TV Guides Net events
Gemstar-TV Guide International is expanding its presence over the Internet at a time when most companies have had to scale back online initiatives.
TV Guide, a subsidiary of Gemstar, on Thursday launched Web Guide, a new online service that lists daily Internet events.
The Web Guide, which is found on TV Guide's Web site, will feature Web events in the well-recognized TV Guide grid format along with online chats, interactive games and contests. Additionally, TV Guide Online will feed the information to other properties such as its magazine, the TV Guide channel and interactive television.
TV Guide is joining Net giants such as AOL Time Warner and Yahoo which already offer similar event listings over the Web. The launch of Web Guide also comes at a time when a number of companies have been scrambling to regain lost momentum in their Internet initiatives and online services, partly because of an overall slowdown in Web advertising sales.
The idea behind Web Guide is to expand TV Guide's popular program listing service to people who want to have immediate access on what's happening over the Net, the company said in a statement.
Web Guide becomes a main section of TV Guide Online and events listed will have a direct link to the event itself. Visitors will be able to surf for programming via event type, Web site, time and date, and also have the ability to sift through various categories such as music, sports, television and news.
TV Guide said some 40 Web sites are already participating in Web Guide, including CBS MarketWatch.com, RollingStone.com, Seventeen.com and SciFi.com.