Available in English Alexa rank 487,318 (April 2014) | Website tviv.org Registration Required to edit | |
Type of site Television compendium wiki Slogan(s) "A compendium of television knowledge anyone can edit." | ||
The TV IV is a MediaWiki-powered website that was launched in July 2005 as a response to TV Tome becoming TV.com. It is in the top thirty wikis on the web in both size and views. Because English-speaking users generate the website, the content is primarily on English-language television programs, but all content is welcome.
Contents
Features
The TV IV has articles on all aspects of television with the major emphasis on programs. The site has no notability requirements and allows articles to be created for any program, episode, character, or aspect of a program, making it an often listed alternative to Wikipedia for information that doesn't fit Wikipedia's requirements. As of April 2013, it has over 5,800 program articles.
Another major focus is American-program scheduling and DVD releases. The TV IV's main page includes a listing of all new programs airing in the USA over the next two days and all TV DVDs being released on the following Tuesday as well as links to archives of both these data sets going back through 2006. In addition to the front page information the site includes current programming grids for both broadcast and cable networks and highly detailed future schedule grids for the broadcast networks. It also has historic primetime schedule grids going back to the beginnings of network television.
Due to its semi-narrow focus and not needing to adhere to a rigid database structure The TV IV is able to easily accommodate more trivial pages that couldn't easily be placed (or are unwelcome) on many other reference sites. In fact some of the wiki's most viewed pages are these non-traditional reference pages that work well in the wiki format such as music lists and timelines.
Reception
The TV IV has been hailed as a good use of a wiki format due to the large but specific topic and the potentially large fan base to draw from. It has also been touted as a good alternative to other Flash-heavy TV reference sites such as tv.com.
IVy Awards
Since 2006, the TV IV has been awarding The IVy Awards winners have included: Hugh Laurie, Kristen Bell, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Edie Falco, Jason Bateman, Patrick Stewart, Sarah Chalke, Summer Glau and Will Arnett.
Potential shutdown and reprieve
On December 14, 2014, it was announced via a notice on the TV IV main page that the TV IV would be shutting down on January 4, 2015 unless another server could be found to host the site, citing falling ad revenue and lack of time to maintain the site by the previous server host as the reasons for the potential shutdown.
On December 23, 2014, it was announced that due to finding a new server to host the site, the TV IV would continue.