This is a greatly re-written version of a long AP article, released 7/26.


TV Guide, which has been a money-loser for years, will relaunch itself in October as a large-format magazine containing far fewer listings, and greater emphasis on lifestyle and entertainment articles.

These radical changes come as TV Guide struggles to remain relevant, since many viewers get their listings from the Internet or from on-screen guides provided by cable and satellite companies.

The magazine will also eliminate its 140 local editions and will instead publish one national edition, with either an Eastern or Pacific time zone designation.

And the magazine will lower its cover price to $1.99 from $2.49.

Sounds like I'll be getting my quarter's worth (subscription price).
That mag's been largely illegible for years anyway.
Nothing like the first few decades of its existence when there were so few channels and everything was a snap to find.

TV Guide already has a lesser known (yet still localized) large size edition that some markets use in addition to the regular size. Those editions, the few times that I've seen them, are sometimes variants of the regular edition and have a layout similar closer to satellite guides than the regular size editions.

While TV Guide's listings haven't been all encompassing in decades, at least in any of the markets I've lived in, the decision to go to one national edition seems to force the viewer to seek the alternative venues for what's airing on their local channels. Soon, the local TV Weekly books that newspapers put out may become more helpful than TV Guide, especially for schedule research purposes in the future.

My subscription's running out soon, and it's become too much of a fanzine for my tastes. Wonder if it's worth it to renew.

This reminds me of a story...

A few years ago, I was home from college on spring break. One Saturday morning, the parents and I went to the grocery store. When we got back, Dad got the mail, which included the TV Guide whose listings started that day. He told Mom, "you know, if they keep delivering this so late, we might have to cancel our subscription," and they both laughed.

When we got in the garage, I asked Mom what was so funny about that. The answer: "Oh, our subscription ran out two months ago. They haven't stopped sending it yet." :-)

(And to keep this on topic...yeah, TV Guide is pretty damn worthless these days.)

About a year after I got digital cable with the on-screen schedules, I made the deicsion and dropped my subscription after about 25 years. Technology has made it obsolete (although the Sunday papers are going to have a field day for a while, particularly with their more elderly readers).

I think the amazing thing is that TVG enjoyed a monopoly in TV listings national magazines for as long as they did. I would think that someone would take a shot at them, particularly after Murdoch bought the magazine and diluted the articles content (yes, there was a time when TVG articles were readable). Maybe it's too expensive in this country, particularly to do all of the editions that they had to do.

Well, it's now just another celeb mag, fighting for newsstand space with all of the other celeb mags.

As one of the TVGuide collectors on this board, it's kind of sad to think that TVGuide as we know it will no longer be. But, in some ways, the past few years it wasn't even TVGuide as we know (knew) it. I agree with the comments of other posters who felt the quality has really slipped in recent years. The handwriting has probably been on the wall for some time now. I remember a comment in ATGS from someone who worked at TVGuide, that stated something to the effect of "give it five more years the way it is, then things will start to change". That comment was posted about five years ago!

I'm in the camp that thinks TV Guide is almost totally irrelevant now that satellite dishes and TiVos all have on-screen guides that duplicate the TV Guide-style grid to a T, or maybe even a U. My idea would be to stop publishing a paper version altogether and move to a strictly online distribution with a couple of different subscription levels: browse the site (with no listings) for free, see today's listings only for a small amount, and full access to all listings would cost a, um, less-small amount.

And those few articles with any historical interest? Print 'em.

My subscription is set to expire with the 10/9 issue - as it turns out, the final one of the old format. I paid 23 cents an issue for my subscription and it hasn't been worth it.

Although a month ago I finally switched over to the DirecTV-specific version, which is slightly less useless.

I can only assume they'll "accidentally" send me a few issues of the new version, too.

Back when I was 3 years old in 1960, I could read (not write, but read). The local paper actually did an article on me and noted "one national magazine that comes to the house is considered to be Ray's and he insists on reading it first" or something like that. Yup, TV Guide. (That's how I learned to read, such words as "BUICK" and "PHILCO."

Now, the magazine seems aimed at a 3-year-old. I gave up on TV Guide when it started running as many covers on movies as it did on TV shows. There was a time when it ran high quality writers - Edith Efron, Cleveland Amory, Mel Durslag, and many others. At a time before regular newspaper coverage of TV (except in the largest cities) it was a rare center for critical comment on TV, as well as news.

In short, it's sort of followed TV's decline. Yes, I loves me my online programming guide, but it was nice to have everything at a certain hour listed together by channel, complete with writeups.

One wonders if it would be feasible for somebody to try to start over again.

I stopped buying TV Guide when it basically became the house organ for the FOX network.

It's not even about TV half the time anyway, with its several-times-yearly NASCAR covers and frequent forays into movie coverage.

