Anything good on tonight?

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

 333 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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333 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 need to have an account apparantely. Nice idea, tho.

Zone | December 4th, 2006 at 5:00 pm

Useless, bloated, non-functional, and ridiculously flashy; in your haste to get something new up, you’ve blown out a huge chunk of your user base…..

Off to TitanTV…Buh-bye!

Seth | December 4th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

Complainers –

Technology! If you not with it, consider yourself obsolete.

- The Web (2.0)

John | December 4th, 2006 at 9:36 pm

Thanks for the comment Lori. http://www.TitanTV.com is exactly what I want to replace this bungled new version of YahooTV. I love how it does this amazing thing of easily showing you what is on tv without showing all the clutter that this Beta version does now. Reminds me of an old service, oh yeah, the original YahooTV. Thank you Yahoo for making find more and more alternatives to services that I only used on here.

J | December 4th, 2006 at 10:30 pm

The new tv.yahoo.com is unnecessarily difficult to us. I used the old site for years because it quickly delivered the information I wanted. Now it is slow and uninformative. I agree with the numerous comments stating that the beta should not have been rolled out without leaving the original site accessible, and it was way too difficult to find a place to leave a comment. I followed a link from a blog I found via a google search.

I saw several mentions of http://www.zap2it.com in the comments. I just tried it out and it was great. The old tv.yahoo.com interface was a little better, but I’ll stick with zap2it for now because it works.

S Canfield | December 5th, 2006 at 6:56 am

I thought about my earlier command and the comments of others and I’m afraid the tv.yahoo people are just going to write this kvetching off as just a bunch of loud complainers afraid of change. Well, that’s not a bad descrption of me but I can’t speak for anybody else.

I said the service was too slow and I still think it is. But even if the page loaded instantaneously, I still wouldn’t like it. The listings just aren’t very browseable (as in peruse, I don’t mean web browser). I could scan the previous listing more quickly and I don’t think it’s just because I had become accustomed to them. The way you implemented scrolling, I have a hard time tracking where I was from one page to the next. Perhaps if you had a draggable scroller a la google maps I would be happier. Plus it seems silly not to use the available real estate on my wide-screen. Why do I have to scroll around this narrow column of listings?

Anyway, I feel a little bad for the people behind this as I’m sure they believe that what they have done is good. Technically, it is cool. But that’s not a very good reason to do something.

Aesthetically, it’s seems a bit cluttered for my tastes but then I know my tastes aren’t your tastes. I believe less is more and to me it seems like you are trying to clone ICQ’s web site circa 1997.

Also- ditch the required sign in. Saving simple preferences in a cookie is a feature that I think should not have been taken away. I’m sure you guys are signed in all day long so it probably seems like a non-issue to you, but ask yourselves if you really want to add a barrier to use.

-sc

Melinda | December 5th, 2006 at 10:00 am

I don’t understand the reason for the change. The old page was clean, easy to use, loaded very quickly, and was highly functional. The new page is prettier (FSVO) but less functional. Seems like a really poor trade-off to me.

Note that Zap2It is plugging their listings as faster – clearly they understand what matters. I also really like their “what’s playing now” and “what’s on tonight” tabs.

Granted that human-computer interface stuff is really hard, but it would be easier to understand if Yahoo started out with a crappy interface and moved to another crappy interface. Starting with a good one and moving to a less good one suggests less attention to the user experience than I would expect from a company that’s been around as long as Yahoo.

duke of windsor | December 5th, 2006 at 10:43 am

Sal,
I don’t know if this has been mentioned yet, but in using Yahoo TV with Safari, my method of determining my evening’s viewing was to command-click each listing so each show goes into its own tab. i keep the tabs up throughout the evening to remind me what to watch. Very convenient.

This does not seem possible with the new ajax interface (is it?). This omission is enough of a downgrade that I will be looking around for other sites that still allow this functionality to suit my tv-viewing-listings style.

I have used Yahoo TV for years and always enjoyed the Yahoo interface. If you fix this I will come back.

Best

Richard Welch | December 5th, 2006 at 10:56 am

My Yahoo has been my home page since 1999. Now, I am looking to change my home page to another web site.

I can’t believe you took something that worked well and made it into something that is absolutely worthless. Who has the time to scroll through the new way you have the TV listings set up?

I am expecially disappointed because I have a TIVO and often used your listings to record shows. Because of your TV listing changes, I am reconsidering whether TIVO is worth the monthly charge.

If this is a Beta version why is it forced on us?

SM | December 5th, 2006 at 1:15 pm

The old website was perfect, it gave us what we wanted and it was fast. The new website is too flashy, slow and we have to say everytime to display only the favorite channels. I am just hoping that when the website is out of beta it is a thousand fold better. Good idea but not so good implementation. Please fix it soon.

Steve | December 5th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

The new site is too heavy; it takes a long time to load. It has a lot of bells with less functionality. Flashy presentation is not always better. Just look at the new http://www.cnbc.com; it looks nice. However, IT TAKES FOREVER TO LOAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh yeah, some of your feeds do not work. For instance, the “Watch With Kristin” content from E! is not broken up into paragraphs.

justin | December 5th, 2006 at 4:09 pm

ugh. the old tv listings grid just worked. now i have to actually work to get the listings – drag the slider to load the page. what a joke.

manually loaded web pages. is this the future of the web, yahoo?

Matt | December 5th, 2006 at 4:21 pm

I hate to be a broken record, but I am also really pissed off about the redesign. I have literally watched less TV as a result, I RELIED on your clean, quick, easy to use listings to find out about TV. The fact that you can’t pick a time, and you can only see large blocks of times makes the site literally unusable. Unless this is fixed, I will never go back. I have already deleted all of my links to Yahoo TV from my browsers at both work and home.

Joe | December 5th, 2006 at 4:53 pm

Wow. It looks great!!!! But it doesn’t work. Sorry. I will leave Yahoo TV for another site. Please don’t mess with Yahoo finance. That’s the only YHOO site left that I regularly use.

Joe

David | December 5th, 2006 at 7:45 pm

I moved to TitanTV. Yahoo had been my preferred TV listings site up to now. The new site, with no listings search, no time setting, and impossibly slow loading that has to refresh as you scroll up and down is no longer useful. I’ll check back in a month and see if they’ve restored the old listings, or if the new ones serve any purpose. The Yahoo TV listings has been moved to the back of my bookmarks. It’s likely to be deleted in the near future, after having had a long and useful stay on the browser bookmarks bar.

Paul | December 5th, 2006 at 10:43 pm

For a Beta site, it is interesting that there is no obvious way for users to give feedback. I would never have found this page if I hadn’t done a Google search. Given the number of people who have put questions into Yahoo! Answers, it seems like a fair number of people aren’t happy with the Beta as well, but can’t figure out how to tell anyone about it.

Now, if the purpose of the Beta was to switch to a TV Guide-like page, where people can learn about shows, then it worked great. This especially works great if you wanted to get rid of users who wanted to look at TV listings or find out when shows are on. Let some other website waste their time feeding out that information. You can at least get the Ad revenue from people visiting your pages, if anyone visits. And I suppose your current listing setup helps lower the load on your servers, by only dribbling out parts of the listings over minutes, instead of the seconds that were previously used. This can obviously help reduce the amount of hardware that is needed to support this feature.

And could someone post a note on the main Yahoo! page when the TV listings goes back to the old version? That may be the only way some of us find out. I just need to see if any of the competitor’s listings beat zap2it.com.

(By the way, I never did figure out why the Search works the way it presently does. If I type in something like ‘Egypt’, I get a list of 88 shows and 23 episodes. There is no way for me to figure out which ones are on in the next 2 weeks without clicking 100 or 200 times. Again, if the purpose is to reduce the number of people doing searches for TV shows, then that requirement has been met.)

John | December 5th, 2006 at 10:45 pm

Much too slow, awkward, cumbersome & unwieldy – who has the patience to wait for this to load up?

You can’t select a time except by scrolling through 3-hour time blocks …. what if the program you’re interested in is 12 hours away from the current time? You have to reload the page 4 times to get to it … and one reload takes forever.

Worst of all, you can’t add a TV show to your calendar, which was the best feature of the old yahootv.

You discarded something that worked perfectly and replaced it with something that doesn’t work at all. I think you forgot that simple is always better.

Larry | December 5th, 2006 at 11:53 pm

The way I knew something was up is that my Yahoo! Widget WhatsOnTV no longer shows any listings. So I went to the web site. At first I thought I was in the wrong place… then realized that you had completely replaced what I’d comfortably used for years with some sort of TV gossip site. That’s not at all what I want. I want the old listing grid back, simple, accurate, fast, easy to use. Sounds likes lots and lots of your soon to be former guests do as well. If we can’t get precisely that, at least give us the functional equivalent, ASAP.

This sounds like the classic developers-with-too-much-time and who-want-to-play-with-whiz-bang-tech issue: “fixing” things (even “archaic back end systems”) that aren’t broken and that users don’t want changed. However, we can all understand Yahoo! wanting to socialize the site and get your users more involved, and ride the new Internet video wave, so I’m sure this change was more strategic than that. I’ve been on the Internet since it was the ARPAnet, and I’ve been using Yahoo! since very near day one. This change is not surprising given the business model. But there is no excuse whatsoever for making such a massive change overnight with no warning, for providing no mechanism for user acceptance and feedback, and for pushing the primary reason people navigate (or rather, navigated) to tv.yahoo.com — the TV listings — to a secondary role with a less capable, harder-to-use functionality. What always made Yahoo! special for me was the clean simple yet highly functional HTML interface. The more you become like everybody else, the less special you become. But I’m an old fart.

And to boot, you’ve broken whatever database the widget referenced.

Chris | December 6th, 2006 at 12:13 am

Its sad that Yahoo! has managed to take such a great project and mess it up. They took a very usable listings site and made it horrible.

The loading as you scroll “feature” is absolutely terrible. No more using browser search features. Attempting to find a future program is horrific, and is extremely clunky.

I love AJAX, but this implementation is terrible. It has taken a page that worked and changed it into a page which is slower, clunkier, less informative, and less useful.

mj | December 6th, 2006 at 6:35 am

The new TV site works great for me, no speed issues here and I really like the look of it.

The one BIG thing missing from my perspective, is the ability to add shows to my calendar, a feature I used often on the previous version. I really hope this is not overlooked.

Greg | December 6th, 2006 at 7:26 am

I’d like to chime in with the many other users who have voiced their frustrations with the new Yahoo TV listings. I strongly agree with the person who suggested that both the old and new styles are maintained while the kinks are worked out of the beta. I just find the new listings completely unusable. I never liked tvguide nor meevo, but at least they are usable. Just heard about AOL!TV, and I’ve never used anything from AOL, but it sure looks more like what I was used to with the old Yahoo listings.

AM | December 6th, 2006 at 7:42 am

Sal, I’m sure you and your team put a lot of work into the site redesign–but at heart, it didn’t need one. Yahoo TV was one of the last clean, easy-to-navigate tv listings sites left out there. I can’t find or search anything on the new site. Specific comments/complaints:

1. Having to sign-in to get tv listings. The old cookie method was much less of a hassle.
2. I used to click on a station to get a listing of what else was on that channel for the rest of the day. I could even check future days for that channel. No longer. I have to scroll in 3 hour blocks for all channels and wait for each block to reload.
3. When I clicked on an episode for more information, it would tell me when there would be future airings of the same series. I can’t do that anymore.
4. Search results by keyword used to be useful, with times and dates of broadcasts, now they just produce generic web results.
5. I cannot choose a time for display, having instead to scroll through preset 3 hour time blocks. If I want to see all shows from 8-11, I can’t do that on the new site.

Maybe the site hadn’t had an update since 1999. Maybe that is also because the site worked wonderfully already. Change just for the sake of change is counterproductive. There needs to be a compelling reason/benefit for change, and there wasn’t one here. Count me among the ones who find the new Yahoo TV site useless for what I want: tv listings.

John | December 6th, 2006 at 8:25 am

K.I.S.S. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I always point bad Web designers to Yahoo for and example
of simplicity when information delivery is involved. Yahoo is
starting to lose thier way.

