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What do you expect of your EPG?

ACMA has announced the minimum criteria expected of Electronic Programme Guides. But has it gone far enough?

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epg7The Australian Communications and Media Authority has declared a number of minimum standards for electronic program guides provided by free-to-air broadcasters.

The key ingredients are what ACMA identifies to be uniformly available on EPGs for viewers, but at the same time only promises to act if broadcasters don’t meet the criteria.

“In general terms, ACMA will consider formal regulatory intervention if it forms a view that the EPG offering from industry participants does not conform with these general principles,” Chairman Chris Chapman said.

“The publication of the EPG Principles provides guidance and assistance to those supplying EPG data for free to air digital television services, by establishing a clear performance benchmark.”

The key principles it has outlined include:

– A free EPG provided by all FTA broadcasters
– accurate timing information (including starting-times)
– a minimum of seven days of schedule information
– inclusion of parental guidance ratings

The issue of what constitutes an acceptable EPG however, surely goes much further than ACMA’s barebones  principles.

For instance, what is the point of having timing information if a network neglects to stick to it? Is ACMA now suggesting this bane of television viewing is now up for industry enforcement? We can only hope. Networks that are notorious for starting programmes late, always seem to manage their 6pm News starting on the dot.

Similarly, a seven day schedule dotted with ‘TBAs’ falls short of fulfilling its purpose. How will ACMA address networks which don’t release their information until days before airing? And what of programming changes -how quickly should a network be expected to update the information?

Other data overlooked in ACMA’s principles include “drill down” info such as synopsis, closed captions, repeat, movie year of release & country, widescreen and whether broadcast in HD or not.

ACMA only says its EPG Principles will need to be reviewed from time to time and that it will monitor the industry for compliance.

FreeTV Australia, which represents Free to Air networks, issued a supportive statement saying, “All commercial free-to-air networks have been broadcasting their program information over the air and in the clear for over a year and we welcome the certainty these principles provide the industry and Australian viewers.”

This week ACMA also announced the formation of a centralised Digital Television Branch to help with the task of bringing all viewers across to digital television by 2013, offering the industry a single point of contact.

41 Responses

  1. I have ahuge problem with the EIT epg for 9HD in Adelaide… it is shocking.. it doesnt say what is on. it just has the same data as the 9SD chanel with “HDTV Demonstration” at times when there is actually unique shows being broadacst oh 9HD… this is really poor. Common Nine!! Pick up your game

  3. I really do hope that people from the channels read these sort of discusions becuause they could sure learn alot.
    I agree with other re nine and not giving the title of the movie. ‘….At The Movies and then the synopsis is just pathetic, we dont even get the damn title!

    And something needs to happen with shows running on time. Maybe ACMA should be giving them a little kick in the behind.

  4. i think the 9 EPG data sent out reacts differently with different machines, or perhaps it is locality based but there are some people saying that the title is not available in the EPG at all, for me i see a listing of “saturday movie” etc at the first level, then i press the info button and i get to see the name of the movie, as well as a description and possibly some of the actors, but i cannot press info again and access more stuff, if i press info again it just takes me out of that screen and back to the first level. the second level does however often have sentences that get cut off, sometimes you can scroll down to see more but sometimes it is just cut off and there is no way to get the rest of it on my machine. it is quite possible that the software our machines use is treating the data it gets differently depending on your machine. because this results in some people not being able to find out the name of the movie at all i think that alone is enough reason for 9 to change its practices and list the movie title the way 7 or 10 do. if they want it to stand out as a movie rather than a show why not just put M- in front of the title like 7 does.

  5. To those here who think “on time” as far as EPG’s and programming goes is not important and there are bigger issues in the world – yes there are bigger issues, but imagine if all businesses worked like that. You local store opened at 9.15 instead of 9am. Your 11pm bus / train you missed because it left 10 minutes early. Or that last train of the night never turns up (Cityrail / Conex bad examples but still there is a point). A 2pm appointment is more like 1.50 or 2.15?