Besides which, if I want to know what's on TV, I have my Comcast set-top and plenty of places on the Internet where I can look for free instead of paying whatever to buy it.

Screw that. There are too many ways to get TV listings for free for me to be willing to pay TVG one thin dime. And NOBODY would pay a micropayment (which is a concept that is a can or worms anyhow) for a single day's listing. End-users aren't the way to go.

What they COULD do is move to a more corporate structure, and provide listings to other web sites, to use how they liked, for a fee, which the web sites could then provide as a fee service (if they were stupid and didn't want to make money) or as a value-add to drive traffic.

Ah, I remember the January 1984 issue that had Bill, Jack, et al. on the cover (which most of you have).

Brian

The Jehovah's Witnesses distribute Mad magazine?

Which had not one thing to do with everything you quoted.

I remember the December 1975 issue with Baretta star Robert Blake on the cover along with Fred.

Great! So it'll be just like the ones in hotels, that say: CBS--Local programming--6:30.

A perfect reason to cancel my subscription.



Sure, but the NASCAR covers sell, don't they? Regardless, NASCAR is on television, and pulls in pretty good ratings to boot.

Would you rather have a cover with Jacko?

No, because he's not pertinent to television either.

Lots of things are on TV. Lots of things sell. Do you REALLY think they do those NeckCar covers to appeal to television fans?

Mainstream TV fans? Hell no. NASCAR fans? A good set of them are dumb enough to snap up anything that says "NASCAR" on it. From a monetary standpoint, its very understandable why TV Guide does it.

Still, everything past the "feature articles" is crap anyhow.

And if they put the future Danica Howard on the front wearing a tank top and some Daisy Dukes, they'll snatch up that Maxim crowd to boot.
TV Guide is about TV like The Biography Channel is about biographies. Peter Falk as Columbo? Great television to be sure. But it's got nothing to do with biographies. Just like most of that station's programming.
ObMysteryMovie: Peter Falk was on a TV Guide cover during the summer of 1976.

Absolutely it is. I'm not questioning the marketing wisdom of the decision. I know a guy who sold the box from a tube of toothpaste that had some kind of NeckCar marking on it on Ebay. You could sell used toilet paper to a NeckCar fan, if you could convince them the smear on it looked like the number of a driver.

"See, look, if you scrunch up your eyes it kinda looks like an 8."

"Yee-haw, Cletus! Dale Jr.! WHOOOOO! Just GIVE him your wallet!"

However, you were defending NeckCar covers as being topical to television, and now you've just admitted they're not. Pick one.

/going to take a right turn and return my dishes to the sink.
//realizes the concept of a "right turn" just confused all of the NeckCar fans.

Only tangently, in the regards they're aired on TV and have related programming on.
In the grand scheme of Television? Not at all.

...which was my original point in the first place.

I was pretty well tired of the non-TV covers (and particularly their twice-monthly COLLECT ALL 12 NASCAR/STAR TREK/WHATEVER COVERS THIS WEEK! multiple-cover nonsense) when earlier this year TV Guide couldn't get the magazine delivered to me on time anymore. Meaning, for example, the issue for this current week might show up this coming Saturday. A hell of a lot of good that was doing me. So I cancelled in April and I haven't missed it (DIRECTV's paper guide and the on-screen listings work just dandy).

I really didn't use TV Guide anyway, but it was a quarter an issue, and I had been a reader for thirty years. It was more of a habit than avid readership these last few years.

Will I pick up the last issue in the digest format? Probably. Just for the sentimental heck of it.

Below are comments I made on another message board (Radio-info.com) earlier tonight...I think they are pertinent here.



"This whole thing is reflective of what they think viewers/readers want.."star" interviews and features. TV Guide used to be a big part of my week from 1965 on..In compiling different TV Guides for the Classic TV "Retro" schedules (On Radio-Info/Classic TV) I was struck by how interesting the TV Guide Articles were. In the early years they had writers who would report on the local scene for each edition, As well as New York and Hollywood Teletype. In summary TV Guide has gone the way of The medium they write about..Shallow and about 90% bland entertainment"

End quote

TV Guide In the last 8-10 years at least has become basically irrelevant to me. And definitely not worth $2.49 an issue.

You plugged-in types need to remember (as does TVG) that the vast, VAST majority of TV watchers aren't going online to get their listings and probably never will. These people don't have satellite (heck, some don't even have cable), don't have TiVo, and they still want to know what's coming on.

There HAD to have been a market for a printed listings magazine, and TVG simply failed to meet the simple needs of that audience. Now they're giving up. We'll still have the history (and thanks to DrBear for bringing back wonderful old memories by dropping names like Efron, Amory and Durslag) and I'll still have my quarter-an-issue subscription for a few more months, but this change seems like the biggest boneheaded move yet. What inroads could they possibly make in that already crowded niche?