JP

CM | December 6th, 2006 at 8:32 am

The single worst feature of the new tv listings has to be that stupid scroll bar. As it is now if I want to check the primetime listings in one block I have to check at 2:00PM or 5:00PM because it will only scroll in three hour increments.

Just allow us to customize the display and to somehow input the time we want to see.

Eric Artman | December 6th, 2006 at 8:53 am

Well, things are happening at Yahoo! The Wednesday San Francisco Chronicle reports on a shakeup in managment.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/06/BUGS0MQ6SI1.DTL

Interestingly, the article refers to the “bloated” workforce–exactly the sort of situation that creates harmful “make work” projects like this unpopular and damaging revision. With luck, the consumer-deaf Sal Taylor Kidd will soon follow others out the door.

Doug Kasper | December 6th, 2006 at 9:16 am

I see you’ve ruined the Yahoo! TV Listings with the same “forward” thinking that went into the Yahoo! Finance Message Board “upgrade” a while back. Thanks! By not being able to use either, I now have an extra hour or two every day.

C. Disobedient | December 6th, 2006 at 10:39 am

You see all these responses? That clicking sound you’re hearing is thousands of potential eyeballs going to different websites. And since you conveniently played the hear/see/speak no evil game by not providing a place for feedback (this errant article hardly counts), you can figure the real number of disatisfied users is at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger.

The new site is a disaster. All the things users actually go to a TV website to do (view listings per station and area, find broadcast times for their favorite shows, etc.) are now *more* restricted than before. And it’s slower to boot. This project is a hammer in search of a nail. At this point your users would rather have a static HTML table than this monstrosity.

robin | December 6th, 2006 at 11:37 am

Now the links on my.yahoo page don’t go directly to the articles. They only link to the main Yahoo TV or whatever page. But the article I’m looking for isn’t ever on the resulting link. This will probably make me not make my.yahoo my home page anymore.

Also, your video player in Yahoo TV doesn’t have a pause button, or any buttons for that matter. That is the direct opposite of user friendly.

Leilani | December 6th, 2006 at 12:30 pm

What an awful mess the new site is! This reminds me of why I switched to Yahoo TV several years ago when TVGUIDE screwed up THEIR television listings/search. I’ve been very happy with Yahoo TV, usually checking the site several times a day via my toolbar button…which I’ve now removed and replaced with one for Zap2it. This whole thing was woefully mismanaged and looks like a “make work” attempt by employees desperate to figure out how to get more ad revenue. But without users, that revenue won’t arrive. Bye, bye.

peter | December 6th, 2006 at 4:08 pm

went to your 9 website and was informed i needed to upgrade my operating system and browser!?
from debian sid 686 and firefox 2.0!?
ah you guys kill me!
the only site on the web that has ever suggested i change operating systems to view video of all things,how much simpler not to use your services or view your adverts?
especially the implied one for windows!

Keith | December 6th, 2006 at 5:41 pm

Fire your usability guys. Seriously.

It just took 52 seconds to load the entire listings (PIII, 4mb/s cable). At the bottom, I’m treated to the right half of a listing that says, in its entirety, “h of his par…”. Do you really think that listing is useful? So, I click on it, and four seconds later I get the full listing – except, it doesn’t tell me the name of the film. So I have to click on the left arrow, which now, finally, tells me that it’s Batman Begins, where the entire listing now reads “Batman Begins: Following the death”.

So, now I’ve spent over 10 seconds finding out that it’s a film I don’t want to watch, I scroll back up to find something else. Except, now it needs to load all those sub-grids again. I move away from the page to look at something else. I switch back to Yahoo 30 seconds later, quickly scan the listings to find nothing that I particularly watch (not that the 3 or 4 word summary helps in any respect – “Val feels”, apparently, and also “The team must use mo…”, whatever ‘mo’ happens to be), and scroll up again . . . and now it has to load even more stuff! I was away for 30 seconds – why didn’t it load everything it needs then?

I’m sure the technology behind it is very clever, but it doesn’t work. Show me the next three hours from any time I want, show entire entries or not at all, and allow me to search within the page and to open new links in new tabs, and make it faster than actually channel-hopping.

chris | December 6th, 2006 at 5:45 pm

What a mess!! I switched to Yahoo’s TV listings years ago because another site I was using became way too clunky and overrun with useless features. Sometimes the simplest method works best, and this is definitely one of those cases. Same can be said for Yahoo Mail Beta, except thankfully I had the option of using the previous version which works way more efficiently and does everything I need it to do – sending and receiving email.

The load time for the grid is certainly an issue, but even more so, the simplistic approach of a html table was the very thing that lured so many people away from other services with fancy interfaces using flash, javascript etc etc. K.I.S.S. Some people will like the slider bar at the top, rollover descriptions and a ‘pretty’ look. I’m all about functionality more than look, and I believe the majority of people using the previous version were more interested in a simple layout too.

If nothing else…the option to return to the previous version would be greatly appreciated!!!

Patricia | December 6th, 2006 at 6:18 pm

I used the old Yahoo TV site because it was a fast and convenient way to get the TV listings. Now, with all the bells and whistles, it’s very slow, not all of the listings download all at once, and I can’t see the 7:00 to 9:00 (Central) timeframe all at once anymore. Yahoo TV has become as bad at the TV Guide website, and that’s bad! Sorry guys, I might have to move to Zap 2 It.

Dan | December 6th, 2006 at 8:19 pm

I’ve got to add my voice to the chorus. If this is a Beta..how can I go back. This new TV site is an absolute step back. While this new site is admittedly pretty, it is absolutely worthless. The old site was faster, easier to use, and gave me the information I was looking for, the new site give me none of this. After a many years I find myself going to MSN (arrg).

At the very least, the following needs to be done to make it usable.

Eliminate the requirement to login to receive local listings.

Get rid of that stupid scrollbar across the top. It is almost impossible to get the time range desired.\

Show new/rerun on the main listing page. Bring back the “originally seen” date in the discreption.

JohnnyG | December 6th, 2006 at 8:34 pm

I have used Yahoo! TV for years, and found it to be fast and easy to use. I have an older computer which is not a speed demon, and the “flat” listings came through fast enough for me to be happy. Now it takes my system 10 times longer for listings to come up, and I can’t choose the hour I want my grid to begin with. (The sliding window moves in 3 hour fixed incriments.) Further, my personalized listings don’t work anymore (I’ve tried to uncheck a number of stations in my area and when I click “done” and go back to the grid, those stations are still listed. What do I do to get personalized listings again??!!) and I have to click twice to see if a show is a repeat or not. This is NOT THE WAY! Simple is better, and the focus should be on the listings, not the sneak peeks or program recommendations Yahoo is trying to force down my throat now. I am sure the TV industry likes that aspect, as it may snare them new viewers of programs, but for me it is just a nasty annoyance. I am switching over to TVTitan. The listings are much like the old Yahoo listings – the grids load fast, and gives one the information one wants, quickly. Yahoo is Dead, Long Live Yahoo.

Mike S. | December 6th, 2006 at 9:19 pm

Why did you take out the filter feature? I used that all the time to filter and to show only movies. Doing so cut down on the amount of information I needed to look at to find something worth watching.

Please bring that feature back.

netster007x | December 6th, 2006 at 11:11 pm

What’s wrong with the new Y! TV? I like it.

However, I can understand that many are annoyed that the no-nonsense interface was replaced for one that’s full of ratings, buzz, media (all things that are new to Yahoo! TV). Personally, I didn’t bother with all the episode gossip etc. I just found the page for the full listings, and bookmarked it…
http://tv.yahoo.com/listings

I did notice that the listing effects did seem a little slow, and would enjoy it if those were pepped up a bit. Another problem with the listings page is with the slider to select the day/time at the top of the listing. It starts loading listings before you finish selecting your time, making the slider lag. The slider would be very useful if it would just wait till you let go of the mouse button to load!

The new listings are nice because you can see a show’s details without having to load another page (kinda like Y! mail beta and Y! photos beta). However, neither Y! mail beta nor Y! photos beta were forced on users, and due to the surprisingly negative feedback you may want to consider keeping the old as an option (if possible).

Also, when I go to Y! TV, I just want to see what’s on, and I don’t really care what some guy thought of the episode. I’d like an option for Yahoo! TV beta to default to the full screen listings. This could be stored to a cookie or preferably Y! ID.

Heck, you may want to add some more AJAXY features. What if I could just drag an episode of a show on the listings page into a “shows to watch” folder, and then that folder would automatically send reminders at programmable intervals before the show aired. Rather than Email reminders, there could be a pane of the site that lists the shows you dragged to the folder and the airtimes, so you could always just go to Y! TV to remind yourself what’s on. You could make your own folders, and each would have it’s own folder settings regarding sending reminders etc.

Also, BUG ALERT: For some reason the site does not display the station of the highest channel number of the personalized/favorite channel TV listings. For me this meant hiding channel 68, so as a workaround I added channel 98 to my favorites (so 68 is shown and 98 is hidden).

MY WISHLIST:
*speed up the tv listing grid’s effects
*make the the slider at the top of the tv listings grid wait till you let go of the mouse button before trying to load that time’s listings
*make an option for the site to default to the full screen tv listings
*make the listings page remember whether all channels or just favorite channels were viewed last time
*FIX THE BUG mentioned above!
*make some more cool AJAX features

-you may want to resurrect the classic TV listings just to satisfy those who are appalled at the new TV beta (although I’d stick with the beta)

Keep up the good work, this project has GREAT POTENTIAL!

Pierre Fontenelle | December 7th, 2006 at 2:46 am

I’m surprised that Yahoo did not create a separate beta on top of the existing TV listings the same way it has done with Mail, Photos, Maps, etc.

It’s a pretty fancy set up, as an intermediate level developer I’m inspired, but still, the old listings were better.

Kim | December 7th, 2006 at 8:41 am

I have to agree with almost all of the posts. I have used this webpage on, a daily basis, for years. Now I’m wondering have all the people at Yahoo lost their collective minds? Did anyone *at* Yahoo even look at this total garbage?

It’s unusable.

I have gotten six other ideas for other websites to use. I have them all in tabs and I’m going right this minute to check them. I will be changing my homepage as soon as I find the one that works for me.

Please fix the “fix”.

Yahoo used to be where I got my email.
Yahoo used to be my number one search page.
Yahoo used to be my number one place to play a game.
Will Yahoo be the place I used to come to for my home page to check my tv listings?

Nate | December 7th, 2006 at 10:51 am

Another note for the so-called “braintrust” now at the site;

Please kill the gossip section. Generally it’s good manners NOT to display important spoilers such as “Ugly Betty” casting moves that are two months away and classified as spoilers (i.e. things that should not be known unless you seek them out) on the front page of a highly-trafficed TV site. There are viewers out there who would rather watch the show and be surprised at what happens at the show than have to go to your site and have it ruined immediately because of a sloppy headline writer. I compare this to TV Guide’s decision two months ago to reveal that Christopher and Lorelai of “Gilmore Girls” get married in a large-type front page headline; it ruined any anticipation or drama I may have had if I would have actually watched the episode without reading TV Guide.

GF | December 7th, 2006 at 6:14 pm

Repost from Brett:
“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.”
Agreed. Seriously. Please.
In the meantime we can use
http://www.tvguide.com/listings/default.aspx

jbelkin | December 8th, 2006 at 1:05 pm

The main problem is that it was clearly designed to look web 2.0 but CLEARLY not designed by someone who actually watches TV. It’s like offering a map feature but no zoom button – what is the point? You might as well just print a giant text file.

A plain guide nowadays is almost pointless. Most people have a digital box that tells them exactly what they watching or what’s on every other channel through the guide. An online listing must make it easier for TV fanatics who want to plan ahead.

The old guide was not going to win the designer any awards but on useability, it was definitely an A-

This site was designed to win the art guy an award but on the useability factor?

F

Clearly this person or team should NEVER be allowed near anything consumers have to use – it’s sluggish, it fails to understand who the end user is (not an award design committee) and it’s pointless on so many levels – even failing to serve Yahoo as the old version let me ADD to my yahoo calendar, now, I will use yahoo calendar way, way less.

