My Yahoo! Blog

TV fans: you spoke, we listened!

Your feedback on our first attempt at new TV Listings was emphatic: it was too big, too clunky, and too limiting. So guess what we’ve done over the past few weeks? We rebuilt it, taking into account the things you asked for.

We’ve fixed several things
• The listings grid recognizes your theme and better fits into various column layouts.
• We revised the prime time defaults (8 p.m for ET and PT, 7 p.m. for CMT).
• If you click on a show and come back, the listings now “remember” where you were.
• Your favorite channels on Yahoo! TV will appear in your TV Listings on My Yahoo!.

We’ve also given you a lot more control
• Want a grid that suits your layout? You choose to display 1, 2, or 3 hours at a time.
• Are you a night-owl or an early bird? Set “primetime” to be any time you want!
• You can choose to have the listings start out at primetime OR at the current time, and then use the “Now” and “My Primetime” links to jump between them.
• Seeing wrong times at the top of the listings? We now show you the time zone associated with your account and give you a link to the profile page where you can update it.

(Just click on the “Module Options” gear icon to adjust any of these settings.)

We’ve got more work to do
In some browsers, there are display issues if you have too many hours in a grid that is too narrow. If this is just too much to bear, consider moving the listings to a wider column or use the “Module Options” to display fewer hours.

Some of you are still having trouble finding listings for your area, and we’re sorry about that. We are working with the listings data provider to sort these out on a case-by-case basis.

And we are working with the team over at Yahoo! TV to increase the number of show titles that have links to more detail. Please stay tuned.

Thanks for using My Yahoo! and enjoy the new listings!

–james

My Yahoo! Product Manager

More news about TV Listings.

As a product manager on the My Yahoo! team, part of my job is to figure out what users want. Right now, that’s pretty easy: you want your TV Listings to work! So I wanted to give you an update about what we’re doing with the TV Listings.

I’ll start with a bit of good news: we’ve restored TV Listings on the original My Yahoo!. If you haven’t done so already, you can switch back and check out your good ol’ TV Listings.

A couple of things to note:

• If you are an AT&T My Yahoo! user, it may be another 24 hours or so before the fix gets to your page.
• Clicking “Edit” in the TV Listings module will take you to a page that allows you to choose your favorite channels for the new My Yahoo! Beta. We’re investigating options for restoring the same functionality for the original My Yahoo!.

Now, some of you are probably wondering: what on Earth happened? As the previous blog post mentioned, Yahoo! moved to a new TV Listings provider. Here on the My Yahoo! team we’ve been busily preparing for the switchover, but last week we found out that we weren’t as ready as we thought. We’re sorry for the inconvenience it has caused you.

So what are we going to do about it? In addition to restoring the TV Listings on the original My Yahoo!, we’ll be working hard to improve the TV Listings on the new My Yahoo! Beta. You’ve told us we can do better, and we agree, so we’re going to make the module faster, better looking, and more customizable. We’re also going to work with the Yahoo! TV team to improve the process of setting up your favorite channels.

And we’re going to continue to refine the overall experience in the beta. You’ve given us tons of valuable feedback and we thank you for that.

Regards,

James
My Yahoo! Product Manager

TV listings update.

Many of you have experienced problems with your TV Listings module. We want to first apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you, and give you an update on what we’re doing to fix the problem.

What happened?
Yahoo! TV upgraded to a new listings provider in an effort to provide you with more comprehensive and more accurate listings. This upgrade provides more HD channel options and greater time zone accuracy. Unfortunately, this change resulted in a poor experience for many My Yahoo! users.

What are my options?
- If you upgraded to the My Yahoo! beta for an improved TV experience, we want you to know that we’re not quite done with the new My Yahoo!. We hope that you’ll stay tuned for improvements coming in the next few weeks and want to remind you that you can switch back to original My Yahoo!.
- If you’re still using original My Yahoo! (not the beta), we recommend that for now, you access your TV listings directly from Yahoo! TV (http://tv.yahoo.com/listings) while we work to address the problem.
- You can find more details on the Yahoo! TV blog.

Please check back here for updates in the coming days. Thanks for your patience.