channels weren't the only difference in TV GUIDE...

[harrisburgpatv]

Being a collector, one thing that has always interested me in TVG is how different editions had different features - some came to all editions eventually, some not at all.

One of them is "TV MOVIE GUIDE" - basically a listing of all the movies on all the channels for the entire week. I saw this in early '70s TVG, and saw it again make an appearance in some 1983 issues of the SE PA edition of TVG. One intruiging aspect is in one of the ads to subscribe where it's showing the features, it does show the TV MOVIE GUIDE - but its look is exactly like the "PAY-TV MOVIE GUIDE", without "PAY-" of course. Broadcast channels too. Was this just a prototype, or was it actually in some editions?

Anything else that your TVG might have featured, but went away, never to be seen again, and you never saw in another edition?

 

[wbhist]

Being a collector, one thing that has always interested me in TVG is how different editions had different features - some came to all editions eventually, some not at all.

One of them is "TV MOVIE GUIDE" - basically a listing of all the movies on all the channels for the entire week. I saw this in early '70s TVG, and saw it again make an appearance in some 1983 issues of the SE PA edition of TVG. One intruiging aspect is in one of the ads to subscribe where it's showing the features, it does show the TV MOVIE GUIDE - but its look is exactly like the "PAY-TV MOVIE GUIDE", without "PAY-" of course. Broadcast channels too. Was this just a prototype, or was it actually in some editions?

Anything else that your TVG might have featured, but went away, never to be seen again, and you never saw in another edition?

TV Movie Guide was a long-standing feature in the New York Metropolitan Edition, dating back to the 1950's, but was missing entirely from the Scranton - Wilkes-Barre Edition, if that's what you're wondering.

 

[Tim L]

One thing I've liked, from researching old Lake Erie/Cleveland TV Guides was the "Local Dateline" column..In which a local TV Guide writer would present news and notes about programming/personalities in the Cleveland-Akron-Youngstown area..I think other editions had the same type column, but it seemed to have been phased out by 1958 or so..

 

[gregg75]

I think the channel numbers themselves were interesting.

Seems like the main city usually got the black squares with white numbers.
Then there were those who got the white squares with black numbers.

I've seen some where the channels had zebra like stripes........I'm not sure if
I had a station that I would want a zebra striped square listing. Seems most of these
were usualy fringe type stations or places with only one station. I guess that was the
only way they could list three channel 3 stations in one guide.....most seemed to only
have one or two of the same channel numbers in the same edition.

And the stations are always in order. If 2 was NBC, then all the NBC shows were listed first.
I guess the channel 3's would be (black 3 first, white 3 second, zebra stripe third).....just a
guess though.

 

[harrisburgpatv]

TV Movie Guide was a long-standing feature in the New York Metropolitan Edition, dating back to the 1950's, but was missing entirely from the Scranton - Wilkes-Barre Edition, if that's what you're wondering.
[/quote]

By Scranton-WB edition do you mean the PA-NY State edition? In any case, that's another edition that's quite interesting to me, particularly the Syracuse stations..When I first came across an issue in 1981, they were black bullets - [3], [5] and [9]. The next time I saw an edition, they became oblong bullets - (3S), (5S), (9S) and (24S). Never mind that the edition already listed WNYW and WOR as (5N) and (9N)! Could be quite confusing for some people. Sometime between 1989 and 1990 the syracuse went from oblong to white bullets as (3), (5), (9) and (24).

Scranton/WB never appeared to carry (not even in the grids!) TMC.

 

[harrisburgpatv]

And the stations are always in order. If 2 was NBC, then all the NBC shows were listed first.
I guess the channel 3's would be (black 3 first, white 3 second, zebra stripe third).....just a
guess though.

Sometimes there were exceptions. The Philly edition would list all the Philly stations first, and then all the NYC stations second. - when airing things together and separately - CBS was listed as (3, 2) for example.

 

[KML0224]

The last time I bought a TV Guide with listings was in June of 2004. It was the Central Pennsylvania Edition. Besides Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, it also included Allentown, Harrisburg, Lancaster and York. I think the Pennsylvania/New York Edition was sold in Binghamton and Elmira, NY.

 

[wbhist]

By Scranton-WB edition do you mean the PA-NY State edition?

I have some editions from the period 1956-69, so it would be Scranton-WB. And none of the issues had any TV Movie Guides. Nor did the Hazleton-Williamsport Edition (as of 1965), Western New England Edition (as of 1968), Los Angeles Metropolitan Edition (as of 1970), or San Francisco Metropolitan Edition (as of 1972-80).

 

[harrisburgpatv]

The last time I bought a TV Guide with listings was in June of 2004. It was the Central Pennsylvania Edition. Besides Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, it also included Allentown, Harrisburg, Lancaster and York. I think the Pennsylvania/New York Edition was sold in Binghamton and Elmira, NY.

It was also sold in Scranton - one of two editions sold there. Central PA edition was the other one - the difference being that the Central PA edition had "CABLE" stamped across the logo.

 

[harrisburgpatv]

By Scranton-WB edition do you mean the PA-NY State edition?

I have some editions from the period 1956-69, so it would be Scranton-WB. And none of the issues had any TV Movie Guides. Nor did the Hazleton-Williamsport Edition (as of 1965), Western New England Edition (as of 1968), Los Angeles Metropolitan Edition (as of 1970), or San Francisco Metropolitan Edition (as of 1972-80).

I always wondered when the SE PA edition came into being, and when the Scranton-WB and Hazleton-Williamsport editions folded.

