This article is about the television magazine. For on-screen schedules for broadcast television programming in general, see
Electronic program guide.
This article is about the US edition. For the Canadian edition, see
TV Guide (Canada).
is a North American weekly listings magazine about
TV shows.
In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and
crossword puzzles. Some issues have also featured horoscope listings.
History
[edit] Prototype
Lee Wagner (1910–1993) was circulation director of McFadden Publications in New York in the 1930s—and later for Cowles Media Co.—distributing movie celebrity magazines. In 1948, he printed
The TeleVision Guide for the New York area. On the cover was silent film star
Gloria Swanson, star of her short-lived "Gloria Swanson Hour." Wagner later added regional editions for New England and Baltimore-Washington areas. Five years later, he sold the editions to Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications, but remained as a consultant until 1963.
[1]
[edit] Annenberg/Triangle era
The national
TV Guide's first issue was released on April 3, 1953. The cover featured a photograph of
Lucille Ball with her newborn son
Desi Arnaz, Jr.
TV Guide as a national publication resulted from
Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications' purchase of numerous regional television listing publications such as
TV Forecast,
TV Digest,
Television Guide and
TV Guide. The launch as a national publication with local listings in April 1953 became an almost instant success with the magazine becoming the most read and circulated magazine in the country by the 1960s. The initial cost was just 15¢ per copy. In addition to subscriptions,
TV Guide was sold from grocery store counters nationwide. Until the 1980s, each issue's features were promoted in a television commercial. Under Triangle Publications,
TV Guide continued to grow not only in circulation, but in recognition as the authority on television programming with articles from both staff and contributing writers. Over the decades the shape of the logo has changed to reflect the modernization of the television screen. At first, the logo had various color backgrounds (usually black, white, blue or green) until the familiar red background became a standard in the 1960s with occasional changes to accommodate a special edition.
Under Triangle Publications,
TV Guide was first based in a small office in downtown Philadelphia until moving to more spacious national headquarters in
Radnor, Pennsylvania in the late 1950s. The new facility, complete with a large lighted
TV Guide logo at the building's entrance, was home to management, editors, production personnel, subscription processors as well as a vast computer system holding data on every show and movie available for listing in the popular weekly publication. Printing of the national color section of
TV Guide took place at Triangle's Gravure Division plant adjacent to Triangle's landmark Philadelphia Inquirer Building on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. The color section was then sent to regional printers to be wrapped around the local listing sections. Triangle's Gravure Division was known for performing some of the highest quality printing in the industry with almost always perfect registration.
Triangle Publications in addition to
TV Guide owned
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
Philadelphia Daily News, 16 radio and television stations (
WFIL AM-
FM-
TV Philadelphia, PA, WNHC
AM-
FM-
TV New Haven, CT, KFRE
AM-
FM-
TV Fresno, CA, WNBF
AM-
FM-
TV Binghamton, NY, WFBG
AM-
FM-
TV Altoona, PA and
WLYH-TV Lancaster/Lebanon, PA)
The Daily Racing Form,
The Morning Telegraph,
Seventeen, and various cable TV interests. It was under Triangle's ownership of WFIL in Philadelphia that
Dick Clark and
American Bandstand came to popularity. Triangle Publications sold its Philadelphia newspapers to
Knight Newspapers in 1969, its radio and television stations during the early 1970s to
Capital Cities Communications and various other interests retaining only
TV Guide,
Seventeen Magazine and the
Daily Racing Form. Triangle Publications was sold to
News America Corporation in 1988 for $3 billion, one of the largest media deals of the time.
[edit] News Corporation era
The advent of
cable TV was hard on
TV Guide. Cable channels began to be listed in TV Guide in 1980 or 1981, depending on the edition. Channels were also different, depending on the edition. Each channel was designated by an oblong bullet of 3 letters; for example, (ESN) represented ESPN. To save channel space, some cable channels (mainly pay channels) had an asterisk by them, which meant that it was only listed in the evening grid (and later the Pay-TV Movie Guide). Channels like (MAX) and (DIS) (Cinemax and Disney, respectively) initially started only in the grids but later expanded to the listings as well.
