current hour was the third column listed. The shifting 3 hour blocks is a pain as well.

Getting info on a show is also annoying. I support the expandable more info without refreshing the page idea. I can even handle waiting for it to load. What I hate is how the info animates out in an expanding panel. This is the kind of unneeded javascript flashiness that only bogs down firefox on my PC. Float it, or implement some icons to signify things such as new or rerun or etc.

Newspaper listings are a great model for online listings in this case. I want to be able to see as much at once as possible, without waiting, and without interacting. For further info like future airings, original airing, description, cast, etc would be great for a details in window pop up or something.

But I fear you have concentrated too much on this interactivity idea. I really don’t care to read the ratings and reviews of random people. I don’t care to leave them either. I just want my info.

This redesign really feels like it was forced by the advertising management. I understand revenue generation, but when the ads and commercial tie-ins and cross promotions get in the way of the REASON for the site, you have missed the target.

Before I go, let me note a few things I like. The date slider is neat. If it could be fine tuned more to increment by one hour instead of three, that would be great.

I also miss the coloring of different genre’s of programming similar to the on screen guide from my cable co.

Thank you Yahoo for listening, and I hope you can rescue your product and make it better than it was, or at least let us have the option of the old version!

Simon | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:05 pm

K.I.S.S (I hope know what that stands for)

Anyway, please keep layouts simple and uncluttered, as many here have voiced out. Do you know why companies like Apple and Google thrive today? They try to keep things simple. Innovation does not equate bombarding users with unnecessary features. Users come to the tv page tolook up info quickly; flashy and pretty layouts may be refreshing and cool at first, but that feeling wears out quickly, especially if they are not well implemented.
My suggestion is to have those new features but somehow incorporate that in a clean, fast layout that the old tv site used to be. I appreciate your tries at innovation, but don’t forget what has worked in the past.

Tony | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:09 pm

What is with the absurdly narrow TV Listing size?

News flash! Leaders in the industry LEAD by being the bleeding edge, not by playing to the lowest common denominator.

I want to see more than 2 hours worth of listings in a view without having to click the right arrow. Allow customization of the TV Listing applet so people who have purchased computers since 1995 can employ the full capabilities of their systems.

Learn by maps.yahoo.com. They use the whole screen. Why don’t you?

Don’t take advantage of the fact that this is an area Google hasn’t bothered to invade, because rest assured, if they did….it would be a superior solution to this mess you’ve come up with.

SeriouslyPO | December 3rd, 2006 at 8:15 pm

No wonder why Yahoo is not #1. I can’t even find TV Listings on this TV product. How dumb. I’ve switched over to TVGuide.com.

Alex | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:04 pm

I used to use tv.yahoo.com because you loaded so much faster than tvguide.com. I liked that it was simply HTML and not flash or anything else. That is what attracted me to that page. It was bookmarked and I would use it once a day. To my dismay, I clicked my bookmark and was lead to some horribly slow monster, where I had to wait for each “section” to load when I scrolled down. It was simply unusable and I’ve now switched my bookmark to http://tvlistings.aol.com - a great alternative BTW, loads fast and uses ajax for descriptions. Sorry yahoo, but I like my webpages to load fast and be easily accessible, that is why I am a big fan of html only (no flash) webpages. Keep in mind I’m on a T1 connection, so “internet speed” should not be an issue.

Scott | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:31 pm

OK, I’ve read through all of these postings and have come up with (hopefully) a temporary solution.

For those looking for the ability to save shows to a calendar via .ics, use TitanTv.com.

For those looking for advanced search features, the same site is similar, or better to what we wish Yahoo! had kept.

For special searchs, i.e., foreign movies, go to tv-now.com/stars/index.html

Yahoo! had it all and fell on a sword for TiVo $ ?

Jesus Swanswon | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:41 pm

Man here I was assuming that most people used tvguide.com and at first I used it as well, but after stumbling upon tv.yahoo.com I immediately canceled my tvguide subscription and stopped going to tvguide.com because of the difficulty in navigating the site. tv.yahoo.com has been my homepage for the better part of two years up until the recent site design. Until the old layout / site becomes accessible again, then I think tvlistings5.zap2it.com is going to be my new homepage from this point forward or atleast untile tv.yahoo.com becomes bearable. And yahoo will be relegated to my email client, oh wait gmail took that spot already. What is yahoo?… anyone?

