Zap2it

• 1. Founding And Early Evolution

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  Tribune Media Services began offering online listings services to Prodigy in the late 1980s. This early work laid the groundwork for a branded service called TV Quest. The company launched TV Quest on AppleLink in 1993. It later moved to Apple's eWorld and then to the internet by the mid-1990s. The Zap2it website officially debuted in May 2000. This new site combined three existing properties: TVQuest, MovieQuest, and UltimateTV. UltimateTV brought breaking news and live celebrity chats to the mix. Its Promo Lounge area featured video clips and interviews. The earliest version of Zap2it focused heavily on films and television alongside original web content. It listed short films and interactive games from partners like Atom Films and Shockwave.com.

• 2. Editorial Expansion And Features

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  The editorial pages received a major redesign in 2001. By early 2003, the focus narrowed strictly to television and film. An agreement with Fandango in 2005 introduced online movie ticketing for select theaters. Blogs arrived in 2006 with titles like It Happened Last Night offering show recaps. These blogs expanded rapidly over the following years. In 2007, users gained click-to-record functionality for TiVo digital video recorders. This allowed remote scheduling directly from the listings page. A blog called TVOvermind launched in 2008 dedicated to episodic recaps. BC Media Group purchased that specific blog in 2012. The site also began playing an expanded role within Tribune Company by February 2009. It became the central aggregator for entertainment content from latimes.com and chicagotribune.com. A major redesign was planned for midyear 2009 to support this new function.

• 3. Rebranding To Screener

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  On the 3rd of October 2016, the site changed its name to Screener. This rebrand marked a shift away from the original Zap2it identity. Tribune Media announced the end of editorial content on Screener in April 2017. By January 2018, only the TV listings section remained active. The website reverted to the name Zap2it at that time. TV by the Numbers ceased operations at the end of January 2020. The editorial pages were completely removed during this period. Only the core data service survived the transition. The company stripped away all blogs and celebrity chats to focus purely on schedules.

• 4. Corporate Ownership Transitions

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  Zap2it syndicated its listings data to major broadcasting companies like Disney. It also provided information to Sinclair Broadcast Group. Pay television providers such as Wave Broadband, Cox, and Dish Network used the data. Publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post relied on the feed. These partners used the information online and within interactive programming guides. Yack data generated web listings while TMS handled television showtimes. In early 2007, Zap2it released enhanced

• 5. Data Syndication Ecosystem

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  listings with improved performance. Upgrades included better customization capabilities and sharing tools. A user rating system was introduced following a testing period. The product became available to affiliates after this rollout phase.

  Nexstar Media Group took the website offline permanently around the 25th of March 2025. The domain name began redirecting traffic to NewsNation schedule pages. This cable network is owned by Nexstar. Users could still find TV schedule grids under Gracenote's domain via their logins. By 2020, only the TV listings section remained before the final shutdown. The site had been taken offline abruptly without prior warning. The editorial content had disappeared years earlier in 2017. The legacy of

• 6. Final Shutdown And Legacy

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  the service lives on through the syndicated data streams. The original brand name Zap2it no longer functions as an active destination.