Scintillating SHite conversations
Nov 19, 2019 20:34:17 GMT
Post by Norman ‘Whiplash’ Mailer on Nov 19, 2019 20:34:17 GMT
forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/tv-guide-and-tv-listings.901170/
There is absolutely nothing worthwhile in this thread, but I’m noting it here because it may very well be the most banal conversation ever documented in the English language.
WLL
Carrick Doone
Dillydipper
Alan G
WLL
WLL
The Panda
The Daily Buzzherd
Chazro
Jimac51
There is absolutely nothing worthwhile in this thread, but I’m noting it here because it may very well be the most banal conversation ever documented in the English language.
WLL
I have been thinking again recently about the old weekly digest-sized TV GUIDE magazine that I imagine almost all the North Americans in here grew up with:p! I'll assume the magazine-sized later-years version is still in business, but I didn:t gander it when I took a look at the magazine stand of my local Walgreens' recently:rolleyes:...The Annenberg family were behind it, but they sold it long ago:nauga:...
In their ongoing reduction of the amount of pages you get for the money while charging you ever more for it, day newspapers have reduced the size of their TV listings,,,For an example, the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE used to dedicate a full jp of the daily to TV listings, and s week-long TV supplementson Sunday...Now it's 1/2 page daily and just daily listings for Sunday on Sunday, a weekly TV nagazne on Sun is a seperste - paid - subscr:realmad:ipion!
In their ongoing reduction of the amount of pages you get for the money while charging you ever more for it, day newspapers have reduced the size of their TV listings,,,For an example, the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE used to dedicate a full jp of the daily to TV listings, and s week-long TV supplementson Sunday...Now it's 1/2 page daily and just daily listings for Sunday on Sunday, a weekly TV nagazne on Sun is a seperste - paid - subscr:realmad:ipion!
Carrick Doone
I can share a story about TV Guide though it isn't really mine. I had a friend many years ago who had one musical obsession and a few downright OCD patterns. One of them he shared with his wife. Throughout the 70s and 80s, while she was pregnant with their children and after, they both would snip out and catalogue TV Guide descriptions. How do I know about this obsession? One day in the 90s he proudly showed me the folders of catalogued descriptions they had saved with highlighted ones being those that he or his wife deemed accurate. They clipped out descriptions of every show they watched - as if this was a perfectly normal behaviour.
Along with this, my friend had the best stories of him getting into minor difficulties and humourously getting out of them. It's been years since I've last seen him. I'm sure he has more.
Along with this, my friend had the best stories of him getting into minor difficulties and humourously getting out of them. It's been years since I've last seen him. I'm sure he has more.
Dillydipper
The "sad thing" about TV Guide, isn't all that sad if you think about it. They decided to change to make it a bit more like the magazines in the stands where most of them were being sold - that is, the tabloids, geared towards a more general-interest, lower-calibre reader. More stars, less issues about the business, more fluff and hype, less detail and journalism. But then again, that had been going on constantly since I started reading it (cover-to-cover, I was such a teevee geek) in the '60s.
But the landscape was changing at the same time in the world outside the checkout line. Not only were the grids running out of space for what people needed to know, but they were finding it elsewhere. Cable offerings were making TV Guide's original format unusable, and the internet was becoming a better place to access specific information, chat and news about specific programming (just like the changing landscape of news itself: no longer would general-audience-targeting satisfy somebody who preferred news only about subject he was interested in, or opinions about the news only he agreed with).
And, you had a machine in your house that not only showed you your entertainment, but showed you a grid with everything on it. How could a weekly tabloid compete with that, and retain dominancy. Heck, the magazine couldn't even compete with their own cable channel, and the cable company's own in-house grids were still challenging the relevancy of that!
Today I'm still the biggest TV geek I know. Only I may (may!) only purchase one TV Guide magazine a year...as well as perhaps the Entertainment Weekly Fall Preview, which I find more targeted to readers, not to magazine advertisers looking for dolts. And yes, I go out looking for specific information on the shows I want to watch specifically, because whatever passes for Google in my life, is much more helpful than anything on newsprint I could pick up in the checkout line.