Sydney | December 8th, 2006 at 9:20 pm

I’m shocked other people feel the same way I do (my initial thought was that I was just being picky), but perhaps it’s for the better. I’m not trying to be mean but- this beta sucks. A lot.
First, the main page is just crammed full of useless STUFF. Honestly, it is unbelievably annoying and a bit laggy.
Another thing that loads like a turtle is the listings page. Everytime I scroll down I have to wait for the listings and it’s extremely frustrating. Frankly, I don’t believe the problem is my connection.
Also, I really loved the shading thing because I didn’t have to look at every listing to check to see if there was a good movie on. But.. now it’s gone.
In any case, I agree with others that you guys should either murder this beta or at least let people choose to use the old version if they want. The way it was was simple and easy. And people actually liked it.
Oh, and I’m reading about titantv, but honestly, their format is hedious. The set up and colors (of the listings) are just about the ugliest things I’ve ever seen. Therefore I’m off to tvguide, though their scroll in scroll is quite annoying.
These unattractive alternatives which I would never have looked at twice if the old Yahoo TV guide was here, are now what I must look to.

Bill Giannini | December 9th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

I think the new Yahoo!TV is a step backwards. It was fine the way it was and if you would restore it to its previous look and functionality you would probably make many people extremely happy. In its present condition I find it unusable and it has forced me to use other TV web sites. The new Yahoo!TV is awful.

Bill | December 9th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

I think the new Yahoo!TV is a step backwards. It was fine the way it was and if you would restore it to its previous look and functionality you would probably make many people extremely happy. In its present condition I find it unusable and it has forced me to use other TV web sites. The new Yahoo!TV is awful.

kurt | December 9th, 2006 at 1:37 pm

Used to be 3 clicks of the mouse and I had the listings for 3 hours, great googly moogly what have you fools done!!! The best thing to come from this is that I found titan tv, which I like better than the old yahoo tv. This is to you Sal, You screwed up royaly and like Bush you are to arrogent to admit it and make a change for the best that might save your job. Better dust off your resume Sal!!!

Bye,

Diane | December 9th, 2006 at 3:20 pm

I’ve left Yahoo and no longer have it as my homepage because your new TV listings are HORRIBLE!!!! I always checked them and it was great – you highlighted movies, separated them by cable company – but now it’s constantly loading, I can’t go up or down an hour or two, and it’s impossible to read. FIRE THE PERSON WHO HAD THE HAIR-BRAINED IDEA TO CHANGE IT!!

I’m sorry, but you’ve made a good thing horrible.

So I now have Google as my homepage and am looking elsewhere for TV listings. You’ve just lost a customer.

Please let me know if you switch back to something humans and not cybergeeks can use.

Thank you.

Diane | December 9th, 2006 at 3:30 pm

PS: You should have an email address on your TV listings page so you can get feedback – I just stumbled across this blog accidentally today. And that’s after I spent hours the other day looking for contact information to tell you what I thought about your new site. Another reason why I’ve left Yahoo.

Jay | December 9th, 2006 at 5:47 pm

I haven’t used the TV page much, but after reading about half the comments on this page I must agree with them, because it reflects what I am seeing with Yahoo Mail: Fix what isn’t broken, and break what works to force people to accept the fix for what wasn’t broken. Yahoo Mail is completely unusable for me, and an upgrade that I don’t want. In the meantime, several features of Yahoo Mail that weren’t broken are now broken. Furthermore, the site treats me like a common spammer by making me copy the graphic for almost every message. I have been a cheerleader for Yahoo in the past but it’s getting harder each day to justify that.

James | December 9th, 2006 at 8:59 pm

Please get rid of the progressive loading of the TV Listings as you scroll down the page:
1) Its horribly broken – sometimes it jumps to channel 1565 or whatever and then the next block is back to where its supposed to be.
2) Its much slower than if you just loaded the whole damn thing anyways.
3) Even if you scroll very slowly, there’s still huge gaps of whitespace between the loaded grids (this is in Firefox 2.0).

Who let this thing go live with all these issues?
If you want to do progressive loading fine, load it in blocks of 10-15 at a time so you get the first channels right away, but don’t make it dependent on scrolling!!

DEM | December 10th, 2006 at 10:49 am

Previously, I had given my feedback about the redesign by sending an email to Support — after defeating the maze of “we don’t *actually* want to hear from you” hoops. However, this morning, I finally hit my limit and went on a hunt for a replacement. I found this blog and want to add my voice to the chorus of people asking what you were thinking.

Clearly, your “usability group” pulled a fast one. (Frankly, though, passing the blame to them strikes me as slimy.)

I’ve replaced my Yahoo tv listing homepage with one recommended by a couple of other posters above. For a long time you were the best thing going; now you’re at the bottom of the barrel.

DF | December 10th, 2006 at 12:23 pm

The other day I clicked my “tv.yahoo.com/grid” bookmark — and instead of the tv listings page I expected, I got a 404 followed by a redirect to the new tv.yahoo.com home page. No advance warning the old page was going away, no “do you want to try our beta page?” prompt, nothing. Not exactly a nice user experience, unless your plan was to antagonize your users. (I see now that “tv.yahoo.com/grid” is redirecting to “tv.yahoo.com/listings” — a little better.)

After hunting, I finally found the “tv listings” button on the new page. But the problems continued:

* The new listings page is slooow. (In fact, the whole site is slow.) Maybe it’s the ads, maybe it’s the code powering the page, I don’t know — I just know I see the “barber pole” progress indicator a lot, and it stalls as I scroll down the page.

* The “favorites” selection is missing some local channels. (Specifically channel 9, the Seattle PBS station.)

* After selecting favorite channels and checking the “Display my favorites” option, it doesn’t show all the channels I picked. (Specifically, I have channel 7, the Seattle CBS station, selected as a favorite channel, but it’s not showing up in the grid view.)

* The “Display my favorites” option preference should be saved the same way the favorite channels list is saved. You shouldn’t require “?showFavorites=true” to be in the URL.

* The “pick your favorites” page is doing an ASCII sort, not a numeric sort. This makes channel 4, 5, 7 show up at the end of the listing after 20, 22, 28. The main grid page seems to be doing the same thing when viewing all channels, but seems to be sorting correctly when “Display my favorites” is checked.

* When I originally went to the page a week ago, it couldn’t figure out from my zipcode that I was in the Pacific timezone, so all times were three hours off. It looks like that one might be fixed now.

* Possibly the biggest issue: There’s no “feedback” link on the new tv.yahoo.com page (or if there is, I can’t find it). If you’re going to force everyone to use the beta page, at least have a prominent “feedback” link. When I originally encountered the new page, I was going to send these complaints — but couldn’t. I only found this blog page from other blogs that mentioned how Yahoo was getting beat up about the redesign.

Finally, the old saying “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” is especially true on the web. Anyone providing a web based service has to remember that there are *lots* of other options for users. If a user doesn’t like your service, they’ll go find another one they do like. I’m surprised that Yahoo (who have been in the business of providing services on the web longer than most) would screw up a new service deployment this badly.

In my case, I found tvlistings.zap2it.com. This provides *exactly* the grid view I want. They even offer a web service API to the listings data, something I’ve often wished Yahoo would provide. So I’ve switched. I’ll continue to use Yahoo for other services (for example, I really like news.yahoo.com), but not for TV listings.

kk | December 10th, 2006 at 12:48 pm

I especially agree with jbelkin about the calendar feature missing. I used to use the link to get more info on yahoo movies all the time. Now, that’s gone as well. I have been a die-hard Yahoo! user for years. I’ve gotten used to the new home page, mail, and even tolerated the glitches with IM beta. However, the changes with the tv listings actually drove me to AOL. I will never use this “new,improved” version EVER! It makes me sad that yahoo made such a bad choice.

Nick Antzoulis | December 10th, 2006 at 3:00 pm

I really, really dislike the new interface.

It’s too slow, can’t get as much info on a single screen, can’t start the listings from a particular hour (it forces me into specific 3-hr windows), can’t click on a channel to see listing for the day, etc.

I appreciate some of the additional features you’ve tried to add but this is a big step backwards overall.

Please, please, please provide a link to the old interface. If you don’t I will have to switch to another service.

-Nick

JM | December 10th, 2006 at 3:02 pm

I have to echo the other’s complaints–the team that built this deserves to be canned and flogged repeatedly. The page loads way too slowly. And the time zone situation still isn’t fixed–everything is listed in East Coast time! I saw this in the first couple of days, and assumed it would be a bug that would be quickly fixed (especially since Yahoo is based in California), but its still there. Please let me go back to the old listings; they allowed me to get the information I needed, and get on with my life. This is not an effective way to implement the new web 2.0 stuff; keep it simple!

bsbishop | December 10th, 2006 at 8:24 pm

I’ve been trying to get my listings for days now. All I can get to come up is a message saying i.e. cannot get it to come up. I loved it just the way it was. It could be edited so that the stations I received on rabbit ears on regular broadcast (I have no cable or any service bringing in my TV. Depending on the weather, I get stations that are really not listed in the Tampa broadcast listings, but it was nice to be able to edit them into my personal listings. I used your TV listings quite often because my newspaper, The Tampa Tribune has really ruined their TV listings magazine. They’ve got all kinds of reception and times mixed all up together, and the times of day scattered to badly that you must to backward to get some and then on daytime listings, they have the daily listings and late night listings all wrong. If I’m looking for the overnight news on my channel 10 CBS station, it’s listed as various programs for every night. The reason I’m telling you all this is that because they took a formerly good TV magazine and messed it all up, I was very dependent on Yahoo listings, which now are also messed up. I’m wondering it this disease of TV listings is contageous. I sure hope not. The TV Guide magazine on the newsstands is strictly for folks with cable and really does not have the proper information with folks receiving TV through the air as broadcast like I and some of my older friends on fixed incomes must do. PLEASE PUT YOUR LISTINGS BACK THE WAY THEY WERE. AS THEY ARE NOW, I CANNOT RECEIVE THEM AT ALL.

Thanks for reading. I hope this does some good.

A | December 10th, 2006 at 9:51 pm

Thanks to some of the previous posters, I have tried myway,
meevee, and titantv.

They are all much closer to the old Yahoo TV, which is a very good
thing. titantv did seem to have a way of marking shows as repeats. Both myway and meevee distinguish between new shows and
repeats. meevee does it with a little icon, while myway has
(Repeat) in the text description of the episode. The meevee
method was much easier to see at a glance. meevee also seemed
to have a lot more customization and community features, which
I’m not really sure I want. But I will give them a try.

Vince | December 11th, 2006 at 10:28 am

Chiming in to agree how horrible the changes are. The thing is, I doubt people will be coming back once trying other services. People are loyal to things like this and you betrayed their loyalty.

Unless you go back very very soon, you’ve lost these people forever as customers.

At the VERY LEAST you should revert to the old ones and give a choice for people to try the beta (much like your email).

Gary Goodwin | December 11th, 2006 at 6:45 pm

I cannot stand this new TV layout. I used their tv listing more than any other website. I was compeletely shocked that yahoo would FORCE US CUSTOMERS (thats right yahoo CUSTOMERS – the ones you have been losing in DROVES RECENTLY). Even if you fix it I will not be back. It is this arrogance you have. I have had it . Thanks to other CUSTOMERS who have suggested other TV listings that are at least as good as the old yahoo. So count me out. Eventually I intend never to visit yahoo again. Once again Yahoo – it is your ABSOLUTE ARROGANCE TOWARDS THE CUSTOMER….

Goodbye

Gary

Jimmy H | December 11th, 2006 at 7:37 pm

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEEEEEEEASE…. GIVE US BACK THE OLD LISTINGS !!!!!!

If you are so intent on rolling out this “upgrade” why not , at least, give us loyal Yahoo users a choice as to which we prefer to use…. and STILL KEEP THE OLD STYLE LISTINGS in addition to the new beta version.

Thank you for reading my feedback.

JJOjo | December 12th, 2006 at 12:05 am

What everyone else said.

The new interface is horrible.

Bring back the old one.

David | December 12th, 2006 at 7:02 am

Since an earlier comment I made, I’m happy with TitanTV. It has a steep learning curve for all customization options, but there’s quite a bit you do with it, including storing Favorites and Searches. (To Sydney who posted above: you have some very limited control over TitanTV’s grid colors, including the option of no colors.)