Bob Spence | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:49 pm

TV listings once simply worked. Now they are broken. More than half of the lines only show one listing for the entire 3 hour prime time view.

Forget about new stuff and just get the old table to work.

Ernest Millan | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:49 pm

Anyone longing for the previous format and style should probably give EarthLink’s TV Listings a try. It’s clean, fast and simple.

http://tv.earthlink.net/

Regards,

- Ernest

our2cents | December 3rd, 2006 at 9:52 pm

You’ve taken a streamlined system and turned it to junk. It was nice to be able to open several show descriptions at one time in tabs and then click to add to the calendar. Now there isn’t even an option to add reminders to the calendar.

I went looking for a replacement as soon as you did this. I hate to say (as an avid AOL hater), that their tv listings aren’t broken and allow for shows to be easily added to their calendar in comparison to this new junk.

We are so dismayed by the direction yahoo has taken over the last year (taking away options, and not seeming to care about their users), that we may pull several business accounts from you over this kind of garbage.

Norman Miller | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:00 pm

I used to be able to click on the channel name, such as “TOON”, and get a future listing. That doesn’t work any more. It was the one feature I used most often. Fortunately, the Excite TV listing still work that way…

Aaron | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:15 pm

This is just bad. Yahoo! usually makes nice Web 2.0 products, but this is pretty bad.

The worst part is when you scroll down the page and it has to keep loading things… what the hell?

danheskett | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:18 pm

I dare someone working at Yahoo to try to view this site on a machine that is in the 800MHz-1GHz range.

I run a “low-end” PC most of the time, because as a software developer, I am not interested in what a quad-core, high-end, high-performance, 3d graphics card enhanced workstation can do with my code. I am interested in what the largest number of people who I can feasibly serve can do with my code.

I quick look shows that, without graphics or external files the core page is over 180k.

The simple truth is that a “rich media” experience here is not called for. If Yahoo can’t deliver TV listings, reviews, and the odd cutesy poll about who my favorite “Hero” is without this dog slow, bloated, flash-gorged disaster of site I will find someone else who will.

Ben Griebe | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:21 pm

I completely agree with the previous comment posted by SeriouslyPO. I could not find the TV listings, and it too me 15 minutes to confirm my belief that an episode was a re-run — after I found the information on TVGuide.com. Come on guys, simple is better and all the clutter is infuriating when a user just wants basic information.

d | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:22 pm

As a former General Manager of Yahoo! TV, I find the feedback fascinating and can’t resist the urge to throw in my $.02.

First, some positive thoughts for my old friends at Yahoo:

1) People always hate change. I probably rolled out hundreds of new features and changes during my time at Y!, and even the most successful changes had less than 5% of people saying positive things. I consider the ultimate success to be when people don’t even notice anything different at all. So take all this feedback with a grain of salt.

2) I give the Yahoo team huge credit just for making ANY changes to Yahoo! TV. Yahoo has become a big, lumbering, messy place where it can be very, very difficult to get anything done. I spent more than 3 years trying to redesign Yahoo TV (the design hadn’t been updated since 1999), and it’s as if the company was set up specifically to stop change, not encourage it. Recent moves by the company indicate that things have perhaps improved; I hope that is the case.

3) Understand that the folks who did this redesign had many, many inputs - not just consumers, but sales, “site police” who want the functionality on Yahoo! Mail or Autos also work on TV, analysts, research groups, UI police, and so much more. It can be hard to remember the consumer when there are so many competing voices in your ear.

4) Big points for actually listening and engaging with users, as Sal is doing here.

As for my personal opinions on the site, I’d say the following:

1) It seems like Yahoo’s media sites have decided that a news/magazine vibe is more important than focusing on the databases that actually drive most of the usage. The new Y! TV forsakes Listings (now below the fold on the home page) for video snippets and heavily editorial-driven content, which has the markings of Lloyd Braun all over it. Usually, that’s an expensive way to go, as it means big-time headcount to write, schedule and put together all those promotional units, and, funny enough, news stories tend to click far worse than strictly useful “tools” like “Get Your Listings”. I’m a bit surprised to see such important content buried.

