@tnt wrote:
Language premiere probably should be disabled (or hidden/removed) for the shows originally in English. At least while only English is allowed for language premiere.
That would probably be expanded, but is kept short for testing purposes I guess.
Also it may be useful to include runtimes. An episode may run originally on BBC with a timeblock of 50 minutes, but may be shorter for it's timeblock on netflix or longer with a commercial tv network that runs advertisements inbetween.
It also seems that the alternate listing is not implemented in the calendar as of yet, which pretty much kills the need for alternate dates in my opinion.
@tnt wrote:
DId I get that right, and global premieres (Netflix, Prime Video, etc.) are not supported and alternate lists are limited to local networks/web channels only?I see them in the list of web channels, but the policy explicitly excluding global channels.
@gazza911 wrote:
Under the draft policy, we'd not be allowed to add Netflix as the streaming premiere (though it could be flagged as the English language premiere).Personally I think you should allow two streaming premieres:
1. From the country of origin
2. Global
Indeed, the current draft policy only allows for the "BBC vs iPlayer" scenario. A global channel like Netflix picking up a random English language show is not covered by any of the alternate list types.
I understand that it's tempting to include these cases in the alternate airdates system, and I don't want to fully rule that out yet, but I don't think it's a great idea. The other cases are pretty straight forward: once an episode premiered there it's very likely to stay available, for everyone who can access that service.
But when a global Web Channel like Netflix acquires the rights to an existing show it's very unstable. They'll add a show just to remove it again a year later, to re-add it again the next month but only make it available for European users and block access in America. Tracking that accurately requires a system that automatically scrapes Netflix and the likes for the availability per country, instead of a contributor-based system. And what value would it have to anyone that Netflix had the episode available a year ago but not anymore, or that it's available to half of the world which may or may not include them?
@Thomas wrote:
That would probably be expanded, but is kept short for testing purposes I guess.
But even then the show's original language needs to be removed from the list, so you can't create a German premiere for the show in German, French for French etc.
@david wrote:
Indeed, the current draft policy only allows for the "BBC vs iPlayer" scenario. A global channel like Netflix picking up a random English language show is not covered by any of the alternate list types.
Obviously it's not my place to say, but as with the DVD lists, you seem to be putting a lot of time and effort into a feature, but then limiting its potential use to a very small number of scenarios, making it less useful than it could've been. I thought you'd want the people to use the fruits of your labor more often?
They'll add a show just to remove it again a year later, to re-add it again the next month but only make it available for European users and block access in America. Tracking that accurately requires a system that automatically scrapes Netflix and the likes for the availability per country, instead of a contributor-based system.
The show can be removed from the network's streaming service in the same manner. But this does not change its premiere date, right? And since we track only premieres, we don't need to think about the show's availability or other properties. We only save the date when the show was first released on a given service, local or global, that's all.
@tnt wrote:
Obviously it's not my place to say, but as with the DVD lists, you seem to be putting a lot of time and effort into a feature, but then limiting its potential use to a very small number of scenarios, making it less useful than it could've been. I thought you'd want the people to use the fruits of your labor more often?The show can be removed from the network's streaming service in the same manner. But this does not change its premiere date, right? And since we track only premieres, we don't need to think about the show's availability or other properties. We only save the date when the show was first released on a given service, local or global, that's all.
I think tnt has a valid point here :)
Indeed, unless we're planning on fundemental changes and listing every single re-run, I don't see why we wouldn't handle global web channels the same as everywhere else.
@tnt wrote:
Obviously it's not my place to say, but as with the DVD lists, you seem to be putting a lot of time and effort into a feature, but then limiting its potential use to a very small number of scenarios, making it less useful than it could've been. I thought you'd want the people to use the fruits of your labor more often?
The alternate airdates are actually built on top of the DVD ordering. If I'd waited until the architecture supported both DVD ordering and alternate airdates, we wouldn't have had DVD ordering until now :)
The show can be removed from the network's streaming service in the same manner. But this does not change its premiere date, right? And since we track only premieres, we don't need to think about the show's availability or other properties. We only save the date when the show was first released on a given service, local or global, that's all.
@gazza911 wrote:
Indeed, unless we're planning on fundemental changes and listing every single re-run, I don't see why we wouldn't handle global web channels the same as everywhere else.
But you have to think about whether tracking a certain piece of data is actually meaningful. I can think of a use case for all of the scenarios covered by the draft policy so far. For example, streaming premiere is useful for cord cutters who don't have access to cable, and broadcast premiere is the opposite: useful for people who prefer to watch it on broadcast TV instead of on demand. Language premiere is useful for fans of a foreign language show that can't watch it until it's subbed or dubbed. Country premiere is useful for fans of a foreign show, and to be able to match translated episode names with the originals.
But what is the value in tracking the exact date(s) that Netflix premiered "The Office", when that show is only available to Netflix subscribers in a single country? What is the value of tracking the exact date(s) in 2014 where Netflix premiered "Once Upon a Time" in a couple of countries, while it has been completely removed from its catalogue since? (Serious questions! It's unlikely that these scenarios will be allowed, but if I was 100% sure I wouldn't be asking)
Also, many thanks for the feedback and testing so far! FYI: I might move this thread to the public forums later to get a broader feedback.
@david wrote:
streaming premiere is useful for cord cutters who don't have access to cable
Not all networks have their own streaming service. Many of them have deals with Hulu or Netflix instead, who stream new episodes weekly, the next day after the broadcast premiere. FX Networks would be a good example, with "FX on Hulu", which they calling "The new streaming home of FX Networks".