The former Yahoo TV function that has been irreplaceable for me was the excellent listings Search feature, that no other service that I’ve seen can match. It wasn’t only its efficiency at doing a search, it was the detail contained in the entries that was so valuable, down to the first broadcast date of an episode. The result description was compact, and viewable with a single click from a well-laid-out list of search results. It’s baffling that Yahoo could give up such superior functionality for …nothing…

not impressed | December 12th, 2006 at 9:16 am

No option to use old style page while beta is being worked out? Not good!

IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO OFFER THE OPTION OF REVERTING TO THE OLD STYLE TV GRID, CAN YOU PLEASE OFFER A PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION OF THE GUIDE, SO AT LEAST WE CAN VIEW ALL THE INFORMATION AS BEFORE????

I echo all of the previous complaints, to include:
- TV grid is too narrow
- having to keep scrolling back and forth to see what’s on at 8pm and 10pm at the same time is not user-friendly
- having to navigate through so much fluff to find the TV listings makes the page less inviting
- not knowing if it’s a new episode or repeat makes the listing information useless for me
- and by the way, due to firewalls & page filters, not everyone can sign in into their Yahoo! accounts from work, which is when I tend to check the site out most often before heading home

Wherein I once checked tv.yahoo.com many times throughout each day, in the past couple of weeks I’ve on stopped by once or twice and that was to see if they’ve changed everything back to the way it used to work.

Pauline | December 12th, 2006 at 11:23 am

Like the above users have said I once checked yahoo tv many times a day and added selections to my callender for later viewing, now I check it a time or two a week just so see if they have improved it YET.

When whoever is running Yahoo finally figures out what is happening they will be at the bottom trying to win their once loyal customers back, most will not come back because to the HORRIBLE–unprofessional way this business with Yahoo TV BETA has been handled. I will not be back except to see if it is working and all my complaints in http://yodel.yahoo.com/2006/11/28/anything-good-on-tonight/#comment-6204 is working yet.

I have settled for titan tv as a poor substitute until yahoo gets their mess fixed.

So Long for now Yahoo tv, and just remember for everyone that says their leving and really does leave there are multitudes that just leave.

Tim Williams | December 12th, 2006 at 2:25 pm

You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! I am soooo disappointed in Yahoo and the My Yahoo TV Module. Somebody forgot to watch the store, got so excited about making changes, and now the whole thing is frumpy and ugly.

How can you live with yourselves, knowing millions of people turn on their internet, and find a TV module that half works and half doesn’t? How can you live with yourselves, knowing that when questions/complaints get sent through your website, they get returned undeliverable?

Either you guys are hiding under your desks, or you’re embarassed at how you screwed up the website. Just return it to the old — it worked.

shawn smith | December 12th, 2006 at 8:05 pm

I found the old tv listings to be very convenient and useful. I find the new tv listings to be slow, clumsy and frustrating. Strange how Yahoo would destroy such an elegant and useful feature. Very disappointing software design from a user’s perspective.

James Whitlow | December 12th, 2006 at 8:13 pm

Please bring back the old television listings!

Maybe you could just put the old format online at another address like ‘tv.yahoo.com/classic’. You could just put it back online and never have to worry about updates and upgrades. As you can see from the comments above, almost everyone here was quite happy with the old format. The old format was clean, fast & efficient.

Don | December 13th, 2006 at 9:34 pm

+1 more…good intentions, wrong approach, if anyone at Yahoo cares to quibble or debate endlessly about details I am quite sure you can argue everything point by point and come out looking good and on top. I am not an expect debater but I do know this-I cannot use the Yahoo TV listings anymore because it has fallen to feeping creaturism or is it creeping featurism?

joe | December 14th, 2006 at 4:44 am

I’ve used Yahoo’s TV listings for a long time, saving my choices to the Yahoo calendar.

Since the television listing change:

the listings are slow and clumsy;
there’s no connection to the Yahoo calendar.

After giving the program 2 weeks time and finding Yahoo will not let you to use the old format:

I’ve stopped using Yahoo TV listings;
stopped using Yahoo calendar;
am drifting further and further from Yahoo’s other modules and going to Google’s instead.

Macy Rome | December 14th, 2006 at 6:34 am

You screwed up an adequate condensed tv listing…please offer both versions if you must support the new format too.

Dennis | December 14th, 2006 at 6:40 pm

You ruined it. Why do I have to work so hard for any listings other than the major networks?

Invisus Direct | December 15th, 2006 at 8:03 am

I have had Yahoo for my home page for 6 years…their news section is super!

Sal Taylor Kydd | December 15th, 2006 at 12:05 pm

Hello everyone:

Apologies for the delay in posting – but we wanted to have some good news to share before reporting back. I’ll continue to say thank you for the feedback – however harsh – we hear you, we’re working on it – and it is our top priority to address your concerns as soon as we can.

Here’s the status – I’m summarizing the main issues we picked up on throughout these comments – please if there are additional let us know through the suggestions link included in this post, or if you have a specific bug about your provider you can email us directly at tv-coverage-feedback[at]cc.yahoo-inc.com

– channels appearing in the wrong order – fixed
– forced sign in to get local listings – fixed
– page not remembering your favorites on returning – fixed
– change slider to move in 1 hr not 3 hr increments – fixed
– no suggestions link – fixed http://suggestions.yahoo.com/?prop=tv

Our next priority is addressing the page rendering issues. We recognize the current rendering approach is not working, so we’re doing a couple of things in parallel:
1) looking at restoring a simple html version of the listings
2) improving the current page rendering technique to alleviate the biggest issues.

After that our priorities are:

– restoring “new” or “repeat” flag
– implementing network line up
– implementing genre line up
– adding in “add to my calendar” link

Best regards
Sal

Richard | December 15th, 2006 at 2:42 pm

Here’s some extra tips you guys should add to your infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto.

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/11/18/yahoos_peanut_b.html

“Don’t use chunky peanut butter if everyone likes eating creamy.”

All your old Yahoo TV users enjoyed the smooth, quick interface of the old Yahoo TV that actually worked. This new version with the chunky additives is very hard to swallow. We did not ask for these new chunks. Rather than force it down, I would rather throw it up all over your headquarters. This feeling would be much better than the one I get from browsing your currently broken site.

“If you have a moldy peanut butter sandwich, don’t try and fix it by adding more peanut butter. Make a new sandwich!”

Face it, your 10 year odyssey to come to Yahoo TV Beta was a joke. Instead of trying to patch it up, start over with a new foundation. Or better yet, go back to the original one. The more you try and fix this useless site, the sicker your users will get.

Theresa | December 15th, 2006 at 9:00 pm

I don’t think I’ve ever posted anywhere about anything, but this new interface is making me do it!
First of all, I miss the color coding. And yes, it’s slow now, and when I go on the page, all it makes me want to do is leave! How about changing with a prettier font, or I don’t know, sure jazz it up if you like, but really, if we’re lookig at the tv listings we just want to get our info and go, not hang around waiting!

Claudio | December 16th, 2006 at 2:21 am

It’s rare something makes me so joyful or mad that I feel I need to vent about it so here it is – This yahoo.tv site might be a wonder of flash and multimedia whatever but judging its usefulness and how it responds to its customer needs, it sucks. it was probably designed by a bunch of marketing execs and IT geeks (I am one of them) who never bothered going to their audience to ask what they really need. a large majority of parents and workers don’t have that much time to browse through those pages, they want facts, programs at the tip of the hand. What I don’t appreciate is that TV YAHOO has given a chance for people to react on the web site and leave comments but they purge most of the negative comments on a daily basis , very much like if they are in denial. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they listen to me or you or the next one to post on that board, they had a competitive product with their TV listings no one else had, now, they have just become another TVGUIDE of the world. First they had me give up my yahoo email when they came up with their beta (which has been in beta for way over a year !!!!!) then they had their maps beta site, it was so cumbersome, I had to give that up too and now I guess I will just silently give up on Yahoo entirely and switch to something else. Good luck YAHOO, I was one of your biggest fan, always take your defense in arguments when people were bragging about Google or MSN. That’s the beauty of the web. I am one click on the mouse from my next portal
………………………

Cat | December 16th, 2006 at 7:09 am

I’ve hated Yahoo TV since the moment of the change (because my custom listings started crashing immediately) and I have been looking all over for an alternative.

To whoever suggested TitanTV…..YOU ARE MY HERO! :-)

Larry | December 16th, 2006 at 1:12 pm

Sal wrote that they are addressing the “main issues we picked up on throughout these comments.”

NO YOU ARE NOT! The main issue here is that the new format is horrible, and everybody wants you to restore from backups (tape, disk, type it all in again from a printout) what you got rid of. That is what we want. These little tweaks in baby steps are a waste of your and our time. The new page is garbage. You utterly destroyed its functionality. Nobody who used your listings for years will be around Yahoo! any longer by the time you finally get it anywhere close to the functionality it had. What is the point of these changes if the only people using your page won’t know what they’re missing?

Of course, you’ll never revert to what actually worked and what people actually liked and wanted. It’d be too humiliating for you.

Larry

Tom | December 16th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

As an avid, longtime user of the old Yahoo TV interface, l just want to pile on my disgust with the new one. Totally useless. Stinks. And lots of other *%$#^&#@* words.

Please, give us a link back to the classic format! Please, please, please!!!

John | December 16th, 2006 at 3:04 pm

I am so glad to have found all this complaining when I Googled “simple TV listings” in my search for something like the old Yahoo TV. The new one absolutely sucks. I wrote to them several times over the years that their listings went back 24 hours at midnight but other than that it was fine the way it was: get in, get what you want, get out. The only way I can do that now is in My Yahoo TV listings, which requires me to sign in. I’m sure that won’t be available after the new Yahoo TV is made permanent. I will not use Yahoo TV anymore. It’s that bad. I don’t even want to comment on the bugs that need fixing. I fear it will only encourage keeping this piece of trash.

Mike Dumas | December 16th, 2006 at 3:32 pm

I use the tv listings from MyYahoo home page. I’ve selected my cable company and the channels I want displayed in channel order. There are no longer links to a description for each show and when I search for text (ex. Cary Grant) I no longer get a list of upcoming broadcasts with the show or person referenced. So, if I want to know when the next Cary Grant movies are on, what do I do?

Carolyn | December 16th, 2006 at 4:28 pm

I do not like the new improvement. I have moved on to faster simpler TV grids on other sites. I was using yahoo TV grid daily until the improvment.

Therese | December 17th, 2006 at 12:52 am

beta is extremely slow for me. also, the time on the listing doesnt match up with my time. i think it looks pretty good, but i wouldn’t want to compromise efficiency for looking good. anyway can you please make the old version available? people who leaving yahoo in droves, they would stay if the old version were available.

jcburns | December 17th, 2006 at 7:02 am

I have to agree that there’s a kind of ‘tin ear’ effect going on here…I think that the vast majority of commenters here and elsewhere on blogs are NOT asking Yahoo to refine or tweak the new design…they’re asking Yahoo to absolutely roll back, 100%, to the old format.

I have to agree. After spending two months in an area with sporadic internet, where I have to go out into winter cold to get a weak wifi signal, the ajax features just defeat my purpose…I’m trying to get a page with as much data as possible, as clean and lean as possible–loaded quickly into my browser, where I WANT IT TO STAY, un-updated, without the page deciding to go out to the internet once I’m back inside. Assuming a constant internet connection is the first mistake.

I am really baffled by why a ‘dual path’ solution wasn’t offered–this beta is a textbook example of design over substance. I’m a designer, but boy, I’ll take an “old look” any day if it gives me the substance.

And by the way, the channel lineup/arrangement of channels thing is still quite broken.

Riverbird | December 17th, 2006 at 5:18 pm

I didn’t know this site existed until I googled “yahoo tv changes.”

I’ve used my.yahoo.com as my home page for years and the tv module was a big part of why I liked it so much. I could click on a show in the listings, see exactly how long it was (great when “Lost” runs a couple of minutes over,” see when and if the episode would be shown again, and most importantly I could click “add to my calendar” to add the show to my yahoo calendar. All that functionality is gone.

I recently signed up for a customized page at my.myway.com primarily because their tv module is much better than yahoo’s.