2) Speaking of listings, Yahoo seems to be trying to “2.0ize” everything on Yahoo, and perhaps they’ve gone too far. I found the Mail beta very frustrating and ultimately switched back because of one very important issue - it was simply too slow. I’d argue the same thing about the TV Listings. Flashy elements should only be employed when they can actually speed up the user’s quest to find something. Sometimes a love to technology can cause us to overlook basic functionality.

3) I think the editorial units on the home page are, by and large, actually compelling…they seem to have focused on the shows that people care about, and I’m sure their female-skewing demo will continue to push that way with this redesign. I’m glad to see Television Without Pity further integrated…that was always a gem in the rough for Yahoo. I also like the Community integration - rate the episode is long overdue, and it’s nice to see users actually able to review episodes.

4) Since when does basic functionality (i.e. nav bar links to Listings / Soaps / etc) get replaced by subject-based nav items ( Grey’s Anatomy). I know they do tons of research at Yahoo, but I’m surprised that core navigation is now buried under a drop-down.

I’m excited to see Yahoo invest in their media products. I know they’ve hired tons of folks and it seems like there are as many “old media” folks as “new media” folks there these days. In many ways, the issues here are the same as the classic Yahoo / Google / AOL issues…. whereas Google was always very simple, clean and data-driven and AOL was all flash and no substance, Yahoo always straddled this middle ground, offering deep amounts of database-driven content and just a smidgen of editorial. It seems like Yahoo is now heading directly towards AOL and, perhaps more interestingly, at other forms of media (specifically, television). I think this can be great for advertising revenue, but these kinds of sites are MUCH more expensive to produce, and can have a harder time establishing and maintaining loyalty with users when they are more “event-driven”.

It seems that Yahoo is listening to their users, and I look forward to seeing what changes will be forthcoming both here and to the other Media properties.

Peter | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:23 pm

The new site for TV info (tv.yahoo.com) is close to useless in it’s current form. Please provide a link to the old format. I used to use Yahoo TV, now I’m swithing to MSN!

Lectro | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:30 pm

Yahoo TV Listings has gone the way of TVguide.com: Complete Crap! Crap, Crap Crap Crap Crap. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

V1nce | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:54 pm

If this is the work of many months, I don’t want to see the future. Bring back the old, simple, easy loading html grid!!!

Headed to Zap2it.com until Yahoo TV returns to a simplicity and this horror is purged. If ever.

Jake | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:59 pm

I agree with what seems to be the common sentiment–I don’t like the new site. I loved being able to use my.yahoo to access everything from tv listings to news, but cannot do that now, as the tv listings have stopped working. I at first thought this was temporary, but now I am not so sure. Will you be updating my.yahoo also, and if not, let us opt out of this new design, please!

j | December 3rd, 2006 at 11:25 pm

Wow, that’s the worst redesign i’ve seen in quite some time. It went from a slightly slow page to load (nested tables) to beyond slow. and that’s with flashblock installed. I can only imagine it with flash. And it requires that you be logged in making it even more painful.

Please at least bring back the old version.

MS | December 4th, 2006 at 12:35 am

This is a step backward. I went to tv.yahoo.com to see today’s listing; took me a while to find it, and then I have to click another button just to see listing of PRIMETIME shows. Please.. no more click just to see listing for prime time shows.
On the integration w/ my.yahoo.com, it’s quite difficult to see a list of all channels show from my. yahoo.com. You have to click on edit and go thru few steps to see all channels, instead of just one link.

Phil | December 4th, 2006 at 12:47 am

Thank you. This ridiculous redesign led me to a new site I prefer to the previous Yahoo! tv anyway. A few years ago, tvguide.com did sth that drove me away. I never went back. Looks like the same just happened here.

Richard Crawford | December 4th, 2006 at 12:48 am

I’m very disappointed with the tv.yahoo.com redesign; I use Firefox on an older computer running Linux, and I loved the old programming grid, which was easy to navigate, loaded quickly, and gave me the information I needed quickly and painlessly. The new site loads slowly, and is packed full of features that I have no interest in at all. Since the roll out of the new site, I find it is actually easier to go to the programming guide that Dish broadcasts, rather than try to find anything through Yahoo’s new interface.

