Entertainment information provider Tribune Media Services (TMS) has announced a partnership with Placecast which will allow mobile application developers using the Placecast MatchAPI to easily integrate TMS movie showtimes and theatre locations into their offerings. As a result, mobile device users running these applications will have access to the most accurate and up-to-date movie schedule information available for near-by theatres.

TMS is a leading source of movie schedules, providing showtimes for 71,000 screens in more than 13,000 theatres across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Placecast MatchAPI is a free set of tools enabling developers to manage location data. It aims to resolve the often time-consuming and complex problem of correcting location data so that companies can focus on improving their services and attracting marketing support. It does so by disambiguating (deduping) addresses – identifying that all of the different ways to express the address of a location do in fact refer to the same place on the planet. Secondly, it maps all the relevant IDs from different content providers to that same place on the planet, so that it is always referred to correctly by any other system. Since the launch of the Placecast MatchAPI three months ago, more than 350 companies have signed up to use the service.  

“Placecast’s MatchAPI fully leverages our movie showtimes and solves the biggest challenges in working with location-based content today,” says Jay Fehnel, chief operating officer of Tribune Media Services Entertainment Products division. “It makes sure the listings always refer to the correct place in the real world, and makes it easy for developers to add TMS showtimes to their offerings.”

TMS is prominently featured in the newly-launched Placecast MatchAPI Partner Gallery, a free resource that connects companies that have unique geo-content, with developers building location-based applications. This underscores the emerging trend for local content owners to offer the most valid and relevant geo-data to consumers via various mobile services such as apps and text-messaging. The MatchAPI Partner Gallery is available here.