Nichole | December 17th, 2006 at 7:56 pm

I didn’t read through all the postings here, but enough to know that most of my complaints have been voiced already. I really hate the new site overall. But, I haven’t really had a chance to properly use the new site… because my listings are NEVER at the right time when I attempt it. I’d love to have the listings show me the east coast time (as others have had), because that’s where I am — but they are showing anywhere from a few hours to TWO FULL DAYS ahead of my time! (The last time I checked it was 10 hours ahead).
I sent feedback through a link that was posted to rec.arts.tv, and got a response about how it will take time to get used to this “new and improved” version, and it did not address my issue of being unable to use it at all.
This is a big disappointment as I’ve used My Yahoo, and Yahoo TV for many years.

Mark Guttag | December 17th, 2006 at 7:58 pm

I used to use Yahoo! as my home page in part, because of the old TV listings format. It was easy to use and easy to find upcoming shows using Advanced Search. However, the new TV listing format is an umitigated disaster.

As a results, I have switched to Google as my home page and Zap2it for TV listings.

What the heck were the folks at Yahoo! thinking?

Ben | December 17th, 2006 at 8:34 pm

Another longtime yahoo TV user here. You have taken something so good and turned it into just another cluttered site full of slow-crawling flash junk. It is very disappointing and I will no longer be using Yahoo TV. How could you have misread what is important or useful to your customers?

Ray2047 | December 18th, 2006 at 6:16 am

All that can be said has probably been said about this disaster but since there is no place to vote for the old format I’m adding a comment also.

First let me suggest to all the frustrated disgusted former Yahoo users please don’t check every day to see if it has gotten better.It will just misleadingly increase their hit count. Lets let their hit count hit rock bottom.

To the Fubar leaders at Yahoo TV let me point out if you haven’t already figured it out the complaints here are only the tip of the iceberg. I found this site for instance in a Usenet posting. Most users though probably don’t even know what Usenet is. I only used Yahoo TV listings so I certainly wasn’t familiar enough with Yahoo to dig out this page. I’m sure there are many more like me.

My main problem, not among the mentioned ones is checking the summary. The pop-over is partially obscured by mixing with other text on the page. I understand there is button for a second fuller display but I’m guessing that is in the obscured part.

Of course some of the mentioned ones like incorrect time zone and only displaying ten stations make it to difficult to use also.

Allen J. | December 18th, 2006 at 10:18 pm

I want to add my voice to the growing chorus of very negative criticism regarding the format of the new TV listings. The old format worked just fine. It gave useful information and did so quickly. With the new format, it is slow and it is very hard to find anything. Once you do, there is little information.
If Yahoo paid attention to even a small fraction of the astonishing number of negative comments, they would realize they have a major disaster on their hands. Yahoo has lost and will continue to lose significant numbers of eyeballs. Do they care? They say they do but I have not noticed any change. They seem a company adrift and headed for the shoals. Goodbye tv.yahoo.com and hello zap2it.com

W.F.C | December 20th, 2006 at 5:41 am

This is just another example of corporate arrogance. Ford had their Edsel, Coca-Cola gave birth to Coke Classic and now Yahoo has jumped the shark with their TV Listings makeover.

Sal Taylor Kydd’s arrogance is just spin on how a perflectly fine site was turned to trash seemingly overnite. I want to thank the Yahoo people for bringing me to the Yahoo TV Beta party, but I’m not having a good time, and I’m leaving.

marikology | December 21st, 2006 at 8:24 am

The new Yahoo TV is terrible. Just like the new Yahoo Mail, it is shiney and pretty, but not very functional and loads too slowly. I switched back to old Yahoo Mail, and am looking forward to trying out the new one when they work the kinks out. They should have given us the same option for Yahoo TV. Please let us use the old one while you work out your issues.

Cindy | December 22nd, 2006 at 5:13 am

I decided to give it a chance since I know i don’t like change and sometimes that’s the problem, I don’t like change. However, I’ve given it a chance…………I decided I would try to find out what is on this weekend……I used to type NBA in search and I would have a listing of ballgames………not so now!

Ray2047 | December 23rd, 2006 at 2:47 pm

No useful response from Yahoo still. It makes you wonder what their thought process is. Is it: “To heck with the old users. There are plenty of new users who won’t know how bad it is.”

jmw | December 23rd, 2006 at 10:19 pm

I find it hilarious that at 9:30 pm PST the listing shows programs starting at 12 AM tomorrow, and doesn’t let me go back to see what’s on earlier than 12 AM.

You guys can’t really suck that badly…

can you?

Career change time?

JW

GLN | December 26th, 2006 at 9:34 pm

Totally, Completely USELESS!
Putting upcoming shows in address book for alerts was a terrific service,since you changed I dont know how many movies i’ve missed.
As I’ve deleated yahoo tv from my homepage,let us know if and when you go back to the old format

D Kenny | December 27th, 2006 at 4:46 am

Old TV Listing – You had it all….
Hyper link to ALL shows and Movies
Hyper Link to Specific Channels for full day or selected day

Now its a graveyard of:
Spotty hyperlinks to shows and movies
No Hyperlink to Specific Channels
A cumbersome secondary display

It wasn’t broken.
But you really fixed it.

New managers always have a self appointed imperative to put their mark on an organization.

Erase this one before it erodes your customer base.

oogie | December 27th, 2006 at 9:27 am

Zap2it.com folks. The old yahoo tv, and better.

Michael | December 27th, 2006 at 1:37 pm

I was just introduced to yahoo tv and I like the setup and apperance of the program. But I can’t agree with any of you because my ATI TV wonder is not recognized. Is there any way we can get a list of upcoming supported cards so I don’t feel left out. I want to complain about the program too. As far as the other features, It is just what I was looking for. I want one program to control all of my media in a user friendly enviroment. I think it does this well.

For the ones that do not like this setup, you should try Nero 7. It has all the same features. I can’t really tell you how the TV feature preforms beause it doesn’t support the TV wonder either. As a matter of fact, I need to look into a new TV card.

James Whitlow | December 28th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

Sal,
On December 15th you mentioned that you were working on several things including:

“1) looking at restoring a simple html version of the listings”

Is there any update on when we might get this? I am currently using Zap2It, but I keep checking back with the television listing site as well as this thread to see if / when we will get this. I am hoping that the ’simple html version’ means the old version.

Please provide us an update.

JK | December 30th, 2006 at 10:09 am

The new Yahoo TV Listings are a failure. A past comment says Yahoo is working on improvements. That was months ago. It is time Yahoo moves back to the old format and work on the new version without causing Yahoo users to look elsewhere (like me). Every day that goes by with the same bloated TV listings is another day Yahoo loses its credibility. Please heed the feedback.

Thanks

S Wilson | December 30th, 2006 at 2:43 pm

I am totally over Yahoo!. For years I have been able to utilize the TV Calendar to keep track of daily events and shows I wanted to watch on TV. I knew for a fact that once I loaded these planned viewings on my calendar I could depend, that when ready, I’d go to my Yahoo! homepage and there’d be my calendar waiting for me to view for an evening of watching shows that I wanted to watch. NOW, however, that calendar is just that…a box with numbers for the week. I am no longer allowed to easily put in a favorite show and have it showing on my desktop. I am missing out on watching various television shows because I can’t remember, and now dont have a reminder, when to watch. As a result, I am frustrated, and obviously watching less TV–I hate to channel surf and watch that TV guide viewing thingy. SO I am in search of another calendar I can add to my homepage or desktop that would allow me to put in events to watch and have them easily accesible. As a result, I am doing away with my yahoo! items (i.e. messenger, yahoo homepage, etc.) I will go to AOL or some other software and utilize their calendars. If its working why mess with it?
Goodbye Yahoooooooooooooooooooo!

Scott | December 30th, 2006 at 7:03 pm

To JK and others,

For many weeks, YahooTV has chosen to ignore and alienate it’s users. There have been countless requests for the old pages, the ability to save to YCalendar, ad nausea.

I’ve given up and have been using TitanTV, a site I wish I had found sooner.
It’s user friendly, allows me to save directly to Outlook and isn’t adware.

To Terry & Sally, you get a lump of coal for disrespecting so many and listening to so few. You guys need a prescription that includes a beta-blocker.

Smithy | December 30th, 2006 at 7:47 pm

I’m sure Yahoo’s new listing format has everything to do with inserting advertisements, so you won’t be concerned with a small group that is dissatisfied. Yahoo will not fix the new format, but instead, wait it out. Listings on my homepage were easy to use and contained the info I needed. My solution is to go back to pre-internet days and use the TV Guide included in Sunday’s paper. I can quickly find shows and times for the whole week. I have removed Yahoo TV listings from my page.

Steve Savas | January 1st, 2007 at 6:23 pm

Even with high speed cable the page takes way too long to load…I can only imagine what dial-ups are going through. I’m in the east but the listings are for central time. Go figure. At least you haven’t screwed up the primetime listings on my main page…but the rest of it is an unwieldy mess!

Ben | January 1st, 2007 at 6:43 pm

How come the tv listings don’t indicate whether the show is a rerun or not? that’s important info.

Also, I checked the listings today and it only showed “bowl game”. didn’t even say who was playing. I can’t imagine that Yahoo’s data source wouldn’t have this info. It made me wonder: Who on earth is the source for these listings?

Ben

Latham | January 1st, 2007 at 6:43 pm

I want to chime in with the others here. I used to always use Yahoo TV Listings as my guide to tv viewing. I loved the old interface. It was quick and easy. On one page it showed all of the tv channels and it was easy to navigate to certain times.

The new user interface stinks. It is very slow and I hate how you have to load channels when you scroll down. I also hate how I can’t simply pick a time and go straight there (like I could in the old interface).

I like things clean and simple. When I go to view TV listings, I like to be able to quickly get my information. Until this reverts to the old user interface, I am going to cease using this product.

P.S. the only way I found out about this forum is from a friend.

Sammy | January 3rd, 2007 at 7:24 pm

It sucks..I will not use the new site. I now use http://www.titantv.com

Marty Strong | January 4th, 2007 at 9:50 am

Yahoo’s “new” TV page reminds me of the bungled “New” Coke
campaign of some years ago.
Just give me my old TV lineup. It worked just fine, thank you.
The new TV page, when it worked, was big and cumbersome!!

Suggest Yahoo give users option for new or old format.

Don’t need this kind of problem to mess up my daily routine.

Maybe Google has a good user page?

Peter P. | January 4th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

I have used My Yahoo as my homepage for years and have relied solely on it for TV listings. Your ‘improvement’ sucks. Most shows don’t even have a hyperlink and those that do regularly lead to a page stating ‘No airings scheduled’. I’m clicking on a show’s hyperlink — how can it possibly say ‘No airings scheduled’?!?!? Do you test this stuff at all before releasing it? How do I opt out of this beta and use the previous tv listings? In your quest to build-a-better-mousetrap, you lost the ability to catch mice at all! I’ve started using tvguide.com…. bye!

Alan S. | January 5th, 2007 at 6:57 pm

I’ll bet your UI tests were bogus. In other words, they were designed, or conducted, in a manner that resulted in a guaranteed thumbs-up outcome. Yes, no?

Heather D. | January 6th, 2007 at 9:54 am

Yahoo has been my home page for many years now. Your TV guide used to be the best, and I visited it several times a day. Not any more! Why oh why in heaven’s name did you change it? Several of the options we used to have are not available any more, such as being able to pick catagories we wanted to view such as all movies or all family channels etc. Also, I cannot tell if a show has been previously aired and/or is a re-run, which really gripes me because I now end up wasting time watching shows I think are being aired for the first time only to realize after a few minutes that I’ve already seen it when I could be watching something else….and by then, I’ve already missed the beginning of other shows I then switch to. ARGH!!!!!!

It wouldn’t have been so bad if you’d given us the option to view the old TV guide page for those of us who didn’t care for the new one, but no, the new one was forced upon us.

PLEASE bring back the old tv guide or at least incorporate the same options the old one used to afford us or give us a chance to choose between the old and the new until all the kinks are worked out!!!!!

Henry Harris | January 6th, 2007 at 11:26 pm

I have been using the Yahoo! TV site for a long time, mainly because it allowed me to compose a schedule for an evening’s TV watching and print it out. Now Yahoo! has completly changed its software and eliminated that most useful feature. For me there’s no longer any compelling reason for using Yahoo. Another problem I have with all these TV sites (including Yahoo) is that they dump their code on the internet without debugging it first, using the internet as a debugging service. It’s pretty hard to get excited by any of these TV services when you never know whether you’re going to get a TV schedule or go to work as their unpaid quality assurance person.