Nowadays because of the complexity of the scheduling of broadcast, cable, premium and streaming choices - and because I prefer quality and personal preference over convenience - my information is trickier, and most wouldn't put up with it. I keep a list of shows we watch, according to where they are, and when they are currently running. I update my info as often as I need, checking Wikipedia entries for the shows themselves, as the sources don't tend to be as forthcoming with their own information anymore (competition, and just wanting to make viewers jump through hoops, I suppose). It's hard, but it's worth the effort for me.
But the landscape was changing at the same time in the world outside the checkout line. Not only were the grids running out of space for what people needed to know, but they were finding it elsewhere. Cable offerings were making TV Guide's original format unusable, and the internet was becoming a better place to access specific information, chat and news about specific programming (just like the changing landscape of news itself: no longer would general-audience-targeting satisfy somebody who preferred news only about subject he was interested in, or opinions about the news only he agreed with).
And, you had a machine in your house that not only showed you your entertainment, but showed you a grid with everything on it. How could a weekly tabloid compete with that, and retain dominancy. Heck, the magazine couldn't even compete with their own cable channel, and the cable company's own in-house grids were still challenging the relevancy of that!
Today I'm still the biggest TV geek I know. Only I may (may!) only purchase one TV Guide magazine a year...as well as perhaps the Entertainment Weekly Fall Preview, which I find more targeted to readers, not to magazine advertisers looking for dolts. And yes, I go out looking for specific information on the shows I want to watch specifically, because whatever passes for Google in my life, is much more helpful than anything on newsprint I could pick up in the checkout line.
Nowadays because of the complexity of the scheduling of broadcast, cable, premium and streaming choices - and because I prefer quality and personal preference over convenience - my information is trickier, and most wouldn't put up with it. I keep a list of shows we watch, according to where they are, and when they are currently running. I update my info as often as I need, checking Wikipedia entries for the shows themselves, as the sources don't tend to be as forthcoming with their own information anymore (competition, and just wanting to make viewers jump through hoops, I suppose). It's hard, but it's worth the effort for me.
Alan G
Wow, TV Guide. A must have at one time, my parents started a subscription in 1958. There was a handful of channels then. Seemed like issues stayed 15 cents for decades. You’re right, Dillydipper, the news part of it was much more in depth behind-the-scenes stories and star profiles, NOT program ads disguised as articles.
I got a gift subscription for TV Guide a couple years ago and told my gifter to stop. The guide was not local, as it used to be, but time zone, I think, so PBS was never correctly called. Plus, there are a billion channels now. They can’t possibly cover it all. Sad, but TV Guide has become irrelevant.
I got a gift subscription for TV Guide a couple years ago and told my gifter to stop. The guide was not local, as it used to be, but time zone, I think, so PBS was never correctly called. Plus, there are a billion channels now. They can’t possibly cover it all. Sad, but TV Guide has become irrelevant.
WLL
....Some years ago I was discussing old TV GUIDE in a now-gone forum connected to a magazine from Iola, Wisconsin (The now-defunct COMIC BUYER'S GUIDE'S " CBGX-tra " forum). This was maybe about the time TVG switched to its current magazine format at which time they were a sponsor at a comics convention I went to that year - Wondercon, at the Miscone Center in San Francusco - with attendees getting a plastic handout bag one side of which had the version of the TVG logo the mag was using at that time.
On that board the question of vintage TVG collecting came up. It was presumed, I think?:confused: that New York or LA copies might be the most common - but would they? It sorta seems to me that a lot of people emigrate to America through those two cities or move there from elsewhere in America for job/" making it ":nauga: reasons, and often don't stay there forever...and, for residents in NYC proper, would that many people think they had space to store old TVGs:eek:?
On that board the question of vintage TVG collecting came up. It was presumed, I think?:confused: that New York or LA copies might be the most common - but would they? It sorta seems to me that a lot of people emigrate to America through those two cities or move there from elsewhere in America for job/" making it ":nauga: reasons, and often don't stay there forever...and, for residents in NYC proper, would that many people think they had space to store old TVGs:eek:?
