A high quality electronic program guide (EPG) is an essential component of any television broadcast website today, as it has become the primary means for viewers to discover not only “what’s on” right now but also in the following time slots. When supported with simple social media messaging, such as linking to an EPG on a station’s Facebook or Twitter page, it becomes possible to reach a wider range of viewers proactively and draw them to a broadcast.
Without an EPG, broadcasters must hope that viewers will find their broadcast by flipping the dial at a time that something is airing that might be of interest. The odds of this are low.
Sourcing and deploying an EPG doesn’t have to be difficult, time-consuming or expensive.
Some EPGs are very simple, such as TitanTV’s What’s On widget. This simple listing contains the salient immediate information about a station’s programming. A station can drop a snippet of HTML onto your web site, or utilize XML data feeds, to create the desired look.
Other EPGs, such as TitanTV’s Next Gen Guides, feature show cards and other visual content to engage and educate viewers. These guides also contain the ability to monetize page views with digital advertising.
A “community guide” is also available. This option allows a station to publish the lineups of all the OTA channels in their market. With a community guide on its site, a station may effectively become the one-stop shop that viewers within that market will rely on to discover local television program schedule information.
Maintaining a program schedule, of course, is necessary to publish an EPG. A scheduling tool that interfaces with an EPG allows for the broadcaster to update the lineup when needed. Though the EPGs offered by TitanTV are automatically prepopulated by our third-party data provider, the company provides tools that can be used to edit and update program titles (such as customizing paid programming titles and descriptions) and manage social media links. Once published, the changes made locally will appear in the EPG, ensuring the lineup and program data displayed on the guide to visitors is accurate and up-to-date.
TitanTV has been a proud supporter of the LPTV industry for many years and look forward to strengthening our relationships with LPTV stations. They can assist in finding the right EPG solution for your station.