Boyd | January 9th, 2007 at 10:52 am

I could list all the reasons why this new guide is a failure but that has already been covered.

The must upsetting aspect to this whole mess is you are obviously ignoring every single person here that wants the same thing. Give us back the old grid and offer us the option of helping you get the bugs out of the beta at the same time.

We have all been terribly disappointed and now all you can offer is to ask us to stick around and help you redesign this mess while we miss out on the much superior older version.

There seems to be only one bright spot in this whole mess and that is the fact that I am only one or two clicks from picking a new home page.

Goodbye from a long time user. Not because you destroyed a trusted old feature (but that is a BIG part of it) but more so, because you ignore us.

Sue | January 9th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

The new Yahoo! TV page is such a disappointment. Why you can no longer click on movies for a quick Yahoo! Movie review I just can’t understand. Plus the new description of the TV shows is inadequate. It really seems like you are trying too hard but you haven’t really figured out what you are trying to do. So please go back to what worked before. Judging from these comments the majority of users are not pleased.

Dateless Nerd | January 9th, 2007 at 10:16 pm

Well, I finally found the place to comment about Yahoo! TV Beta!

It’s flat-out awful. I’d like to add my voice to the previous negative comments.

Yahoo! TV was my longtime source for listings, and one of my most-frequently visited sites. Since “Beta” was introduced, I’ve dumped it completely, opting for Zap2It instead.

“If it ain’t broke, break it.” Nice work, Yahoo.

Dan | January 13th, 2007 at 2:16 am

I am amazed you have not yet brought back the old version of the Yahoo TV listings.

In the end you will–the new Beta is a failure, and in the end you will at least give us the option of using the old version.

But you may not have any users left by then.

Bug, big mistake, YAHOO, and one that has really gone on too long.

Blax | January 13th, 2007 at 9:01 am

I too find it really slow. Glad to hear the company is open to feedback and we are being heard.

I wanted to mention that Comcast customers can check their listings on this new guide. It does not have all the features Yahoo used to, but it’s pretty good. I think it’s better than Zap 2 It, though again it only has Comcast listings.

Marc | January 13th, 2007 at 9:19 am

I just want to add my voice to all of the other complaints. Yahoo! removed most of the features I liked: being able to quickly see what shows are on for exact times, by channel or time; being able to click on the episode and see a description, when it was first broadcast, and when other episodes of the show will be on in the future including on other channels (important for PBS, repurposed NBC shows, and pay cable multi-channel networks like HBO and Showtime). And, when I complained, I was told thinkgs woudl be adjusted. Nothing is fixed. Yahoo! TV went from being the best TV listing site to the worst.

If Yahoo! makes the same mistake with its mail (Yahoo! Mail Beta is terrible) or its My Yahoo! and Yahoo! sites, it will drive away users in droves.

NorthBund | January 14th, 2007 at 4:58 pm

I have given the new format some honest time and all I can say that its several steps backwards!!! I am sure 90% of the people are coming here for the listings. Which is the WORST feature of the re-design its way too slow, Its very diffucult to pinpoint a time slot, you have to guess where you position the slider, and hope you hit the spot. . . . withch you never do. I think I might use TV Guides untill Yahoo fixes this mistake.

John Doe | January 14th, 2007 at 11:16 pm

Bleh I also miss the old layout

Ill check back in a while to see if its back.

or just provide a like to the old version

PastUser | January 15th, 2007 at 3:22 pm

The only way to fix what you’ve got now is to throw it out and return to the old codebase…

The AJAX stuff only slows down the grid, and makes it stutter VERY annoyingly as you try to scroll down.

Also, it used to work great (better than TvGuide.com) from my wi-fi connected PDA as I sat on the couch…. guess what: The AJAX just doesn’t cut it! It seems to me that sensing the browser and serving up a simple version would be easy….

…. oh wait, if you did let PDA’s get a simplified page, EVERYONE (even on desktops) would want to use that page! Fast, Lightweight, what more could you ask for? Certainly not what’s there now!

CallCentr | January 15th, 2007 at 5:03 pm

So how do you search for a listing? I used Yahoo to find shows and upcoming airings for my Tivo. Not any more… you can’t search. At least it’s not evident to the trained eye. And, like all the others, the listing screen is very slow or doesn’t work on my 3mb cable connection.

Dateless Nerd | January 15th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

Well, it’s been a month since Sal Taylor Kydd has posted any update about how Yahoo’s going to fix the TV listings.

And the TV listings are still total garbage.

Does Sal Taylor Kydd still work at Yahoo? If so, WHY?!?!?

Ray2047 | January 16th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

Well, Zap2It doesn’t say if it’s a rerun so I thought I’d give Yahoo TV another try. Big mistake. I could never get to tonights shows. Worse I kept getting a popup window about a script that was stalling. Popups came so quick I had to do a hard kill of my browser because I couldn’t close the popup and close my browser before another popup occurred.

Ankhorite | January 17th, 2007 at 7:32 am

I’ve stopped using Yahoo completely because of the disaster with the TV listings “upgrade.” I have a superfast connection and a superfast computer, and the page now takes eons — and many clicks — to load. It’s entirely useless.

And among the many things lost was the ability to automatically one-click listings to be saved to my Yahoo calendar.

What were you thinking? Please stop. It’s been over a month, everyone HATES it, and your traffic for tv listings must have dropped to near-zero.

And next time, keep the gossipy junk on another page. Just give us the grid. Thanks.

Atario | January 18th, 2007 at 12:38 am

I will start by saying people need to be a bit more civil here.

I will continue by saying the new format seems to be all about looks and not enough about functionality.

Many have gone over a lot of what is wrong with the situation, so I won’t dump a laundry list on you that you’ve already read. However, I will mention that what drove me here was Googling for “yahoo tv sucks”, hoping to find pointers to somewhere as good as the old listings. Flipping through this blog and checking out the suggestions led me to conclude that Excite! TV is the best replacement for now. It’s like the old Yahoo! TV, except that it expands to the width of the browser (which is actually better), and you have to click once to get the original air date (worse, but tolerable). (I think. Did the old Y!TV show original air date directly in the grid? I can’t remember. Maybe it just had “repeat” or not. Anyway.)

In conclusion, you guys really should have gone through beta the right way — like Yahoo! Mail did — instead of summarily removing what was already working. You could have avoided a lot of this hue and cry.

mox | January 21st, 2007 at 8:47 am

I find the new tv listings absolutely terrible. Bloated, buggy, inefficient with inexcusably terrible performance. Designers/implementers need to refresh on GUI design 101, because this product stinks and is a step backwards. The old listings were nice and sufficient, so i’m now off to find a suitable replacement.

Chuck | January 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm

This “upgrade still stinks.I switched to AOL listings back when this garbage was unleashed on us.I came back today to see if it was improved and it still stinks.The old one was great.why did you ruin this? I don’t get it.

Jeff | January 25th, 2007 at 6:07 pm

It’s pretty obvious to me that Yahoo! is no longer interested in providing any useful products for free. Every single person who commented on the new TV Listings had something negative to say. Yet, nothing is done about it. Why? Yahoo! needs to make money and the old TV Listings weren’t bringin’ in enough cash. No doubt, they were losing money with it. Otherwise, why would they drive away all their loyal users? They’ve effectively made it undesireable to all the ‘freeloaders’ using up all that uncompensated bandwidth. Same thing can be said with the newly-defunct ‘discuss’ feature on articles. Yahoo! is no different than any other large corporation. They could care less about what’s best for you, all they want is for you to buy something. Period.

dee | January 28th, 2007 at 10:20 am

Wow,
I can’t believe I found this website. I have been so disappointed in the new Yahoo TV listing.
I loved the old one because you could search something like “Christmas” and it would show you all the movies or shows that were related to Christmas that were coming on TV within the next 14 days. It did not have to be the Holiday season. It would display Everybody Loves Raymond, the Thanksgiving Turkey episode that may be shown in May. You could click any show displayed that you were interested in and find out what day, time, and channel it came on. I loved the fact that I could add the shows and movies from yahoo TV listings to my yahoo calendar with a click of the button.
The new page seems to be politically motivated. When I did a search on it, it started telling me how to purchase moves. All I see is movie stars pictures and commercial like advertisement. I not interested in looking a Hollywood entertainment pictures. I just want to know what’s on TV.
I’m looking for a new TV search source. I was delighted when I found this page because it gave me several site to view. So far, I have chosen EarthLink as my new search page. I may check back with yahoo to see if they return to their old site. If not, then so be it.
Thanks for all the information and links.

Ell | January 28th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

For anyone who misses the old Yahoo! TV Guide check out http://tvlistings5.zap2it.com/
It’s just like the old Yahoo! tv used to be, except better. It also loads fast, lets you chose a date to check listings going up to 2 weeks, and lets you search for listing going up to 2 weeks.

Boyd | January 31st, 2007 at 7:35 pm

Where is Sal. Seems he is hiding in his little geek hut. Thanks for screwing up a good thing.

Devin | February 4th, 2007 at 2:09 pm

I hate the new Yahoo! TV listings. The old way was so much better. Now it is too complicated and simply confusing.

UGH | February 6th, 2007 at 4:55 pm

The new TV listings suck really hard. I tried it for a day then went to TVGuide. Looks like I will now be using Zap2it. Yahoo really dropped the ball on this one.

Bill Smith | February 8th, 2007 at 3:25 am

Slooow loading, Bloated, terrible layout, way to complicated with to many features.

The old less complicated site was way better and thankfully Yahoo stock is not in my portfolio.

Yahoo TV is removed from my bookmarks forever.

alan | February 9th, 2007 at 1:22 pm

I’ve stopped using it – it’s screwed up the channel selection on my “My Yahoo!” page. When I try to change the channel selection for the TV Listings on My Yahoo! it doesn’t overwrite a previous “favourite channel” list, so I end up with an unholy mess. I’ve tried finding which cookie is responsible for it, so I can delete it and start over, but no luck. I’ve given up and I’m now using zap-2-it instead. Shame.

James | February 10th, 2007 at 2:02 pm

I used to have yahoo’s tv listing pages as one of my (few) bookmarks. It was clean and loaded quickly.

I could reiterate what everyone else’s opinion of the new site is, but everyone at yahoo knows what is wrong with the interface.

Basically, once tv.google.com comes out, there won’t be a problem anymore.

Ken | February 11th, 2007 at 5:14 pm

I have to agree with just about everyone else that said the new tv.yahoo.com site is horrible. Do you even read this blog? If so, why have you not changed back? I think you guys are suffering from a severe case of “The Abilene Paradox” .

schrek_uber | February 12th, 2007 at 6:15 am

The tv listings beta is a failure. Please face reality.

At the very least offer the old version as an alternative,
like yahoo maps does.

schrek_uber | February 12th, 2007 at 6:47 am

Never mind. I’ve found a proper tv listing site.
Good luck keeping everyone else.

Axel | February 16th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

The new system is slow and cumbersome, please bring back the old one or I’ll have to seek alternatives, is not useful!

Nick | February 16th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

It’s been three months now and it still sucks. Please do something about it. I’m also just switched to another site for my TV listings.

JimCo | February 16th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

I used the Yahoo TV Guide for years. But, that all ended on 11/29/06. I kept coming back, hoping for a working website or a return to the old site. No such luck.

In the meantime, thanks to people who post here, I first found AOL TV Guide and later, TitanTV. That is definitely my site of choice. It’s perfect…easy on the eyes, easy to understand, very user friendly and easy to organize for my needs. With two clicks of a mouse, I can even post a program listing to my calendar software, whether it is running or not. I see no reason to ever come back here, or any other TV listing site.

I will still use Yahoo, especially the My Yahoo section. It is the best. Interesting, the TV listings on the My Yahoo page are just fine.

As for the Yahoo TV Guide, thanks for the memories and this is goodbye.

Paula | February 18th, 2007 at 8:11 am

Yahoo had more than enough time to fix the listings by now. I’m sure they’ve adopted the thinking like my CATV provider “Some will not like it, but most will stay” Zap2it has been a fine replacement and there won’t be a need to check back on Yahoo’s progress.

