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Do You Miss TV Guide The Way It Used To Be?

YES!! I used to love checking the "Channels Listen In..." page and TV Guide! I used to have a collection of those from almost every market in the country until about 2004, when the page in question was on its way out.
 
Yes. Yes! YESSSSS!!!!!

That faux "People Magazine" style TV Guide we have now is a joke. I haven't purchased a copy since 2005.
Since I write media-history books, I'm forced to type up my own "highlights" and listings every week, based on the various internet services offering these.
 
This is as good a time to ask this question as any:

Is there a site that lists when each "edition" debuted? I'd like to have a Miami (South FL) edition from the 1950s, and I check eBay periodically, but often they do not tell you which edition/listings are included, as if the articles are the only good feature. The earliest Miami one I know of is 1959.

cd
 
cd637299 said:
This is as good a time to ask this question as any:

Is there a site that lists when each "edition" debuted? I'd like to have a Miami (South FL) edition from the 1950s, and I check eBay periodically, but often they do not tell you which edition/listings are included, as if the articles are the only good feature. The earliest Miami one I know of is 1959.

cd
Click to expand...

A site like that would be a good resource. As far as I can tell, the TV Guide Lake Erie (later renamed Cleveland) Edition debuted the week of May 22, 1953..
 
Hal Erickson said:
That faux "People Magazine" style TV Guide we have now is a joke. I haven't purchased a copy since 2005.
Click to expand...

I haven't even as much as touched a copy of any TVG issue published since 2004, when they first began to tinker with the format (ending the week on Saturday instead of Friday, eliminating "out of market" listings after Midnight, even eliminating the "Channels Listed" page (which no doubt led to confusion in some areas)). Practically after TVG eliminated the local listings in 2005 and became a celibrity-driven magazine with national listings only, TVG became dead to me. To even say that today's TVG is a mere shadow of its own self is overestimating -- I miss the listings, the editorials, and even the stories that practically covered all facets of television, including home video and video games.
 
Why do I have a feeling the Facebook fan page is going to skyrocket past 100 fans in due time?
 
Sometimes the ads in TV Guide didn't necessarily match the same ads in local papers on or near the day of airing. For example, in the New York Metropolitan edition, Sept. 5-11, 1970 issue, a promo for an upcoming commercial-free airing (for Sept. 5) of the 1950 José Ferrer Cyrano de Bergerac on WOR-TV (Channel 9) showed the old "new york 9" logo in use since late February 1969 - but in the New York papers the day before the designated air date, the same ad had the newer "stylized/dotted 9" logo that premiered at the start of that very month and was used to the end of RKO General's ownership of Channel 9 in 1987. In another case, January-July 1969 ad promos for WABC-TV's 4:30 Movie airings made no mention whatsoever of the movie show title - but the Daily News did mention the title in Channel 7's ads, as early as the station's Feb. 13, 1969 screening of Man's Favorite Sport?.

And that's not counting that sometimes what logo was shown in promos for certain shows on certain days were a few weeks behind what the station logo actually was by the time of airing in question (i.e. as the original "circle 11" logo of WPIX was inaugurated in February 1969, or the aforementioned WOR-TV logos).

Not to mention sometimes citing the wrong film on a station (i.e. a listing for the 1943 film Tonight We Raid Calais ostensibly being shown Aug. 13, 1973 on WABC's 4:30 Movie when: a) that film was shown the day before on WPIX, and b) the actual film shown by WABC was a 1953 musical, Tonight We Sing; and then some listings erroneously having WNBC running the 1943 Claude Rains version of The Phantom of the Opera when the station only had the 1962 Herbert Lom version).
 
#129.

With a collection dating back nearly 4 decades (Seattle-Tacoma with some Denver mixed in), I have to be in on this.

That takes it back to the days when TVG cost you all of...gasp...15 cents. Inflation.
 
Since I only get 3 channels I haven't bothered to even look for it at the checkout for years. Then I saw it the other day. How long has it been "T.V Magazine Sized Magazine"?
 
wbhist said:
Sometimes the ads in TV Guide didn't necessarily match the same ads in local papers on or near the day of airing. For example, in the New York Metropolitan edition, Sept. 5-11, 1970 issue, a promo for an upcoming commercial-free airing (for Sept. 5) of the 1950 José Ferrer Cyrano de Bergerac on WOR-TV (Channel 9) showed the old "new york 9" logo in use since late February 1969 - but in the New York papers the day before the designated air date, the same ad had the newer "stylized/dotted 9" logo that premiered at the start of that very month and was used to the end of RKO General's ownership of Channel 9 in 1987.
Click to expand...

Apparently, deadlines to place an ad in TVG were much earlier than the newspapers -- maybe when the TVG deadline came up, either WOR had no plans to change the logo, or they were still indecisive on what logo to use.
 
Joe_Capitano said:
That takes it back to the days when TVG cost you all of...gasp...15 cents. Inflation.
Click to expand...

The first price hike to TVG came in 1974 when it went up to . . . :eek: . . . 20 cents.
 
azumanga said:
Apparently, deadlines to place an ad in TVG were much earlier than the newspapers -- maybe when the TVG deadline came up, either WOR had no plans to change the logo, or they were still indecisive on what logo to use.
Click to expand...

That was my thought, too (the "weeks in advance" deadlines in TVG).
 
It was a great magazine before cable came out and ruined it. You used to have only the broadcast listings. Then along came cable and they would put the channel numbers of stations that technically didn't exist because they were on cable only. you would have listings for several channels with the same number which caused mass confusion trying to figure out which one was correct. and on top of that cable companies would have stations on different channel numbers from what the station was actually brocast on. In our local area, channel 12 was channel 13 on cable, channel 3 was on channel 2, channel 16 was on channel 7 etc. This confused the old folks. Too many channel numbers to have to deal with and on top of that you had out of market channels listed also which often had the same channel numbers further confusing Grandma.
 
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