My personal favorite example of TVG cluelessness (at least among those that haven't been mentioned yet) was their slavish obsession with continuing to publish the VCR+ codes LONG after that particular technology had slipped into irrelevance. Nothing cramps your desperate need for space more than a meaningless eight-digit number AFTER EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM LISTING!

As someone else mentioned earlier, the printed listing of choice will now be the even-more-woefully out of touch Sunday newspaper supplements which, ironically, most people will still refer to as their "TV Guide".

The "TV Week" in the paper here, The Patriot-News, is a wonderful, concise magazine with awesome listings. It's the best TV supplement in a paper I've ever seen.

I can't help thinking that the absence of the tailored listings for local areas is going to wind up bringing a TV listings magazine back into the fold...

I should put in a plug for what was my favorite part of TVG for the longest time -- David Lachenbruch's Q&A column on TV technology. I can't recall the name of the column (though I'm sure someone here will refresh my memory!, but the questions ranged from "why did I get channel 6 from New Orleans on my TV in Glens Falls, New York last night?" to "my son threw a toy at the TV... is it safe to use the set with a chip in the screen?"

Also, the talk of a larger-format TVG reminded me that Rochester was one of the test markets for a large-format TVG back in 1991. I still have issues from roughly half of the test run, including the first and last test issues and the large-format version of the 2000th issue... and it's interesting to see that even the myriad of changes made during the test never detracted from the magazine's usefulness. Sadly, the same can't be said for the "improvements" in the current incarnation, never mind what it's about to become.

I canceled my subscription a couple of weeks after TVG decided that separate, full-day listings for each day of the week was too much to handle. I haven't missed it.

Glad to, David. TV Q&A was also my favorite. Now, though, I like the Televisionary's online column.

In recently looking at TV Guides of which i am gathering a small collection..I had forgotten how interesting some of the writers were like Durslag, Efron, Cleveland Amory, Neil Hickey and others..While there were enough "puff" Pieces Most articles, even involving the stars, were interesting and In depth. There was also Judith Crist and Gene Shalit with movie reviews..And fascinating articles about the future of TV..I have a TV Guide from early 1961 that has an article about NET and the future of Public TV..Mentioning WNTA/13 which was in the process of being sold (To eventually become WNET)..TV Guide was all about TV then..unlike today..

Something just occurred to me. TELL me they're not killing the crossword puzzle. After all, four year olds and the mentally challenged like working crosswords too... :)

Well, they'll probably still publish the monthly TV Guide crossword compilations to whet their appetite. :-)

I've been looking through my copy of the hardback compilation of articles that TV Guide put out decades ago (from the era of Amory and Efron), and it pains me somewhat to think that the content in that book alone probably surpasses most, if not all, the articles that TV Guide has published in the past 20-25 years (or longer).

TV Guide used to be one of those magazines which (to paraphrase an alibi for reading another magazine) you could read for the articles. Not so anymore.


I actually have a friend that still uses the VCR+ codes to this day. She, however, is the only one I know that does.

I realize my knowledge of the TV Guide is almost Horan-ish, but anyway....

I, too, echo a lot of what Drbear said. I, too, could read before I could write, and TV Guide was one of the magazines I could read. As a result, it became my favorite, and especially after I started noticing that the channels were different when you went on vacation, that was fascinating to me.

To me, the bottom started dropping out in three phases:

2003 (June in some spots, September in the rest): Daytime listings get consolidated down to M-F grids.
2003/2004: 11pm to 5am (8am for weekends) no longer include out of town broadcast stations.
July 2004: Overnight listings replaced by a grid which only goes to 1:30am. 1:30am-5am (9am on weekends) listings gone ENTIRELY.

As I said before, I can only hope another magazine might come along with listings that fits people's needs.

But TVG's parent company owns VCR+. Of course they're going to flail that dead house as long as they can, although one wonders if the average TVG reader has a VCR, it's always flashing "12:00." :)

A brief tribute to TVG's spinoff mag Panorama, which was either too hip for the room or ahead of its time in 1979-80. Nobody's done a TV mag like it before or since.

Here's some thoughts on TVG's imminent implosion from Jeff Jarvis, former TV critic and now uberblogger:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2005/...nking-magazine/

I think that either TVG will come to their senses or another publisher will fill the void with a listings mag. If anything, the local papers will sharpen their offerings. There are still quite a few people who use TVG; we may all be AARP members but we use it.

Seems they were just warming up starting the listings on Sunday instead of Saturday... :P

It's sure to be interesting. Anyway, save whatever small issues of TV Guide you have in your collection...

Here where I get the TV Guide, they cut off a lot of stations and also my guide is downsized a whole lot. Not as big as it used to be.