Greg | February 21st, 2007 at 3:28 pm

I can’t get a list of ball games for the next two weeks when using the tv listing search function from my yahoo page. I’ve done it for the past two years using your site and now I don’t see a single game listed.

HS | February 26th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

Function over form.

TV pages are slow to load.

On my my.yahoo.com page after I could see click on any movie in the tv listings and go to that movie, not any more.

You used to be able to click on the channel to get a whole day of programing and easily choose a couple prior days and future days, not any more.

Pages that display a show has too much blank space. Give information, then make it look sharp.

It was great. Yahoo needs to revisit function over form. For now tvguide.com.

ED B | February 27th, 2007 at 11:37 am

I can only say that what I have read about your TV guide page from the many listed above is soooo true!!!! I have no intentions of using it again and have already removed it from my favorites. I hope that you have read these hundreds of comments and will listen to what people are telling you and that when you make other changes in the future you will listen to you users. I do enjoy your e-mail program and use Yahoo for many other things — but not TV again. Titan TV is the way to go.

Charles VandeVelde | February 27th, 2007 at 9:29 pm

I HATE THE NEW YAHOO TV. I WILL NOT USE THE SITE ANYMORE. PLEASE SWITCH BACK TO YOUR OLD FORMAT. I WILL BE USING AOL TV LISTING TILL THEN. I MISS SEEING SHORT CLIPS OF THE MOVIES AND THE RATINGS THAY WERE GIVEN. I ALSO MISS THE MOVIE COVER THAT WOULD BE DISPALYED. E-MAIL ME IF YOU EVER GO BACK TO YOUR OLD VERSION, THIS ONE SUCKS.

Sad | March 5th, 2007 at 4:35 pm

Another thing that was my AWESOME about the old Yahoo TV Guide is that you could click on a show and it would tell you all the future times that show would air and what episode would be airing. I can’t find any other website that does that like Yahoo did.

I miss you old Yahoo TV guide, I really do.

BugAnnoyer | March 10th, 2007 at 2:18 pm

Like many (all?) here I was dismayed when the new AJAXified site was launched; I abandoned it for Excite TV or MeeVee.

I thought I’d check it out today to see if things had been fixed…

Well, it’s a lot faster than it was at first, and the blatant bugs are now gone, but the worst feature – the page-at-a-time loading is still there. Yes, the pages load in a second instead of 3-4, but face it: it will never be fast enough if the user’s goal is to scroll down to a listing that’s at the bottom of the listings. You either need to pre-load pages in advance (in which case, why do page-at-a-time at all?) or go back to loading the full grid.

And not having a drop-down that let’s you jump to the date and exact time is also a mistake.

Finally, it was a mistake to take away the ability to look at yesterday’s listings – sometimes I want to know what I missed.

For all these reasons I’m sticking with Excite or MeeVee for the moment – I’ll check back in another few months to see whether you’ve really taken the feedback to heart and abandoned the page-at-a-time mistake.

tpc | March 10th, 2007 at 5:52 pm

I liked the old Yahoo TV listings interface A LOT more than the current Yahoo TV listings interface. For some reason, even though I typed in my ZIP code AND in my Yahoo account information I selected my appropriate time zone, the current Yahoo TV listings interface is 3 hours ahead, as if I was on Eastern time. You guys at Yahoo TV listings really blew it, and I shake my head because ever since you rolled out the new interface, this problem has been persistent, for something like 4 months now, and there’s no fix or work-a-round. I’m switching to zaptoit.com.

rowland | March 11th, 2007 at 10:19 am

the changes sucked — it still sucks — I don’t know why it would be so difficult to go back to what was there before.

I’m gone.

Greg | March 13th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

Bad things about the new Yahoo:

1. Loading section by section is slow
2. It takes 3 clicks to see the original air date
3. I don’t think it shows the episode number. The old version did
4. It takes 3 clicks to see upcoming episodes
5. Can’t pick the date/time you want to see
6. Can’t view the entire day for a given channel
7. Using a text web browser does not work with the new Yahoo

The thing that made Yahoo special was the original air date, the episode number, and the upcoming episodes. I don’t think any other listing had all of that info. It needs to be shown on the first click, rather than making people dig deeply to find it. When somebody clicks on a show, get rid of the fancy sliding effect and just open a pop-up window with all the goods.

Not being able to pick the date/time is a huge issue. Loading section by section is also very bad.

I am using AOL now: http://tvlistings.aol.com. It is very good. One thing it does better than the old yahoo is displaying “New” beside programs that are new. This is better than displaying “Repeat” for old episodes because it is more explicit, I think Yahoo should consider doing that also.

AOL displays the original air date and upcoming episodes, but it takes 2 clicks to see it. This info is so nice that it should be shown on the first click. I don’t think AOL shows the episode number, which would be very useful.

So AOL is not quite as nice as the old Yahoo, but it is the closest thing that I have found.

I am still hoping that Yahoo will get rid of the new and go back to something like the old. But it is not looking very likely after 4+ months.

J.P. | March 14th, 2007 at 4:14 pm

I hate the new Yahoo! TV page. I visited the old page several times a day to check listings and search for future programming. The guide was simple, easy to use, and great at finding what you wanted using relatively plain HTML.

The first day Yahoo! switched to the new TV page, was the last day I visited it. On Firefox, Konqueror, and IE, this is an unmitigated mess. As much as I disliked TVGuide.com (the original reason I found Yahoo! TV), I have returned there, much to my dismay.

Keep It Simple Stupid. That’s the google model, and I can’t wait to see them institute a TV Listings page. I’m sure they’d basically have the same simple but elegant format the old Yahoo! TV guide had.

Only thing I use Yahoo! for anymore is Mail. And even that’s hard now that Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! TV are both garbage.

K.I.S.S.

rr | March 17th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

You know the reason they won’t go back to the old version — the new style is friendlier to advertisers. The problem is there won’t be anyone visiting to see the ads. The sacrificed what users care about for what advertisers care about, and they will lose big-time in the end.

Eman | March 27th, 2007 at 12:58 am

PLEASE Go back to the original flavored “Yahoo TV Guide” listing. Or at the very least, please have two versions available for us to choose.

Your guide was the best, now it’s very slow. It lost most of the features that I really liked before. For example: On the old listing, I could click on the channel name, like TCM and it would take me to a link for TCM showing all of their shows for that day together. This was very helpful, easy to use, and most importantly quick to use.

I haven’t had time to read through all of the comments, but I’m sure that most of them are about the same thing. As a web designer, you really should have the menu list only the important shows first at the top half of the page. Not all the extra junk that’s around there now. I realize that you need to have some ads up there, but they would be most effective on the outer edges and at middle or bottom (After, the main listings). Most people are in a hurry and want to quickly check some times, we don’t want to wait for a ton of ads and other fluff to fill in first. Please post the relevant data first then load the fancy graphics in the background. This will help to speed things up a bit.

Is there anyway I can get a link to the older viewer, I would really appreciate it. Otherwise, I will have to start looking for another TV Listing (Guide). These are the very reasons I switched from TV Guide to your listing in the first place, because of their slow Flash/Ajax (web2) style page loads. I’m on a fast cable connection and it takes much longer to load than the older, fast interface.

For an example of a good guide, using a more modern interface, take a look at http://www.tcm.com. They offer a few different versions and ways to view their movie listings.

Your have a lot of good services, please fix this one and help Yahoo that much better.

Y! long time, user.

smedgley | March 27th, 2007 at 4:24 pm

Had no idea so many people watch TV!

anyway.

yahoo’s listings are usable if you are looking at tv listings from work, assuming you work at a tech company with a connection at least 10x faster than Verizon DSL — from home it’s too slow to use, at least in the US. Korea, Singapore, Japan it works fine.

Charles Pham, Yahoo! TV | April 5th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

Hi everyone,

Big thanks to everyone who’s sent in feedback through the Yahoo! TV Suggestions Board since the re-launch of Yahoo! TV. The volume of responses has been tremendous and we have been reading the postings and cataloguing, prioritizing and scheduling fixes for the issues raised.

Please head on over to the Yahoo! TV blog for some responses to specific popular suggestions and comments.

Thanks!

schrek_uber | April 8th, 2007 at 9:47 am

I’ll give the new-new site a fair day in court.

So far I have to say it’s missing functionality I appreciated
in the old version: future airings.

Aside from what it still lacks though, is the real
big question for me:

Why did it take more than four months to acknowledge
and accommodate users’ OVERWHELMING, practically
unanimous hatred for the new system? Why did it take
this long to make the partial loading horror go away?

IMO you’re headed in the right direction, but I think that
for many people now Yahoo TV is lame not only because of
the technical blunder, but because of how unresponsive
you have been, and how unforthcoming in explaining
the long wait.

I think serious damage has already been done. Pretending
it hasn’t won’t help. Be straight up. Explain why things didn’t
change for months despite the landslide of passionate
opposition.

I think that if it took this long, and you were so unresponsive,
to popular opinion that was so *extreme*, it’s reasonable to
suppose that you simply will not listen at all when the
opposition is more moderate, or the majority less dramatic.

That is sad, and it’s on you to make your relationship
with your users right.

George Savas | April 8th, 2007 at 7:00 pm

I just retried Yahoo TV and it is 1000% better…almost back to where it used to be. The time shifting problem is almost gone too. I live in the Eastern time zone and my listings used to be for the central zone. Now my correct time zone is displayed on the listings page but when I click on a show for the description it is still using central time zone times. I’m afraid that I might be tired one day and forget to ignore this time shift error and set my VCR incorrectly…so please fix this problem too.

Matt | April 10th, 2007 at 12:25 am

schrek_uber,
I totally agree with you. I’ve only now returned to the site after many months using Excite TV. While I do think that Yahoo!TV is much better now, I have to say that I will most likely not be returning here. It took far too long for this issue to be fixed when all it would have taken was a simple apology and an optional return to the old system. While this beta version is much better than when first released, it still is nowhere near what it was when the system was “fixed.” I hope, but won’t hold my breath for, an apology from Yahoo, and until then, I’ll stick with my other pages.

Site Producer Downunder | April 10th, 2007 at 1:20 am

Just wanted to say… thanks for the transparent and useful case study information about how not to deliver a re-design of a much loved feature!

Down here in Oz, I’m involved in a TV Guide re-design (names suppressed to protect the innocent) and the big learnings I’ve taken out of this are:

1. Make sure you recruit some of your actual hard-core site users for user testing. Those who love your product to bits.
2. Ensure you do not destroy beloved features. Instead, enhance them but make sure you are doing so with the hard-core fans’ blessing.
3. If launching a beta, make sure its a real beta. Leave the current/live production version where it is with a prominent link to the beta
4. Provide a prominent feedback loop for your beta from day 1 and address comments regularly and promptly.
5. Function should never be over-ridden by form, especially when you reduce function and make form too fiddly for its own good!

I knew most of this stuff anyway. But hey – you’ve given the rest of us in the industry a crystal clear view of what happens when you piss of your users!!

Jeff | April 10th, 2007 at 5:26 pm

The times are still effed up. I’ve got the location set correctly, but I still get Eastern time info instead of Pacific. One would think that Yahoo! would at least have the time working properly in their own time zone. Alas, this is not the case. Of all the issues that need fixing on Yahoo! TV (of which there are MANY), this should be one of the easiest. Hell, I’ll bet I could even fix it.

To think that the Yahoo! TV folks can’t even get the time corrected in their own time zone (even after 4 months of opportunity) must be an embarrassment to every Yahoo! employee. Though, I doubt there are many Yahoo! employees that actually use their own product. It’s like GM employees designing such crappy cars that they choose to drive a Japanese or European car.

I’ll bet you don’t see too many GM cars in the Yahoo! parking lot.

Pauline | April 20th, 2007 at 5:41 am

I am sick of hearing “we cannot bring back the old format” so-don’t, just give us the features that you had in the old format–that is all we are really asking for, or is that too much to expect. I have NOT used yahoo tv listing’s since it changed to the new format because they don’t have the features I need–want, I don’t care if you keep the new format, it really does have some good features, just give us everything that the old one had included in it. I WILL NOT be using it until: 1. I can add listings to my calender, 2. search the tvlistings not the whole internet, 3. find future listings, 4. find information on the listing.
If I wanted advertising I would turn off the pop up blocker and get my fill of it. AOL tv listings and titan tv listings have gotten a lot of business since you went to the new BETA–forced–format. I am all for change and update, but make sure it is an update. Thanks from a past user

greg | April 20th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

Thank you for the recent changes. It is much better now. I am switching back to Yahoo! TV.

