Yahoo TV Is Now Useless

So, I used to use “My Excite” as my little personal portal. It had good TV listings, which is always important. But many years ago, as Excite was was burying its content under more and more ads, I switched to “My Yahoo!”. Which was even better. Great TV listings. So even now, when I don’t have cable or satellite, I found it valuable.

But then they changed. They upgraded to super fancy TV listings full of AJAX-y action.

But do you know what sucks?

THEY CAN’T GET TIMEZONES RIGHT!

It’s been quite a few months now, and they still can’t get my timezone right.

For seven or eight years, I had no problem with localized listings. Although for a few of those years I was in the blessed Eastern Time Zone. But even when I moved out west - no problem.

But now, apparently Yahoo! has invested all of their resources into flashy features but they can’t tell me when a tv show is on according to the time in my area.

Absolutely useless.

For a while, I’ve gotten by with using the TV listings on the “My Yahoo!” page. It didn’t have all of the fancy features, so somehow it managed to get the times right. But as of today, I’m told that I have to use the new fancy-ass “My Yahoo! Beta”.

First thing that happens when I visit the My Yahoo! beta?

“We don’t support Safari….”

Goddammit. Many of their other upgraded YUI based sites work fine in Safari. I can understand them saying this months ago, which was the last time I looked at the new beta. But to still be having an issue? While trying to be a shiny partner of the lovely iPhone? What’s up?

Anyways, I clicked the “live on the edge” button to see the new page. There were the TV listings. In the wrong time zone!

I submitted an email months ago about this and got the “yeah, we know, we’re working on this” response.

I know that time zones are a bitch to work with, but come on: this shit has worked for years. And now it’s been how long since the launch of the fancy new Yahoo TV section? Six months? Seven? Surely someone could have worked this out by now.

I’m so disappointed. Yahoo! was always one of the most reliable web sites. And I appreciate what they’ve given to the developer community with YUI! and other tools. But this little TV listing issue just takes the cake. It makes it absolutely useless, and now “My Yahoo!”, which has been my ‘home page’ for years, is all but useless as this became such a valued resource as their other sources stopped working.

Very frustrating.

And I’m still looking for a good TV listing site. But all I’ve come up with, so far, is pretty much bullshit. Wrong channels, inability to properly remember channels, too many ads, hard to access listings, slow display…. Augh.

Pissed.