Sporting Event Start Time Will Not Show In Guide Until That Exact Time

In the guide, when an event is on ESPN or any other channel, if it is say, college gameday leading into a basketball game, it will not show up under the guide in the "Sports" section because it isnt playing at that exact moment.

example: ESPN2 is airing an episode of 30 for 30, which will not show up in the sports section of the guide, because it isnt sports. That episode ends at 12:59pm, and there is a basketball game between Iowa and Iowa State scheduled to air at 1:00pm.

If I go into the guide and sort by sports at 12:59, it wont return the Iowa/Iowa State game, NOR the ESPN2 channel because it isnt "currently airing."

at 1:00pm however, it will show up!

Is there a way to have the Sports section return results for any "channels" if there is/are a sports event scheduled to air in the next 30 minutes, on that channel?

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No there is not. The guide shows filtered channels based on what’s currently airing.

If you’re using the Apple TV version, it has an entire Sports Section you can enable (I assume you mean the Sports channels collection) which shows all sporting events that are currently on, as well as the events that are coming on later in the day.

Additionally, you can see future sporting even airing in On Later.

One strategy is to create your own Channel Collection for sports. You can manually add any channel as well as set Automatic Channels rules for channels to be automatically added based on what’s currently airing.

For mine, I add the normal sports channels then add the Sports category to the Automatic Channels rules.

This way the normal sports channels are always in my Sports collection, and then any other channels broadcasting sports events will fill in at the bottom.

You can learn about Channel Collections here: Channels Support - Channel Collections

When using Channel Collections, you’ll lose all of the ones that are automatically added. But you can recreate them easily with the Automatic Channels rules by setting genre, etc.

Or just make your own. They’re great.

i guess my next question is, how do i request this behavior?

Basically, a guide that shows any sports channels that are showing a “sports” event now or in the next… whatever time frame is shown on the guide

like, the answer to the question “can you show me a grid style guide of any sports events that are on now, or will begin to air in the next x hours”

like if i went to the tv guide channel and said “sort by sports only”

There’s no plans to change the existing behavior.

How do I request this behavior?

I suppose you just did.

The developers have noted the request, and responded with their intentions.

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If you can point out a request in this thread that i made, i would love to see it. i asked how i would request it, and a developer responded with “it’s not in the plans” which is both not an answer to my question, and also unrelated to asking if this a) exists currently and b) how to request it.

thank you for your input though!

I apologize if I misconstrued your posts. Let me see if I can better address your questions.

Solely using the guide metadata based collections, no. The point that Jon was making is that with Channel Collections, you can replace the default collections with one of your own. In this instance, you can add the channels that regularly air sports in addition to the dynamic sports content. Going back to your example, if you create your own collection, you can have the "Sports" category set to always show ESPN regardless of whether there is a sporting event currently airing.

As I implied with my post, I believe that when you made that post, you were effectively making the request. (And Jon's response to that post was a developer both acknowledging your request, and essentially denying it. And Eric's "liking" of my post I took as a second developer confirming that the current situation would not change.)

If you wish to "formally" make a feature request, I believe you can edit this thread (or create another one) to make it one that can be "voted" upon.

“effectively” making the request and actually making a request are different!

look, i work in software development. it’s ok for people to be told no when they request something!

it just needs to be formally requested and formally denied

they don’t have to support my request, just like i don’t have to support this project.l

I understand you are a big supporter! that’s great! however, this post was technical question directed to the developers of the application to which i pay a monthly fee.

Thank you!

The Channels forum is a bit informal; being a "community" forum—you can tell from the community in the hostname—interactions are a little less rigid here. However, this "community" has been blessed with active developers who regularly interact and respond to users.

Since responses from 2 of the 3 developers on the "community" forum was not the formal response you sought, perhaps you should formally request responses from the development team directly via support@getchannels.com .

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So, this isn't exactly a solution to the issue in the Guide or On Now, which will never solve this problem due to how it works.....but hopefully this will help.

As of the latest TestFlight beta for tvOS/iOS, all guide airing modals for future sporting events will now offer a "Watch Channel" button, to allow you to tune directly to the channel it will be airing on.

You will find this scenario while viewing upcoming sporting event airings in On Later or in the Sports Section.

So for example, you know that a game is coming on, but you can't find the channel, and it doesn't show in the Sports channel colleciton due to how it works, because it's not on yet. Visit On Later or the Sports Section, and you'll see that sporting event listed as coming on soon.

Click it to view its details, and you'll be offered a Watch Channel button. So now you can quickly find it 5-10 mins ahead of time, and get to watching the channel live.

Tested and can confirm it’s working perfectly from the Sports section. Nice addition!

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