From now on, the line
from __future__ import unicode_literals
should be contained in every single Python file lest we run into any more 2.x/3.x issues.
Going forward, we're likely to develop on 3.x only and would likely miss subtle bugs otherwise.
It needs to know the channel and the title of the list, because the ids change every time you browse the channels and are attached to a 'VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE' cookie.