Blog
TV Genius Puts Intelligence into Television Listings
Thursday, June 30, 2005, posted by Tom Weiss
Fed up with receiving hundreds of TV channels yet you can’t find anything worth watching amongst the endless lifestyle programmes and reruns of ancient sitcoms? And you keep missing your favourite shows because you didn’t even know they were on? TV Genius (http://www.tvgenius.co.uk), the intelligent online television guide which launches today, has the answers.TV Genius starts with the proposition ‘what do you want to watch’, rather than feeding viewers long-winded tables of TV listings for multiple TV channels, which can be time consuming and confusing to browse. Tom Weiss, the inventor of the TV Genius, explains: ‘I realised viewers want to know two things: when their particular favourites are screening and to check if any other programmes take their fancy. The current system of publishing listings in a big table doesn’t meet these requirements.’
He adds: ‘The old Radio Times and TV Times concept of publishing your full listings for each channel and simply letting viewers browse through them is completely out of date. It worked when there were just three, four or five channels but now we have more than 350 channels available in the UK, it’s almost impossible to know what’s on television. When I began thinking about this, I discovered TV industry professionals have been discussing the implications of the multi-channel universe for years. But the debate has focused on whether the channels themselves have a future rather than taking account of the consumer’s point of view. And that’s where TV Genius comes in!’
Providing a faster and simpler alternative to other TV listings, TV Genius lets users carry out key word searches for the programmes they want to watch. The system also includes filters to make the results more useful and sends SMS or email reminders so registered users don’t miss their favourite shows. It is designed to be user-friendly, informative and functional.
‘We’ve designed a site where viewers catch all their favourite programmes and also know what else is available to make their viewing more enjoyable,’ says Weiss.