    Most modern life does not work on this basis where the time it is scheduled to is meaningless and not adhered to, so why should it on TV (In fact, in Fiji, they call it Fiji time, but their few TV channels run exactly on time!). We are in a highly developed country and not Iraq, Nth K, etc and businesses and services here should be run as such, and show respect for their viewers / customers / advertisors / clients, etc. Being on time is a sign of respect.

  7. Oh deary me, Paul of Perth. Life’s just too hard isn’t it? If only we could be more like China, Iraq or North Korea. I hear they all have great EPG’s and everyone is happy!

  8. It’s starting to sound like the ACMA is as useful as the Petrol Commishioner. All talk and absolutely nothing practical to help. We have been encouraged for years to go digital and now the Freeview crowd want us to change our STB’s & PVR’s to their new digital standard. How hard is it for a digital signal be sent at the start of and at the end of an EPG selected program. I am fed up with setting weekly EPG selected shows only to find that I managed to get half of them because of time overuns. If I were the TV channels I would be very worried about more people getting fast internet access as that is were I’ll be getting my shows from.

  9. I’ve noticed some confusion with users commenting on this story. I reckon the image of the ‘7 Guide’ is a little misleading. Everyone, this article actually relates to the program guide data seen on your set-top box information panel or EPG grid, not that channel which used to show a brief TV guide, news, weather, time etc. They’re now long gone and the networks have no intention of ever returning them (thankfully!)

  10. pressing the info button again (or equivalent) will bring up the synopsis which includes the title and film details. For 9 and 7 the detail seems top be cut off midway after a few lines while Prime and NBN tend to put whole details in

    the extra buffer you add each time is easy to add on but requires more work for your PVR (i.e more power more pollution more cost). That is a bigger cost than pressing info a couple of times a day for 9 movies

  11. Rob says:
    June 3, 2009 at 3:35 pm
    bindi your impatience makes you miss the movie not 9 syain its’ the Late Movie. It like complaing the PC takes too long to start up (30 seconds) when it should be quick (15 seconds). Some extra seconds make little difference compared to missing the program when it says it starts at 10.30 and comes on at 10.50

    huh? can you please explain i don’t know what you are talking about, are you saying that if i leave the EPG on screen longer it will show the title of the movie instead of “saturday night movie” etc on channel 9? coz i can tell you now it will not, i could leave it on screen till the cows come home it will always say the same thing. 9 always says some generic thing telling you it is a movie and if you want to know which movie it is you have to press the info button to see a more detailed description. the reason i miss these movies sometimes is coz i scroll through the EPG and i think that i have already checked that movie and know what it is and didn’t want to watch it, but sometimes i haven’t checked it and i did want to watch it. i don’t do this with 7 or 10 though because i can see what movie it is straight away without having to stop scrolling and push the i button. if you thought i was talking about missing movies due to not allowing for a buffer i was not, i always add at least half an hour to the end of 9 movies. it is simply the added and unnecessary inconvienience i am talking about.

    also i agree that 7 and 9 writing everything in capitals is annoying.

  12. The most annoying thing with the old EPG was having to sit through the entire day’s programming to get to the time you wanted to see.
    Three side-by-side lists of daytime, primetime and offpeak would be a lot easier.

  15. i must be the only person in australia who doesnt care about an EPG. I never use the damn thing! As for programs starting on time, to be honest, most nights i just watch ch7, flicking over to ch10 on the ads, so it doesnt matter what time a show starts or ends. I just get all my time/day info from the ads.
    But i do admit, the only time i use the epg is to pick a movie to watch on a sat night, and its bloody annoying when the only information they have up there is ‘Saturday Night at the movies’. Thanks ch9, but i could’ve worked that one out on my own!

  16. FTA networks are from the stone-age, if only they had any idea how many more viewers they’d have if they published the broadcast information accurately and completely. They’re probably still trying to understand what this new-fangled ‘internet’ is all about…

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