TV Time closure prompts Paris founder to launch Bingers app
A Paris-based entrepreneur is building a successor app to rescue 26 million users left behind after TV Time’s owner shut the platform down to pivot toward AI.
TV Time, the television tracking application with more than 26.4 million lifetime installs, is shutting down. Its owner, Whip Media, is winding down the service to shift its focus toward artificial intelligence.
The impending closure has triggered a significant backlash from the platform's dedicated user base, with more than 25,000 people signing a petition to halt the decision. The outcry highlights the difficulty of dismantling established digital communities. In response, Antonio Pinto, the Paris-based original founder of the app, is developing a direct replacement called Bingers.
Pinto sold TVShow Time to Whip Media, then known as Whipclip, in 2016. At the time, the company promised that its Los Angeles connections would significantly grow the application's user base.
However, the platform ultimately proved financially unviable under its new ownership. Pinto noted that TV Time’s premium subscription revenue covered only about 10% of its server expenses, a structural deficit that drove the shutdown.
Bingers is being engineered to avoid repeating those economic mistakes. Pinto claims the new architecture will drastically reduce server costs, ensuring the platform can remain sustainable even when millions of users log on simultaneously to mark episodes as watched.
The transition relies heavily on European data regulations. Users can export their viewing history and community comments using TV Time’s GDPR-compliant tool before it is removed from app stores on July 15. Bingers is already accepting these archives through its website to pre-load user data.
“Sad because TV Time was part of my life for so many years. And sad because this community was like my other family,” Pinto wrote.
“I decided to build the new home where the TV Time community could go. I wanted to rebuild all TV Time[‘s] great features, but also fix everything that always bothered me.”
The new application is scheduled to launch on the App Store and Google Play by the end of July 2026. Until then, the Bingers website is collecting sign-ups for a waitlist to alert users when the app is ready.