From my perspective here are the things that have been fixed:

1. No more loading section by section. Much faster.
2. Original air date available on the first click. Very informative.
3. You can pick the date/time you want to see. Thank you.
4. Using a text web browser works. Yahoo!

Still on my wish list:

1. Can’t view the entire day for a given channel. This would be very nice.

2. For movies, the original version gave the date and “number of stars”,
Something like this:

Gone with the Wind (1939) ****

This info was right on the grid, and was very informative. Not an absolute must-have, but it was something that gave Yahoo! TV and advantage over the competition.

Jeff | May 6th, 2007 at 11:23 am

OK, after reading Greg’s comments I checked out the new fixes. Guess what? It’s actually fixed! Pretty much all the lost features have returned and I’m on the verge of switching back to Yahoo! TV.

I say on the verge because the ‘current’ time still displays Eastern times for my Pacific Time Zone. I couldn’t believe nobody else was complaining about this, so I did some testing and have discovered this problem only exists when choosing the ‘rabbit ears’ local broadcast option. The time seems to work fine when you choose a cable provider. Needless to say, this is a huge annoyance.

I realize I may be the only person on the West Coast who doesn’t have cable TV, but PLEASE fix what must be a pretty simple time link bug. When the time issue has been resolved, I’ll once again be an loyal user and avid proponent of the new Yahoo! TV Guide.

Keep up the positive changes, you’re almost there!

bob spencer | June 17th, 2007 at 6:12 am

please put a link in so it will go into yahoo calendar

D | June 18th, 2007 at 5:11 am

Yahoo has managed to ruin its tv listings. Today I logged on to the My Yahoo tv module, to find that most of my favorite channels are not being displayed. I also note that for the last few months my local CBS affiliate is not even listed as being an available channel. Under the old format, I was able to view details about the shows. Now most shows are not even “clickable”, and when they are, there is often little or no information about the show.

If it isn’t broke, don’t try to fix it.

b. mcbee | June 18th, 2007 at 5:21 pm

What is going on with Yahoo tv listings. My yahoo Att Dsl has been screwed up for weeks.

Lets get it fixed.

BM

CJ | June 21st, 2007 at 7:25 am

Why doesn’t my MY Yahoo page show all of the local affiliates like it used to? This sucks. When you try to edit the section, the button that used to allow you to display only your favorite channels no longer works. This sucks. Yahoo was also managed to screw up my Verizon-provided Internet Explorer. Not a happy camper.

tredinertok | July 10th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

Hello

Very interesting information! Thanks!

Bye

Charles Pham, Yahoo! TV | July 13th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

Hi everyone,

As noted on the Yahoo! TV blog, We’re pleased to announce that we have changed data providers to provide you with an enhanced TV Listings experience with better and more reliable listings.

The Enhancements & Benefits

More Provider Options: Some users have notified us that their cable/satellite providers were not available in our previous TV Listings. As a result, we found a TV Listings provider with a more comprehensive list of cable and satellite providers to offer.

Over-The-Air HD Channels: We now offer Over-The-Air HD channel listings. Just enter your zip/postal code, select ‘Antenna’ as your provider type and you’ll be on your way to viewing Over-The-Air HD channel listings in your area. Note, there is a bug where digital channels cannot be saved as favorites. We’re working through this and anticipate this being resolved shortly.

Resolves Missing Channels: Users told us that some channels were missing from their channel lineup. With the new TV Listings, these issues should all be resolved.

Resolves Time-zone Shifts: Previously, users with ‘Antenna’ settings in most time-zones were displaying incorrect time-shifting. We’ve corrected this issue so users will now see their listings within their respective time-zones.

Updating Providers & Favorites
As a result of this upgrade, we’re asking those of you who have previously set your location and cable/satellite provider to re-enter your information. This will ensure that you’ll have the correct and most updated version of TV Listings. For those of you who have previously set your favorite channels list, we are also asking you to re-select your favorites to ensure all the correct channels are listed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

TiVo Users
While we upgrade our TV Listings services, the “Record to My TiVo” functionality will be unavailable for a few days. But rest assured we are actively working on this now and should be back very soon.

My Yahoo! Users
My Yahoo is upgrading services as well. As a result, TV listings may not be available for some users. If you are at My Yahoo! user, AT&T Yahoo! user or Rogers Yahoo! user, you can move to the new version which will support the new TV listings:

My Yahoo!: http://cm.my.yahoo.com/upgrade
AT&T Yahoo!: http://att.my.yahoo.com/upgrade
Rogers Yahoo!: http://rogers.my.yahoo.com/upgrade
If you are a Verizon Yahoo! user, please manage your TV listings on http://tv.yahoo.com/listings until the new version of Verizon Yahoo! is available.
If you are a My Yahoo! Canada user, please manage your TV listings on http://ca.tv.yahoo.com/listings until the new version of My Yahoo! Canada is available.

Thanks to everyone for sending suggestions, feedback, and continued support. We appreciate your feedback and will continue to improve the TV listings page with new features you’ve been asking for.

For more updates, please visit the Yahoo! TV blog.

David | July 16th, 2007 at 3:35 am

Thank you for alerting us to the New TV Listings improvements. The main improvement I’m looking for, but where I’ve seen no changes, is in the Search feature. There still is no practical way to search the current listings, as I see it. The TV search seems to search anything in TV: shows database, movie database, web articles, with no way to find just current listings results. The old search function, from within the listings, allowed a search for a program or movie title, an actor, or episode title. The results were quick, in a concise table layout, and a click on a title took you to the best details section I’ve seen. It was about as good as listings searches got, and I used it regularly. Although there were other reasons as well, this was the deciding factor for my abandoning Yahoo listings. Since there are other listing services available I’ve had little reason to return. Yahoo gave up a search feature that was superior to the one offered by every other service I’ve found, and replaced it with one that doesn’t do what it used to, and was what I needed. The search replacement really isn’t useful in any respect that I can tell, and is done better by specialized sites like IMDB and TV.com. Yahoo had the edge here and tossed it.

Tim W | July 19th, 2007 at 11:54 am

I have gone over to MyWay.com to set up my TV listings, with virtually every feature I once liked about Yahoo TV Listing til ~last November.

TV listing is now only available on Yahoo Beta version only, and then only in the new TV Listing format.

I use TV Listings’ Prime Time listings for searching two things:
1.) shows I like, with “repeat” listed if it’s the case.
2.) movies with the star ratings.

I want to see this all in one or two screens, with 8-11pm showing in one screen left to right. If I want more information, I want to click it to get further insight, without going onto the web with a nightmare of banners, graphics, and information nothing to do with what I clicked.

The old format before the beta was developed allowed this. At least without the clickable links since November, I still found the stars and single-screen format.

It took some searching, but I found MyWay provides me everything I want.

Bev | July 19th, 2007 at 7:46 pm

Hasta la nunca Yahoo….not only is the new home page lay-out too “scrunched” to read easily, but the tv listings are vastly inferior to the original. I’m switching to MSN as my home page & thanks to the previous commentor, I will check out myway.com

Shannon | July 20th, 2007 at 11:49 pm

I HATE the new yahoo tv listings. They are not user friendly at all. And one of the best features was completely taken away. The ability to search for future airings of particular shows was the main reason I bookmarked yahoo tv. Now if you try to search you get articles about the shows and half the time they don’t even relate to the show title you’re looking for. Some channels are missing, and not even local broadcast channels but major cable channels (for me HBO, FX, and sometimes TNT and USA aren’t even listed) The shows also lack the detailed descriptions they used have, for example if an episode is a rerun or not (sometimes this does show up, but not very often). Come on Yahoo if it’s not broke don’t screw it up trying to fix it.

scott | July 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 am

Dear Charles Pham,

Please do take the time to read David’s comments of July 16th. In a clear, concise tone he articulates the troubles with the ‘new, improved’ YahooTV.

But I’m angrier. You still don’t seem to comprehend what virtually ALL posters have said in this space. We the users don’t want slick, buggy 2.0 without the option to retain the old version. Once again I find myself reminding you that less features in an unremarkable format has alienated many of your most loyal visitors.

Soon it will be a full year since the best TV pages on the net magically disappeared. How much longer before Yahoo realizes the error of it’s ways?

Mike | July 27th, 2007 at 11:41 pm

I agree with Scott. David has nailed my main reason for leaving. I used to check back here every week or so, and now it’s been a month since my last visit (I now use myway). I no longer use Yahoo TV. I’m more interested in watching the story unfold. It’s funny enough to be covered on the main TV page!

mike | September 1st, 2007 at 5:23 pm

I used to literally check yahoo tv listings everyday…now almost a year after they made the new flash oriented one, I can barely load anything, and many times nothing loads. And this isn’t just on my computer, the univerity of michigan computers load the page slowly too. It sucks that I now have moved onto other sites because I used to love it so much…the old way. Make it fast if you’re going to change a good thing!!!!

John | November 19th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Yahoo! TV Listings were a thing of simple, easy-to-use beauty. Users could happily click away on things, and actually have those things work as they should. They had their favourite channels, as listed by their local providers, and the world was a wonderful place. It just worked.

Then, apparently, some intellectually defective person came along and made a decision that has boggled and angered Yahoo! TV users across the globe: They released a “new and improved” Yahoo! TV…..Beta (D’oh!), and neglected to leave the old, happy system in place while the Beta was tested.

Now, I don’t really care much about the TV Listings themselves. What chaps my bum is when a large corporation has a collective brain flatulation, alienating it’s client/user base, all the while not seeming to care because they have grown so large that a severe invincibility complex has set in:

“We are huge and indestructible, so who gives a crap if the services we offer begin to slide into the pooper.”

A note to the folks that made the decision to go live with Yahoo! TV Beta: You is Dumb (could you understand that statement?)

When releasing a web service in Beta, aimed at replacing a pre-existing service, the pre-existing service is to stay in place until the supposed “Beta” comes out of “Beta”. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Customers are given “opt-in” opportunities to “test” the “Beta”, but the existing system stays in place. Get it? This is standard industry practice in a situation such as this.

If the word “Beta” has not yet lost all meaning, read on.

The key words to remember when defining the term “Beta”, are testing or evaluation. You don’t see a car manufacturer pull an established, capable, reliable model out of the marketplace, only to be replaced by an evaluation, test, or (typically referred to as) “concept” car that may, or may not explode at any given moment (think before you hit that button….). It does not happen. Car companies do not want their customers to explode. It’s just bad business.

But the story gets worse.

The service that has been forced on customers — without the option to “opt-out” and return to the old, stable system — cannot by any standards be considered a “Beta”. A Beta release is usually a Feature-complete release, that has progressed to the stage of minor bugs and inconsistencies, ready for extensive real-world testing.

Yahoo! TV Beta is still experiencing the types of major flaws that are supposed to be resolved prior to any public offerings. This is Alpha at best, not Beta. It should not be available to the masses.

A typical release cycle usually goes like this:

1. Pre-Alpha (sometimes) – The service is still crap, but someone, internally, wants to see it.

2. Alpha (this is where Yahoo TV beta really is) – It is still somewhat crappy, with major flaws still existing in the service. It is not yet feature-complete. Ready for internal testing to try and de-crapify it before going to beta. Not ready for the public.

3. Beta (where they claim to be) – Ready for “real-world” type testing. Sometimes made available for public testing.

4. Release Candidate(s) (they’re not even close) – Often made available to the public. Almost ready for primetime.

5. Final Release for public consumption and mass, non-exploding hysteria (are they even capable of this?).

The decision to go live with this so-called Beta service without leaving the old system intact was an absolute, total, and profound mistake. A mistake serious enough that in most industries, it would warrant the dismissal of the person responsible for making the ingenious decision. They have released the “exploding concept car” of interactive web services. Shouldn’t someone be fired and possibly publicly humiliated for that?

Shame on Yahoo!. You are treading in the waters of bad business. Do it for long enough and you are likely to drown.

Scott | October 7th, 2008 at 9:36 pm

Amen.