[ excerpt from developer's website ]

XMLTV is a set of programs to process TV (tvguide) listings and
manage your TV viewing. It stores the listings in an XML-based
format.

The idea is to separate out the backend (getting the listings) from
the frontend (displaying them for the user), and to implement useful
operations like picking out your favourite programmes as filters
that read and write XML documents.

WWW: http://xmltv.sourceforge.net/