As the years went on, cable channels were added. To help offset this, the issue of May 11–17, 1985 introduced a smaller font with some other cosmetic changes – a show's length was listed after the show's title, not in the description as it was previously. Another listings change took place in 1996; the show's title was no longer listed in all-uppercase, but mixed case as well.
In 2002,
TV Guide published six special issues to celebrate their 50th year:
- TV We'll Always Remember - April 6-12, 2002
- Greatest Shows of All Time - May 4-10, 2002
- Our 50 Greatest Covers - June 15-21, 2002
- 50 Worst Shows of All Time - July 20-26, 2002
- 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time - August 3-9, 2002
- 50 Sexiest Stars of All Time - September 28-October 4, 2002
Because most cable systems published their own listing magazine reflecting their channel lineup, and now have a separate guide channel on the remote that opens up to available programming, a printed listing of programming in a separate magazine became less valuable. The sheer amount and diversity of cable TV programming made it hard for
TV Guide to provide listings of the extensive array of programming that came directly over the cable system.
TV Guide also could not match the ability of the cable box to store personalized listings.
TV Guide's circulation went from almost 20 million in 1970 to less than three million in 2007.
By 2003, there was also a list of cable channels (also broadcast channels in some editions) that were listed in the grids only. From its inception until 2003,
TV Guide offered listings for the entire week, 24 hours a day. Beginning with the June 21, 2003 issue (in just a few select markets), the 5am-5pm Monday-Friday listings were condensed down to four grids: 5am-8am, 8am-11am, 11am-2pm, 2pm-5pm. If programming differed from one weekday to the next, "Various Programs" was listed. This change became permanent in all
TV Guide editions beginning with the 2003 Fall Preview issue. Beginning in January 2004, the midnight-5am listings (and also 5am-8am on the Saturday and Sunday listings) did not include any out-of-town broadcast stations, just the edition's home market. Starting in June 2004 in most editions the channel lineup page showing the stations for each local edition was dropped. Starting in July 2004 the overnight listings were taken out entirely, replaced by a grid that ran from 11pm-2am and had the edition's home market broadcast stations, with a handful of cable stations. It also listed a small selection of late-night movies on some channels. The daytime grids also changed from the 5am-5pm listings, to 7am-7pm. In early 2005 more channels were added to the prime-time and late night grids. The magazine also changed format to start the week's issue with Sunday listings, rather than Saturday listings, changing a tradition that started from the magazine's first issue.
On May 18, 2005,
TV Guide launched
TV Guide Talk, a weekly
podcast available for free. The podcast was headlined by
TV Guide reporter/personality
Michael Ausiello, and was co-hosted by his co-workers, Angel Cohn, Daniel Manu, and
Maitland McDonagh. The podcast was discontinued in 2008 with Ausiello's move to
Entertainment Weekly.
TV Guide was purchased from News Corporation in 1999 by United Video Satellite Group, parent company of the Prevue Networks, which itself was later purchased by the maker of the
VCR Plus+ device and schedule system,
Gemstar-TV Guide International, partially owned by News Corp.
[edit] Gemstar era
On July 26, 2005, Gemstar-TV Guide announced that
TV Guide would change in format from its
digest size format to a larger full-size national magazine that will offer more stories and fewer TV listings. All 140 local editions were also eliminated, being replaced by two editions, one for Eastern/Central time zones and one for Pacific/Mountain. The change in format was attributed to the increase in the Internet, cable TV channels (like TV Guide Network),
electronic program guides and
digital video recorders as the sources of choice for viewers' program listings.
The new version of
TV Guide went on sale on October 17, 2005, and featured
Ty Pennington from
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on the cover. The listings format, now consisting entirely of grids, also changed to start the week's issue with Monday listings rather than Sunday listings.