WLL
...Yeah, the old Annenberg (One if whom was Nixon's ambassadorato the Court of St. James) 70s TVGTVG " concerned ", " serious ", articles...kind of examples of the old " proper " media which is long-gone!!!!!!!!!!!:laughup:
I recall a rotating political commentators column during the Nixon era, 4 different commentators rotating, so monthly or so each. I saw it commented once that TVG was ' one of the last strongholds of magazine illustration " - I recall Jack Davis cartoon covers, others? I remember this lovely, sorta retro, portrait of Lucille Ball cover by the same artist who did Bette Midler's first album's sleeve. I remember, when my family went from our Westchester County, N.Y. home (getting the N.Y.C. edition) to visit her family in East Texas (where I think the edition had Texarkana in it) seeing that week's issue in my aunt's TV room that I had already seen up North...and being shocked when it had a page if one:label gag cartoons that wasn't in our home edition:yikes:? An unsold ad page, obviously, now I see.
I recall a rotating political commentators column during the Nixon era, 4 different commentators rotating, so monthly or so each. I saw it commented once that TVG was ' one of the last strongholds of magazine illustration " - I recall Jack Davis cartoon covers, others? I remember this lovely, sorta retro, portrait of Lucille Ball cover by the same artist who did Bette Midler's first album's sleeve. I remember, when my family went from our Westchester County, N.Y. home (getting the N.Y.C. edition) to visit her family in East Texas (where I think the edition had Texarkana in it) seeing that week's issue in my aunt's TV room that I had already seen up North...and being shocked when it had a page if one:label gag cartoons that wasn't in our home edition:yikes:? An unsold ad page, obviously, now I see.
The Panda
You would have died walking the halls. Every cover was made into a high quality matted print available for free to anyone who asked for it. The halls were lined with fantastic covers (Mr Ed, Avengers, Hitchcock, Murrow, Lucy, Berle, Kovacs). But the covers were only available for 3 months. I was lucky enough to get under the wire for the John Lennon cover. Fantastic painting
The Daily Buzzherd
Listings have been a mess since cable took over in The '80s ...
I knew TV Guide was gonna be collateral damage but in retrospect
it was a good blueprint for how to list shows in an easy to understand
format. We bumped it in favor of lesser-known Cue Magazine* for a
while, but TV Guide was by far the easier to digest. Just a simple
run through the hours of what was on. No grids, just listings.
The only way one can get listings for Roku channels often is through
Facebook. No thanks.
* Likely a misspelling.
I knew TV Guide was gonna be collateral damage but in retrospect
it was a good blueprint for how to list shows in an easy to understand
format. We bumped it in favor of lesser-known Cue Magazine* for a
while, but TV Guide was by far the easier to digest. Just a simple
run through the hours of what was on. No grids, just listings.
The only way one can get listings for Roku channels often is through
Facebook. No thanks.
* Likely a misspelling.
Chazro
T.V. Guide
Yellow Pages
Sears Catalog
....sadly, add to this so many great magazines that are no longer with us. While the content's been replaced by the internet, we've lost something precious.
Yellow Pages
Sears Catalog
....sadly, add to this so many great magazines that are no longer with us. While the content's been replaced by the internet, we've lost something precious.
Jimac51
Seeing the phrase "Annenberg family" breaks me up. Local(Philly) ties,the old man,Moe,cornered the market for horse racing info(a big deal 100 years ago)was, if not a gangster at least gangsterish,with union fights,owning both political folk and police,eventually cornering the Philadelphia media market with son Walter's Triangle Publications ownership of the Philadelphia Inquirer(from the old man),the Philadelphia Daily News,WFIL-AM radio and WFIL channel 6(where American Bandstand started and rescued ABC from oblivion) and,yes,the 15 cent weekly digest that for many years was the number one selling magazine,TV Guide. A creep,a crook and,yes,a billionaire,but one nasty person. Sub-headline on Slate for his obit:So long,you rotten b#$tard.