Please bring back the old interface! Or at least allow the option for those of us whose computers are not able to fully utilize the new features.

Roman | December 4th, 2006 at 2:33 am

Well I think this new Tv is just great.
I can’t believe the amount of bad reviews there are on this blog. I think you guys just can’t accept changes… any changes.
The old Tv was old and ugly. The new one feel young and dynamic.

Thanx for the good work

Nate | December 4th, 2006 at 4:26 am

I’ve had the link for the TV listings on my toolbar since at least April 2000, and found the listings simple and easy, and very easy to change if I need to see the listings for another city.

Now I’ve put a MyWay listings link next to it for the time being because I cannot use your listings in any way, shape, or form, and searching is nowhere to be found on the site, at least without having to dig through menus and menus of crud. I also dislike that original airdates have been taken out of the data, which really helps if you’re watching an under-the-radar show that isn’t advertised as new (or advertised period) and you want to find out that it is a new episode which does does premiere on that day.

And if you’re an actor who lives in bit parts or not in the upper part of the “Starring” credits? You won’t be found, because the new version only has two or three names from the cast of a show or film. This is the most irritating thing because I often do listings searches for my favorite actresses and singers, who are not as well-known to most other people.

Also, I could care less about anything on the TV Guide Channel. I don’t care if it’s in the Gemstar/TV Guide contract that “TVGC must be first in the listings or we don’t give them to you”. For me, it’s on channel 17, not channel 1, on top of everything else. Put it back to it’s natural system assignment. No channel deserves to be put in the spotlight just because their data provider happens to own the listings service.

Pat B | December 4th, 2006 at 8:31 am

I agree with terrible assessment of other posters. The Flash epidemic is a scourge. You need and option for those who won’t allowis on their systems

Drew | December 4th, 2006 at 10:28 am

Count me in amongst those who would love an option to go back to the old interface. I could go into much more detail, but those comments above mine have covered it quite nicely.

Boognish | December 4th, 2006 at 11:13 am

What’s with all the whining? I used the previous listings before, and don’t mind the changes one bit at all. It’s fast, clean and works on firefox/mac! It’s also really nice to be able to scroll through time frames without full page refreshes.

Keep up the great work!

MJ | December 4th, 2006 at 11:25 am

Why did you try to fix what wasn’t broken?

Love the previous site — please bring it back.

Don’t let you tech-egos get in the way and make you force this on users because your team worked so hard and think it’s soooo pretty. If you were going to go here? You should’ve left clear option for users who wanted to continue using the previous Yahoo TV….had you done so I bet this feedback wouldn’t have been so embarassingly brutal.

PLEASE BRING THE OLD SITE BACK - IT GOT THE JOB DONE AND PEOPLE OBVIOUSLY LIKED IT.

webprofessor | December 4th, 2006 at 11:27 am

Absolutely terrible.. the site is nearly unusable now. The log in requirement is what totally stucka fork in it for me. I’m done with that until you roll it back.

Mortimer N. Cobblepop | December 4th, 2006 at 11:34 am

Terrible redesign. If it ain’t broke, don’t ruin it (and you did).

Jeremy Hill | December 4th, 2006 at 11:40 am

I used to use Yahoo’s TV listings daily, now it’s a mess. I took one look at it and googled for another tv listing site.

I ended up going over to tvlistings.aol.com. So if you are as dismayed as I am, folks, it’s time to move on!

Joe | December 4th, 2006 at 11:52 am

I never comment generally on stuff like this.. however, it is difficult not to comment.

1. i realize that engineering probably spend a serious amount of time on this new look, as a result, it’s tough to get critical criticism

2. As with all comments, look into the statistics and data to validate what people are saying here. you will likely see a drop off in people accessing tv.yahoo.com unless something is changed.

3. i have to admit, i’ve been using tv.yahoo.com for ages but the new site is totally unusable. i’ll sadly be using tvguide.com until this is fixed (if ever).. maybe i’ll check back in a few months.

4. What is wrong with it? Slow, slow, and difficult to find the things we want to find. And who wants to log in? especially for something less useful then what was available without loggin in!

i think if you look at the data, you will likely find that a good majority of people use tv.yahoo.com for the listings.
you have just alienated the majority of people who use this site!