 

[bpatrick]

One thing I've liked, from researching old Lake Erie/Cleveland TV Guides was the "Local Dateline" column..In which a local TV Guide writer would present news and notes about programming/personalities in the Cleveland-Akron-Youngstown area..I think other editions had the same type column, but it seemed to have been phased out by 1958 or so..

I've seen those in Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina TV Guides from the late '50s. I remember in the '60s, along about the end of August, there would be a page in "For the Record"/"The Doan Report" that would list changes local stations were making for their fall schedules; Eastern Virginia used to have a particularly good one.

Speaking of stations being listed in reverse, San Diego was another; CBS was (8,2), ABC was (10,7), NBC was (39,4), the second station in each pair being Los Angeles.

 

[Bluenoser]

Pittsburgh, Memphis and Rochester were some others, with the locals listed first and then the other regional channels listed in order afterwards.

 

[ShawnHill1]

Speaking of stations being listed in reverse, San Diego was another; CBS was (8,2), ABC was (10,7), NBC was (39,4), the second station in each pair being Los Angeles.

The L.A. Metro edition only did the same thing when it came to ABC...Los Angeles was listed first (7-KABC), then Palm Springs (3-KESQ; it was used as opposed to its OTA number, 42). Palm Springs' NBC affiliate, KMIR, was also listed by its cable number (6) than its OTA position (36).

Take it one step further, the Los Angeles Times' TV listings would always list the Los Angeles/Orange County stations first, then the out-of-town stations (they included San Diego, Palm Springs, San Bernardino, Ventura, and Santa Barbara).

 

[Limp73]

One time as a teenager in 1969 I picked up a TV Guide at a Woolworths in Lima,Ohio...no big deal there since the Dayton/Cincinnati edition was the norm issue with WIMA-TV (now WLIO) also being in the listings...except I stumbled upon the Detroit edition. I was facinated by the different ads and listings in the Detroit edition. Interestingly enough some of the Toledo stations mentioned in the Detroit edition were watchable in Lima thanks to Lima Cablevision.

 

[Gregg]

There were actually five different ways a station could be listed in TV Guide...

--Black TV screen with a white number.
--White TV screen with a black number.
--A black number inside a mostly white screen but with several black horizontal lines inside the TV screen. For instance, the Western Massachusettes edition used this symbol for stations from Boston that in most cases had to be received by cable.
--For a network of stations that all simulcast the same programs all the time, TV Guide might use a black TV screen with several letters in white inside the screen, such as ETV for the South Carolina Educational TV Network, MPB for Maryland Public Broadcasting or TVO for TV Ontario.
--For a single digit station, a black number surrounded by a small white space within black borders on the right and left inside the TV screen. And for a double digit station, one black numeral surrounded by white and one white numeral surround by black, all within the TV screen. For instance, this was used in the Western New York edition for the three Canadian stations it listed, 5 and 9 in Toronto, 11 in Hamilton.
--White TV screen with a black number and the first letter of the city that station is located in, such as 9C for WGN Chicago or 11N for WPIX New York. They only used this if you were in a market only a hundred miles or so from Chicago or New York. For distant markets, they'd use WGN or PIX, since viewers were getting these stations not over the air but as a cable station similar to CNN or USA.

Gregg
[email protected]

 

[Bluenoser]

There were actually five different ways a station could be listed in TV Guide...

--Black TV screen with a white number.
--White TV screen with a black number.
--A black number inside a mostly white screen but with several black horizontal lines inside the TV screen. For instance, the Western Massachusettes edition used this symbol for stations from Boston that in most cases had to be received by cable.
--For a network of stations that all simulcast the same programs all the time, TV Guide might use a black TV screen with several letters in white inside the screen, such as ETV for the South Carolina Educational TV Network, MPB for Maryland Public Broadcasting or TVO for TV Ontario.
--For a single digit station, a black number surrounded by a small white space within black borders on the right and left inside the TV screen. And for a double digit station, one black numeral surrounded by white and one white numeral surround by black, all within the TV screen. For instance, this was used in the Western New York edition for the three Canadian stations it listed, 5 and 9 in Toronto, 11 in Hamilton.
--White TV screen with a black number and the first letter of the city that station is located in, such as 9C for WGN Chicago or 11N for WPIX New York. They only used this if you were in a market only a hundred miles or so from Chicago or New York. For distant markets, they'd use WGN or PIX, since viewers were getting these stations not over the air but as a cable station similar to CNN or USA.

Gregg
[email protected]

The Maritimes edition had another kind of bullet...an elongated black one with stripes on both sides and a white channel number (this was used for WTOL Toledo), I've come across that type of bullet in some Adelphia editions as well.

 

[harrisburgpatv]

--White TV screen with a black number and the first letter of the city that station is located in, such as 9C for WGN Chicago or 11N for WPIX New York. They only used this if you were in a market only a hundred miles or so from Chicago or New York. For distant markets, they'd use WGN or PIX, since viewers were getting these stations not over the air but as a cable station similar to CNN or USA.

Gregg
[email protected]

The SE PA edition had (/9/) and (1/1) for NYC stations 9 and 11 up until spring 1981 when they changed to (9N) and (11N). (9N) became (WOR) in the listings in September 1983 and (11N) became (PIX) sometime in 1985 or 1986. Early on, when TBS was added to the listings it was (17A). Didn't take too long until it became (TBS).

As I may have said above, in the PA-NY edition, the Syracuse channels went from white-on-black (3), to elongated bullet (3S), to black-on-white (3).