Build your own TV station.
Televism is the lovechild of MadTV and Hattrick — in your browser and on your phone: build your own TV station, battle your rivals for ratings every day, and climb into the next league.
The setting
Welcome to Quotistan
You run a private TV station in the Quotistan of the '90s — and share your league with real players. Plan your broadcast day today; tomorrow it airs and earns you league points. At the end of each season the best stations are promoted and the rest go down. What counts is who knows their audience better and builds the smarter schedule.
Tactics
Plan your broadcast day
Get ready for the next match day and set your line-up: 24 slots, from the morning programme to the late-night film. Editorial deadline is kick-off. Every title can sharpen your station's profile — or bring in cash today.
The heart of it
Fight for the ratings
Viewers have their own tastes, and the market never stands still. Analyse the last match day, spot the shifts early and work out which programme will make your audience tune in next time.
Sourcing
Source titles from the distributor
The best titles aren't on the shelf forever. Buy from the distributor, trade with other stations, or grab the cheap blockbuster — even if it doesn't really fit your programme.
Economy
Fund it through advertising
“I don't even 'ave a car, senorina.” Adverts work and they stick. But above all they fund your station. Estimate your viewer numbers correctly to land effective ad contracts.
Core mechanic
A day as programme director
Every match day begins with decisions whose effects only show days later — and none of them stands on its own.
Strategy
Viewer tastes keep shifting. Bet early on the emerging crime-drama boom before it pays off? Spot trends too late and you lose — misread them and you invest in the wrong direction.
Tactics
The right content is scarce. Land good crime dramas on the market, improvise with weaker programming — or buy the dirt-cheap fantasy blockbuster that doesn't fit your station at all? Meanwhile the ad agency dangles a lucrative kids' contract.
Economy
Every decision ties up capital. You pay for tomorrow's titles today, while ad revenue only comes in after broadcast. And somehow you still need to get a few housewives in front of the TV so the league points roll in.
Every match day is a balancing act between ratings, money and the station you want to build in the long run.
What we stand by
The fun manifesto ranks above any single mechanic. If a feature violates a principle, the feature is wrong — not the principle.
Decisions, not busywork
Success comes from judgement, not from repeating clicks. Recurring tasks can be automated or delegated.
A fair shot for latecomers
Account age buys no unbeatable lead. Start later and better decisions still take you to the top over time.
Few rules, deep play
Complexity grows from the interplay of a few rules — not from the number of systems. Understand television and you understand the game.
Time is no substitute for strategy
Invest more time and you refine the details — but the edge is small and capped. Time replaces neither strategy nor understanding of the system.
Your station. Your decisions. Your ratings.
Whether a big blockbuster, a bold niche or a clever ad deal: every slot can move your station forward.
From the dev blog
All posts →Full Throttle into a Dead End
The heart of my TV game rewarded, of all things, boredom. The concept lab let me fix that faster than ever before – so fast that at some point I no longer noticed where the journey was actually going.
Read more →Reports of Its Death Are Exaggerated
Agents write the code, test it and review it. Does that make the SDLC dead? My one-man project suggests otherwise: it's not the handovers that disappear, it's the waiting in between. And what gets handed over changes.
Read more →The Dark Factory
Working with my agent runs smoothly – and yet I feel blocked, because during the implementation I'm just watching. How the wish for more efficiency turned into a factory that writes its own story on the merge request.
Read more →