Webchannel show not present in schedule API

For the schedule endpoint, if you don't specify a country it will default to US.

As the Web Channel that show airs on - Disney+ - is marked as a global Web Channel it won't appear on the US schedule.

The full endpoint shows regardless of country, hence why it's present there.

So there is no possibility to filter that series by date? It's rather inefficient to get the full schedule because of the amount of entries.

Also in my logic should all global series included in US or any other ISO filter. If it's global, it does not make sense it's missing on any filtering.

There's been many threads about it or similar:

https://www.tvmaze.com/threads/248/webchannel-schedule
https://www.tvmaze.com/threads/1134/nexflix-show-not-on-schedule
https://www.tvmaze.com/threads/1191/web-channel-shows-schedule
https://www.tvmaze.com/threads/2182/web-channel-shows-not-present-in-schedule-endpoint

etc.

So far not much has been changed so all I can give you is the information that you can only do it via the full schedule endpoint

Hm, ok. Thank you. I hope this will be fixed in the future. The API is great, but I (and many others too) can't understand this.

Moved to the API forums.

The schedule (on the site as well as in the API) only lists broadcast TV shows. The whole architecture of the schedule simply doesn't allow for webchannel "binge dumps" since it's not possible to list two episodes on the same combination of network+timeslot.

On the site this isn't much of a problem because tools such as the calendar or watchlist can be used instead. In the API, the full schedule endpoint has always been an acceptable fallback, but I agree there should be an easier way to retrieve these episodes with the ever increasing prominence of web channels. Let me think about this.

I have two ideas for exposing this in the API.

1. Create a whole new endpoint

e.g. /webschedule?date=2019-01-01 (all webchannel episodes on that day)
and /webschedule?date=2019-01-01&country=US (episodes from US-only web channels)
and /webschedule?date=2019-01-01&country= (episodes from global web channels)

2. Add a parameter to the schedule endpoint

e.g. /schedule?date-2019-01-01&country=US&web=all (broadcast US shows + all webchannel episodes)
and /schedule?date-2019-01-01&country=US&web=US (broadcast US shows + US-only web channels)
and /schedule?date-2019-01-01&country=US&web=global (broadcast US shows + global web channels)
and /schedule?date-2019-01-01&country=none&web=US (no broadcast episodes, US-only web channels)

I lean towards the separate webschedule endpoint (#1), since #2 has confusing semantics: the country parameter defaults to "US" while the web parameter would have to default to "none" to keep behavior for existing API clients unchanged and I don't want to introduce API versioning yet at this stage. The consequence is that you'd need two requests if you want the broadcast as well as the webchannel schedule though.

Thoughts?

We'd have to be careful with the new parameter.

Currently local Web Channels (I.E. US if the country paramater is set to US) are listed in the schedule endpoint.

We would have to imply that it's default the same as country if the Web parameter is omitted (to avoid breaking existing implementations).

If you wanted both global and US you'd have to make two separate requests.

Instead I'd propose that the parameter is just IncludeGlobal so that you'd always get local Web Channels and be able to get global if you wanted it.

Sorry for the late reply. I did not expect that somebody reply to this thread so fast (email notifications ftw).

Thanks a lot for your replies @david and @ gazza911. For me all options are ok.

But I understand gazza911's point to not break existing implementations. To prevent this an additional parameter would help. But more logical and much cleaner (in my opinion) is your 2nd option for me @david.

Any news about that topic?

For the time being I'm mostly waiting to see if there will be additional feedback.

Something new there? I could use the episodes endpoint, but there are no country information for the airdates. :/

Bump. ;)

Is there a chance, that there will be an option to get such cases in the near future?

I wouldn't mind this.

A new endpoint sounds like the better option and it would be something I'd be able to use with my current setup without too much hassle.

I've got a beta version of this endpoint ready. Mind that the implementation can still change until it's announced to be out of beta and listed in our API documentation!

For all web channel episodes: http://api.tvmaze.com/schedule/web?date=2020-05-29

For all global web channel episodes (not tied to a specific country, such as Netflix): http://api.tvmaze.com/schedule/web?date=2020-05-29&country=

For all local web channel episodes (tied to a specific country, such as Hulu): http://api.tvmaze.com/schedule/web?date=2020-05-29&country=US

That's awesome david! Thanks a lot. I will check it later if I've some time. :)

Is it correct, that if no webchannel country is set (null), it's a global aired episode?

@Pete77 wrote:
Is it correct, that if no webchannel country is set (null), it's a global aired episode?

If the webchannel is present, but the webchannel country is null then it means that it's not exclusive to a single country.

It doesn't necessarily mean it's global (although we list it as such on the shows index).

@gazza911 wrote:
If the webchannel is present, but the webchannel country is null then it means that it's not exclusive to a single country.

It doesn't necessarily mean it's global (although we list it as such on the shows index).

Ah, thank you. This is good to know and very helpful.