And in my Howard Hands, I hold this week's issue fresh from my post office box. To their credit, the cover story is about prime time crime time super show Law & Order and its myriad of companion programs.
But sure 'nuff, there in the upper right corner of the periodical is a photograph of The Danica accompanied by the burning question "Her week to win?".

Aaron: I can push it back a little further. At least as far back as 1998, I remember being p***ed off that the copy I got in the mail had Law & Order on the cover, but the newsstand had the cover I really wanted, (South Park). Show some respect to your subscribers!

I second the notion that this is a boon (if temporary) for the local newspapers' Sunday editions. As it is, the one advantage mine has over TVG is the name of the host for SNL. (C'mon, TVG, you can't get the advance listing for a rerun?) I reckon that as most people get cable and Internet access, it will go like this: Buy the Sunday paper to read about individual shows that are coming up. Check the onscreen schedule if you're bored and you just want something to watch. Go online if you want detailed episode information.

That's OK Aaron, some of us still love you...

RIP, TV Guide...it was a great 52 yrs, gonna miss ya. :-(

Chuck Donegan (The Saddened "Chuckie Baby")

There's always the People Puzzler, which has one photo clue to make it even easier for today's super-busy mentally challenged.

While it doesn't surprise me, I didn't know TV Guide had been losing so much money. Was it already going in the crapper when Murdoch bought it, or can we blame it on him?

The first inkling to me that the mag was turning into a rag was in those commercials for TV Guide in the mid-1990s where that Disney woman (Althea, Anthea, something like that) was heard to say, "TV Guide's not safe anymore. We take risks.", thereby sending the newsstand weekly on its opening journey toward the road to sensationalism.

I don't think Murdoch would have paid [dr.evil]three BILLION dollars[/dr.evil] for something that was already going in the crapper. But it's also unfair to blame him completely. New technologies certainly played a role.

Earlier, Aaron summarized the moves of the last couple of years which were at the very least frustrating to those of us who have followed TV Guide over the years.

Here is something else that happened in July 2004 which, in hindsight, also foreshadows this move... did anyone else notice that the local editions no longer had a channel legend at the beginning of the TV listings? Those cable editions that required conversion tables still had their legends, but editions such as the South Georgia one... where each network is represented by as many as eight different affiliates... were now useless unless you already knew which channels were being shown where.

My main sadness comes in knowing that, until a couple of years ago, TV Guides put together an incredible history of the genre. (I learned a lot about early television by perusing old listings on microfilm back in the day.) It's hard to imagine how we'll be able to get such a detailed account of what has gone before in television without it.

It's sad, but we'll certainly move on...

I'm a lil' young. What exactly was VCR+?

IIRC, it was an easier system to set your VCR. Instead of having to go through a lot of steps, you would punch the program code (usually a 5 or 6 digit code, found in TV Guide, and I think other TV listings as well) into the special VCR+ remote, and everything would be set.

The commercials aired in the early-90s.

Originally it was a device that looked a little like a calculator that you would set up, and you could punch what were called PlusCodes into them (which were anywhere from 4 digits and up....I remember Sharks games being six digits long, and they got longer with more "complicated" record times, like those TBS 7:05 starts and such) which you could get out of TV Guide and other sources, and it would program your VCR for you. (Or it might have just been a complicated universal remote that started and stopped recording. I didn't have one in that form.) It was supposed to simplify the process. Then they started building the technology into VCR's so you could punch the PlusCode into them and it would automatically set up the VCR to record whatever the show was you were typing the code in for.

They were hot for a while, and then people realized that anyone who could figure out how to initially set up your VCR to work with this thing could probably figure out how to program it, so they fizzled quickly. Also, on-screen interfaces and what not got a little more user-friendly, so the usefulness of a device of that sort was lessened.

I still can't figure out why they kept doing multiple cover issues. Did they really see a spike in sales for those issues that made it worthwile? Maybe the fact that they kept doing them indicated there was a noticeable sales increase, but I don't know anybody who made a habit of buying every single multiple cover. Or, maybe they were just desparate and were willing to try anything until it succeeded...

Yes, and for us TVGuide collectors on this forum that was a major pain in the butt. You could still go to TVGuide's website and print off the channel charts for each edition, but I'm pretty sure most readers wouldn't want to be bothered. But you're right...in areas with a lot of channels, you had to just know which channels you could receive. I think this was a big mistake...even our local Sunday supplements still have the channel legend.

And the DaMN paper still has the Plus codes in their TV listings.

It's been years since we were subscribers to TV Guide, and even then it was "by accident". We had subscribed to a magazine called "Cable Plus" (I don't know if it was a national or regional magazine). And when our version went out of business in 1981, we were sent TV Guide as a replacement.

Strangely enough, there are still some VCRs and even hard disk recorders that have VCR Plus+. Talk about irrelevant...