In September 2006, TV Guide launched a redesigned
website with expanded original editorial and user-generated content not included in the print magazine.
On December 22, 2006,
TV Guide introduced the magazine's first ever two-week edition. The edition, which has
Rachael Ray on the cover, was issued for the week of December 25, 2006 to January 7, 2007. In early 2008, the daytime Monday-Friday and late night grids were eliminated from the listings section, and the television highlights section was compressed into a six-page review of the week, rather than the previous two pages for each night.
With the acquisition of Gemstar-TV Guide by
Macrovision on May 2, 2008, that company, which purchased Gemstar-TV Guide to mostly take advantage of their lucrative and profitable VCR Plus and electronic program guide
patents, stated they wanted to sell both the magazine and TV Guide Network, along with the company's
TVG horse racing channel to other parties.
[edit] OpenGate Capital era
On October 13, 2008,
Macrovision sold the money-losing magazine to equity fund
OpenGate Capital for $1.
[2] As part of the sale, however, the companion website was retained by Macrovision
[3] (who then sold it to
One Equity Partners[4][5]), with all editorial connections between the magazine and website severed, including the end of Matt Roush's presence on TVGuide.com.
[6] The editorial content of the magazine was launched on a new site, TVGuideMagazine.com, which didn't feature TV Guide's listings in any form. However, TVGuidemagazine.com was shut down on June 1, 2010 and TV Guide Magazine and TVGuide.com entered into a deal to restore content from the magazine to the TVGuide.com website,
[7] which Lionsgate bought along with the TV Guide Network in January 2009.
[8]
In January 2009, the magazine cut several networks from the grid listings, including
DIY Network and
MTV, citing "space concerns"; however, two cuts, those of
The CW and
TV Guide Network,
[9][10] were seen as suspicious and arbitrary, as the guide carries several channels which have the same schedule night after night or are low-viewed and could have easily been cut, while several Fox networks continue to be listed due to agreements with the former News Corporation ownership. It is likely that the network's removal from
TV Guide listings was related to the "divorce" of the website and network from the magazine.
In early February 2009, the listings for The CW and MTV were readded after much protest to the magazine's email addresses, with the listings for several low-viewed networks removed as a consequence.
[11] The other listings were slowly re-added, until TV Guide Network's schedule returned to the listings pages in June 2010 with their logo prominent within the grids as part of the deal with Lionsgate's TV Guide division mentioned above.
[edit] U.S. TV
In 1998, the
TV Guide brand and magazine was acquired by United Video Satellite Group, parent company of the Prevue Channel (now
TV Guide Network). Like its predecessor, the original TV Guide Channel scrolled TV listings on the bottom portion of the screen. Until around 2002, the
programs on the TV Guide Channel generally only lasted from 30 seconds to a minute, and thus usually appeared once to twice per hour. For instance, a show might appear at 12:25 and again at 1:55. However, over the early 2000s, the channel's focus shifted to full-length programs featuring celebrity gossip and movie talk.
In May 2007, Gemstar Media, a subsidiary of Gemstar-TV Guide Inc., renamed the TV Guide Channel to the TV Guide Network, stating that the new name reflects a new direction towards more original content and entertainment features in addition to its traditional listings function.
Today,
TV Guide Network runs programs such as the weekly entertainment news magazine,
The 411, and red-carpet event coverage (originally hosted by
Joan and
Melissa Rivers). In mid-2007, the mother-daughter duo were unceremoniously dropped by
TV Guide in favor of both
Lisa Rinna and
Joey Fatone, whose popularities had been on the rise in the wake of their recent appearances on
Dancing With the Stars.
To further distinguish itself from other television guides,
TV Guide re-branded itself as
TV GUIDE Magazine. The original name is now capitalized and "Magazine" always follows.[
citation needed]