I hope you fix this.. otherwise, you’re probably lose most of ur loyal tv.yahoo.com members

Talin | December 4th, 2006 at 12:06 pm

Man I loved the old Yahoo listings but the new site is crap, plane and simple. I, for one, like to know what is going on tv in a timely manner without having to wade through a septic tank worth of adds with a load time of forever and a day. It doesn’t have to look pretty, it just has to work without the frustration but you screwed yourselves on that one. I for one will not use it again until you make a public apology for the butchering of a good source of information and replace it or make major renovations towards a more streamlined and faster loading site.
—Talin

P.S. With all that behind me I must say that your current version is crap for a whole different reason, it wont load all my favorites even tho I double checked to make certain they were checked.

Don | December 4th, 2006 at 12:12 pm

Please bring back the old TV listings. I switched to the TV Guide listings with the Greasemonkey script Cleanup TV Guide Listings.

Alek | December 4th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

Horrid. I go to TV listings because I expect to spend a few seconds finding my shows before leaving to go to my TV. Now I have to spend minutes loading this god-awful site and searching through the horribly sorted channels (is there any pattern?).

Also, with the old TV listings, I was able to save links to the listings of different providers, so I was able to bookmark the listings for my home and my college dorm, and easily view either. Now a provider change requires you to log in. Stop trying to force people to join your site. I already have and still don’t have the functionality I used to have.

I’m off to find a new listings provider.

Mike Gallant | December 4th, 2006 at 2:50 pm

First the good: I think this face-lift is great. It’s a nice design, looks modern, and should be fun to use when the kinks are worked out.

The bad: It seems to have little or no provision for over-the-air digital TV broadcasting. I live in SJ and with nothing more than a cheap, old-fashion UHF antenna, I get 36 channels! All new sets being sold are capable of tuning in these stations, but it’s hard to find out what programming is available. Likewise, it’s hard to find out what stations are available in a given area.

Typically, a station (like Channel 2) will broadcast two different streams, 2.1 and 2.2. Some, like KQED, will broadcast 5 streams, 9.1 thru 9.5. The Y TV site only allows me to see 1 stream from each station - it has no provision for the branches. If you don’t happen to know the stations’ call-sign (KQED, KTEH, KTVU, etc), you’re out of luck.

Another thing that could be improved is to allow users to compile favorite station sets from different sources. As it is, I can set up my “favorites” from only one source. If I have some favorites that are OTA, I have to select “Rabbit Ears (Antenna)”, and then I can select them and save as my favorites. But what if I switch between OTA programming and cable? Many people do, now that DTV is common. I cannot also include cable stations with my OTA stations in my favorites list.

Lastly, in the listing of available stations, when setting up my favorites, the channels are not in order. In the available channels list, the station numbers are presented in random order.

So, that’s my input. Thanks.

Wang Kuo | December 4th, 2006 at 2:55 pm

Bring back the old Yahoo TV! This new “beta” version that was foised on us is HORRIBLE. Not only is it loaded with irrelevant ads (Amazon at the top!?) and is hard to read (light blue, gimme a break!), the search engine is fubar. After trying hard to work with ya for several days, I gave up and switched to ZAP2it.

V1nce | December 4th, 2006 at 3:14 pm

Well we have to thank the webdesign crew at Yahoo!TV for encouraging us all to find other TV listing sites… thanks.

Lori | December 4th, 2006 at 3:47 pm

The new TV listings are horrible now. The way you had it before worked just fine.

I now use TitanTV.

Mary | December 4th, 2006 at 4:27 pm

This redesign is beyond disappointing. I’ve used Yahoo’s grid and advanced listings search function happily for years, but I guess I’ll be seeking elsewhere for this information. Thanks to the posters above for suggesting alternatives. I will check back to see if the site’s speed and functionality has been restored, but this was a very unpleasant surprise.

GB | December 4th, 2006 at 4:44 pm

Need to find a new TV Listings provider- this one is now unusable. I have a pretty fast machine, and DSL to boot, and this thing just stutters, loads..and loads…and loads…..and loads.

It’s the Google effect we need- page. load. now.

Does Google have a TV grid?

PS to the poster that suggested Earthlink- you nee