TV Time, a show-tracking app with over 26 million lifetime installs, will be removed from app stores on July 15, 2026 TechCrunch. Antonio Pinto, one of the app's original founders, is building a replacement called Bingers, scheduled to launch on the App Store and Google Play by the end of July.

Pinto co-founded the app as TVShow Time and sold it to Whipclip — later rebranded Whip Media — in 2016 TechCrunch. The shutdown stems from economics rather than user decline. According to Pinto, TV Time's premium subscription tier covered only about 10% of the app's server costs, creating a shortfall that Whip Media chose not to sustain. The company has redirected its focus toward AI products, and TV Time — which let users log episodes, rate shows, and follow friends' viewing habits — was wound down accordingly.

The user response has been substantial. A Change.org petition against the shutdown has gathered over 25,000 signatures, a notable figure for what is typically considered a niche utility category rather than a core app. Pinto announced Bingers in a blog post at bingers.app/history before speaking with TechCrunch, positioning it explicitly as a lifeline for TV Time users.

Bingers' most important feature for user retention is data portability. The app will let users import their TV Time viewing histories using TV Time's GDPR-compliant export function — meaning years of logged episodes, ratings, and watch statuses can carry over intact rather than forcing a restart. For an app whose core value is a long-term record of what you've watched, losing that data on migration is a critical problem; a user with ten years of history has far stronger reason to stay than to start fresh elsewhere.

This is where GDPR regulation becomes relevant. The European regulation's Article 20 requires companies to provide personal data in a structured, machine-readable format on request. Whip Media built or maintained an export path to meet that requirement, and Pinto's new app now benefits from that compliance infrastructure — a case where a privacy regulation designed to protect individual rights ends up functioning as a de facto bridge for users switching between apps.

The underlying economics Pinto describes are common in this category. Tracking and companion apps for TV, fitness, and reading tend to accumulate large, engaged user bases that don't convert readily to paid subscriptions. Infrastructure costs grow with usage regardless of how many users upgrade, and a 10% cost-coverage ratio from premium subscriptions is difficult to maintain indefinitely, especially once a parent company's resources and attention shift toward higher-margin products like AI tools.

Bingers faces the same unit-economics challenge TV Time encountered, and Pinto has not yet disclosed, in available reporting, how the new app's cost structure or monetization approach will differ substantially from the original. What does differ is timing and positioning: Bingers launches with a ready-made, vocal, and demonstrably loyal user base actively seeking an alternative — a stronger starting point than most consumer apps have.

One detail warrants attention: the migration plan relies on TV Time's export function remaining accessible through and beyond the July 15 removal date. Any delay between the app leaving stores and users successfully exporting their data would undermine the continuity Pinto is promising. The available reporting does not specify whether there will be a guaranteed export window separate from the app-store removal deadline.

In my view, this situation reflects a pattern we have seen before with shuttered social and utility apps: a founder-built community product gets acquired, scales beyond what its monetization model supports, gets deprioritized when the acquirer's strategy shifts, and the original founder — or someone else — attempts to capture the displaced users under fresh infrastructure. Whether Bingers succeeds will hinge less on feature compatibility than on whether Pinto has actually solved the server-cost problem that sank the original app, a critical detail still not public.

Bingers' launch before the end of July will be the first real test of whether the user base — especially the 25,000-plus petition signatories — follows.