Des Moines Register TV schedules of old: by station, not by time

[joebtsflk1]

Back when you could feel the heat of the tubes from the back of your TV set, when most households had at least two remotes that had to be fed three times a day, The Des Moines Register had TV listings organized by station. Not by time as with the old TV Guide, or by grid, as the Register adopted in the late 70s ?early 80s??.

jh posted some 1964 examples from the Register a month or so back, btw thanks...enjoyed seeing them this evening. I searched the Classic TV board to make sure I wasn't covering old ground.

Growing up, I never thought the Register's format was odd until I started reading newspapers from other cities while on vacations.

It looked something like this:

DES MOINES WHO-TV 13
5:00 Today,Iowa 6:00 News
7:00 Today 6:30 Wheel,Fortune
11:00 Rachael Ray 7:00 Biggest Loser
12:00 News 9:00 Law,Order SVU
1:00 Days,Lives 10:00 News
2:00 Dr. Oz 10:35 Tonight
3:00 Ellen 11:35 Late Night
4:00 Judge Judy 12:35 Last Word
5:00 News 1:05 Tonight
5:30 NBC News 2:05 Poker


(the two columns are supposed to line up, but I don't have a Linotype machine)

Did other papers use this tabular format?

 

[TVWorldwide]

Did other papers use this tabular format?

In most of the world, TV listings in newspapers and magazines have always been organized by station rather than by time. In fact, time-based listings are exceedingly rare outside the Americas.

This example from a French TV magazine is typical of what most foreign listings look like:

http://www.plurimedia.fr/wp-content/uploads/t7j-programme.jpg

 

[anotherguyTN]

In Memphis the Commercial Appeal used to have listings for out of town stations in this format, although they had grids for the local stations.

 

[ShawnHill1]

The Washington Post's TV listings have a format similar to what's posted at the top of this thread. Each station's listings are listed by column top to bottom, with the times listed to the far left of the page. Then, they're separated by sections (this is by memory, so the order may not be exact):

*Washington-area commerical stations: WRC, WTTG, WJLA, WUSA, WDCA, WDCW
*Baltimore-area commerical stations: WMAR, WBAL, WJZ, WUTB, WBFF, WNUV
*Public/educational stations: Maryland Public TV, WETA, WHUT, WNVT
*Digital sub-channels: NBC DC Nonstop, RTV, and a few others (I'm assuming that WDCW's subs are listed currently)
*Regional networks: NewsChannel 8, Comcast SportsNet
*Basic cable, then finally premium cable networks

The Post's weekly TV guide publishes different editions for each part of metropolitan Washington (DC proper, the Maryland suburbs, and Northern Virigina), so what actual channels are listed is depedent on where you live. They also have a conversion chart, showing you the channel numbers on cable (in this case, Comcast covers almost all of Baltimore and Washington, plus Cox has a system in Northern Virigina), DirecTV, Dish Network, and those secondary providers (such as RCN). I know over the years, Comcast's Washington system have gradually removed all of the Baltimore stations they carried, and I can assume it's vice-versa in Baltimore in regards to the DC stations.

If I'm not mistaken, the Portland Oregonian has their TV listings set up in the same manner as the Washington Post.