But what is the value in tracking the exact date(s) that Netflix premiered "The Office", when that show is only available to Netflix subscribers in a single country? What is the value of tracking the exact date(s) in 2014 where Netflix premiered "Once Upon a Time" in a couple of countries, while it has been completely removed from its catalogue since? (Serious questions! It's unlikely that these scenarios will be allowed, but if I was 100% sure I wouldn't be asking)
You're talking about past shows, while I'm more concerned about current and future shows. For example, I don't have access to Australian TV, but I like Australian TV shows, so I'm interested when those shows became available globally on Netflix. Or anime, which usually premieres on Japanese networks, and later became available globally on Netflix or Prime Video.
So it has a great value for people, who do not rely on piracy to watch TV shows from abroad.
@tnt wrote:
You're talking about past shows, while I'm more concerned about current and future shows. For example, I don't have access to Australian TV, but I like Australian TV shows, so I'm interested when those shows became available globally on Netflix. Or anime, which usually premieres on Japanese networks, and later became available globally on Netflix or Prime Video.
Anime would be allowed as English language premiere. But as for the Australian future show, that still wouldn't tell you anything, right? We'd add streaming premiere dates for Netflix, but you would have no idea if it would actually be available on Netflix in your country.
I just moved this thread from the Trusted Contributors forums to the general forums, to allow for some additional feedback before finishing the implementation.
If you just arrived at this thread: please start by reading the draft policy at https://www.tvmaze.com/faq/50/alternate-airdates-draft and check the alpha implementation at https://staging.tvmaze.net/shows/1079/fear-the-walking-dead/episodelists. If you can't access the "create new alternate list" on staging (it's limited to Trusted Contributors), refer to https://static.staging.tvmaze.net/uploads/images/original_untouched/0/343.jpg.
Any feedback on it all, including what the people before you commented on it in this thread, is welcome! :)
@david wrote:
We'd add streaming premiere dates for Netflix, but you would have no idea if it would actually be available on Netflix in your country.
That's the same for any Netflix (or other global Web Channel) show right now.
We don't track geo-restrictions, nor current availability so we wouldn't loose anything by not supporting availability in alternate lists, whereas we do loose out by not allowing streaming premiere to be a global Web Channel.
@gazza911 wrote:
That's the same for any Netflix (or other global Web Channel) show right now.We don't track geo-restrictions, nor current availability so we wouldn't loose anything by not supporting availability in alternate lists, whereas we do loose out by not allowing streaming premiere to be a global Web Channel.
We just had a long discussion about this over chat which I won't try to summarize, but to reply to this specific point: but shows that have their world premiere on Netflix (Netflix originals) are very likely to be available in the entire world, and indefinitely. So this is currently rarely a problem, but allowing this for alternate airdates would cause great confusion.
I updated the draft policy to note that the "country premiere" list may always be used when the airdate owner policy is in effect. Additionally, I whitelisted the top three most used countries for generic use of the country premiere list.
This type of list can be used to indicate when episodes are aired for the first time in a different country from where they premiered. It may be used when the "airdate owner" policy is in effect, e.g. when we are not using the world premiere dates. Additionally, it may always be used when episodes premiere for the first time in the following countries:
@ United States
@ United Kingdom
@ Canada
@gazza911 wrote:
1. Not selecting anything displays "Unknown" as the title, but "World Premiere" in the dropdown to select alternate list
2. In the above, it is not displayed under Show | Episodes as there's already a World Premiere
3. Selecting 'Language Premiere' but not a language causes an unhandled error, rather than an error message
4. Alternate Lists dropdown has a hardcoded width, so x country premiere always gets cut off
5. You can have multiple country premieres for the same country
6. Edit Alternate List button still displays for standard contributors (but they are correctly denied access)
Most of them fixed, thanks!
#3 I couldn't reproduce in the first place, could you double check?
#4 I have to leave for @Jan
@gazza911 wrote:
Verbatim order"The name should be left empty so that the original episode names are automatically used."
This probably shouldn't apply to merged episodes when the original network marks it as a 2-parter / has two production codes, but actually broadcasted it as a single continuous episode.
Good point, edited.
@tnt wrote:
In terms of usability: manually entering the season and episode number for alternate streaming/broadcast premiere seems redundant. If they are the same as in the world premiere, they should be inherited (same as the episode name), and manual entry should be required only when the alternate premiere has a different order of episodes.
I agree, this isn't very data-entry friendly. For technical reasons they can't be automatically inherited though, they will have to be stored together with the alternate episode entry. But what I could do is - for some list types - automatically pre-fill the season & episode number once you selected a linked episode.
@Thomas wrote:
Also it may be useful to include runtimes. An episode may run originally on BBC with a timeblock of 50 minutes, but may be shorter for it's timeblock on netflix or longer with a commercial tv network that runs advertisements inbetween.It also seems that the alternate listing is not implemented in the calendar as of yet, which pretty much kills the need for alternate dates in my opinion.
Hmm, good point, the runtime is likely to be different for a lot of the supported scenarios. In the current UI we don't display runtimes in the episode list though, so there's no way to actually display this information for alternate episodes. But I'll consider adding the field already so we can start collecting this data for future use.
@david wrote:
I agree, this isn't very data-entry friendly. For technical reasons they can't be automatically inherited though, they will have to be stored together with the alternate episode entry. But what I could do is - for some list types - automatically pre-fill the season & episode number once you selected a linked episode.
This would do. The fewer data need to be entered manually, the less space for error :)
