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.

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?

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.

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.

Very interesting information! Thanks!

Bye

Lets get it fixed.

BM

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

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!

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m gone.