TV Time founder readies Bingers as shutdown sends fans looking for a new app

TV Time users are about to lose a familiar way to track shows and talk about episodes, and the app’s original founder is trying to give that community a landing spot. Antonio Pinto says he is building Bingers, a new TV-tracking app meant to carry over watch histories and recreate parts of the social experience that made TV Time sticky.

The move comes as TV Time prepares to disappear from app stores on July 15, according to TechCrunch. For everyday users, the immediate issue is data portability: years of watched episodes, ratings and comments can vanish when a consumer app shuts down unless there is a clean export path.

Pinto, who is based in Paris, originally built the service under the name TVShow Time. He sold it in 2016 to Whipclip, now Whip Media, after the company said its Los Angeles connections could help expand the app’s audience, according to TechCrunch.

TV Time later became a widely used tracker for shows and movies. App intelligence firm Appfigures says the app has recorded more than 26.4 million lifetime installs. A Change.org petition opposing the shutdown has drawn more than 25,000 users, TechCrunch reported.

A new app built around imports

Bingers is designed to let TV Time users bring over their archives. TV Time offers a GDPR-compliant export tool, meaning a data download process tied to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, which gives users rights over access to personal data. Users must export their TV Time data before the app is removed from app stores, according to TechCrunch.

Pinto says Bingers can use those archives to rebuild users’ viewing records and restore TV Time community comments. The import tool is already available on the Bingers website, so users can upload their archive before the mobile app launches.

Pinto told TechCrunch that Bingers is expected to arrive on Apple’s App Store and Google Play by the end of July 2026. Until then, the Bingers website is taking waitlist sign-ups to notify users when the app is available.

Why TV Time became hard to sustain

Pinto says Bingers will try to fix performance and cost problems he saw in TV Time. In a blog post on the Bingers site, he said TV Time had been part of his life for years and described the community reaction threads after episodes as a personal ritual for him and many users.

He also said he wanted to rebuild TV Time’s strongest features while correcting the parts that frustrated him. According to Pinto, TV Time’s server costs were high, and its premium subscription covered only about 10% of those expenses because the community was so large.

Server costs are the ongoing bills an app pays to store data, process requests and keep features running. For a social tracker, that can include watch lists, user profiles, comments, notifications and activity spikes when popular episodes air.

Pinto claims Bingers has been built with lower infrastructure costs in mind. He also says the app should respond more quickly when users mark episodes as watched, including during periods when many people are using the service at once.

Whip Media is winding down TV Time as it shifts focus to artificial intelligence, TechCrunch reported earlier this month. Bingers now gives TV Time users a narrow window to preserve their viewing data and, if Pinto’s plan works, keep a fan community from scattering across less social alternatives.

This story draws on original reporting from TechCrunch.