Generic listing

A TV listing is considered generic if it is generically describing an entire series, rather than a specific episode. Generic listings are frequently seen from data provider Tribune Media (data supplier to Schedules Direct), and probably other providers, when the broadcasting station hasn't supplied information for the specific episode. Aside from the description being generic, these listings typically have no subtitle or a program ID ending in zeros.

MythTV has database fields in several of its tables to tracks generic listings, which permits creating recording rules that ignore generic listings.

For example, this code:

  "ALTER TABLE program ADD COLUMN generic TINYINT(1) DEFAULT 0;",
  "UPDATE program SET generic = 1 WHERE "
  "  ((programid = '' AND subtitle = '' AND description = '') OR "
  "   (programid <> '' AND category_type = 'series' AND "
  "    program.programid LIKE '%0000'));",

from mythtv/libs/libmythtv/dbcheck.cpp, shows the criteria used to initialize the generic field in the program database table.