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Stations/markets never (or almost never) listed in TV Guide

S

Stanislav

The recent Yuma "retro" thread discussed the question of if and when the Yuma/El Centro stations were ever listed in TV Guide.

I recall from kibitzing with other TV geeks over the years that there were a handful of stations and small markets that because of their remoteness were never listed in TVG at all, or at least weren't listed during a large portion of TVG history. I used to know some DXers (who used to do a lot of TVG swapping to help ID loggings) back in the 70s/80s, and I believe there were a very few low-band VHFs (i.e., "skip" targets) that (at least at the time) were not listed in any TVG edition.

Any examples?
 
Were there really markets in the continental United States that were ignored by TV Guide except in the earliest years of the magazine?

I would think the most remote part of the lower 48 would be Montana and the Montana edition of TV Guide goes back to 1965.

Hawaii got an edition starting in 1968. Alaska only had TV Guide for a brief period, maybe a year or two and that wasn't until sometime after 1995 (I don't remember the exact year).
 
Another market with three different bullets was the Arkansas edition. There were three different channel 6's listed. And while the South Georgia edition and its 30+ channels had three different bullets, I don't think there were 3 of any one channel listed in the edition.
 
There were three stations on Ch. 11 in the South
Georgia Edition: WFSU (PBS) Tallahassee, WXIA (ABC,
then NBC) Atlanta, and WTOC (CBS) Savannah.
 
What about stations that were in TV Guide at first BUT their listings disappeared even though the stations stayed on the air?

I can think of four ( OK..three and a half ) and all of them were in the Washington DC market.

Martinsburg, WV's WYVN channel 60
Chambersburg, PA's WJAL channel 68
and Northern Virginia's two PBS channels ( WNVT channel 53 and WNVC channel 56 ).

When WYVN was FOX and WJAL was part of the WB, both stations were in the Washington-Baltimore edition. However when WYVN went dark ( the first time ) in 1993 and came back on the air about a year later without FOX ( FOX didn't want anything to do with them ), WYVN's listings disappeared from TV Guide and pretty much everywhere else too. Even the local newspapers "overlooked" WYVN.

WJAL once they dropped WB ( or when the WB dropped WJAL ), their listings vanished as well.

No sure what happened with WNVC and WNVT as far as TV Guide goes. One week their listings were in TV Guide. The next week they weren't.
 
One of Alabama Public Television's stations, WIIQ-41/Demopolis (west side of the state), wasn't listed in any TVG edition ... certainly not either North Alabama or South Alabama, and I didn't see it in the Mississippi Edition, either (not sure which DMA Marengo County is assigned - Montgomery or Meridian). Nor Gulf Coast for that matter. 41, far as I've always been aware, is a full-power station.

Out of APT's 9 stations, 'IIQ was the only one not listed.

North Alabama: "7-10-25-36" (Cheaha Mtn. / Birmingham / Huntsville / Florence)
South Alabama: "2-26-43" (Dozier / Montgomery / Louisville)
Gulf Coast: "42" (Mobile)

APT's stations were always listed with their individual channel numbers. Which brings me to another question ... did any other state besides Mississippi or Kentucky ever have their ETV networks' listings all lumped into a single "E" bullet?

--Russell
 
...I know that the Wisconsin editions of TV Guide avoided having to list any of the full-power religious stations if they could somehow avoid such. I don't recall ever seeing listings for either WVCY-TV/30 Milwaukee or WSCO/14 Suring/Green Bay. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if Vic "The Vampire" Eliason didn't give a damn about TV Guide and never bothered sending them any listings in the first place...
 
In the '70s the North Carolina edition used "E"
to designate the state public-TV network; that
was later changed first to "CPT" then "UNC."

I seem to recall Ch. 41 in Demopolis, AL, in the
South Mississippi edition. That, too, was a fairly
large edition, with Meridian, Laurel/Hattiesburg,
Mobile/Pensacola, and New Orleans; Jackson was
listed as black numerals on a white background.

The Atlanta edition dropped the PBS stations in
Cochran, GA and Chattanooga; likewise, the Northern Alabama edition
dropped the three heritage network affiliates in Nashville.
I also recall, in the later years, that PBS was listed in the
Northern Alabama edition as 7-10-25-36-APT. Sounds a
bit redundant.
 
The Hartford/New Haven, Providence, Springfield/Chicopee/Holyoke and New York Metropolitan Editions all listed stations for CPTV (Connecticut Public Television). I know the Hartford/New Haven Edition had a black channel bullet with "CPTV" in small white letters. It would be listed after "61" in the evening grids. The Providence Edition may have done the same thing, since a good portion of eastern Connecticut used it. WEDN-TV channel 53 of Norwich was listed directly while WEDH-TV channel 24 of Hartford was listed as a satellite. Strange, since WEDH is actual the parent and WEDN is the satellite.
 
Curious -- was little WAGM-TV in Presque Isle, Maine ever carried in any of the classic TVG lineups, like the huge New England editions? Given its status for so many years as a lone, single commercial station in a geographically isolated market (with probably as many, if nor more, Canadian viewers as American), did it even merit inclusion along with, say, whatever edition Bangor was in?
 
Stanislav said:
The recent Yuma "retro" thread discussed the question of if and when the Yuma/El Centro stations were ever listed in TV Guide.
Click to expand...

I lived in the Phoenix AZ area from 1993 thru 1997 and IIRC the Yuma/El Centro stations were listed in the Phoenix edition of TV Guide. I seem to remember them because the stations, again IIRC, ran more than one network (as in ABC/FOX or something like that). 8)
 
I know WAGM was listed in the Maine edition which I believe replaced the Northern New England edition in 1973. I don't know if WAGM was listed in the Northern New England edition or any other edition prior to 1973.
 
WAGM-TV was only carried in the Maine Edition of TV Guide. The New Hampshire Edition used to list 6, 13 and 51 from Portland, 8 from Poland Spring, 26 from Biddeford and 35 from Lewiston. Old Orchard Beach used to sell the New Hampshire Edition when I lived there from 1985 to 1987. One town over in Scarborough, they sold the Maine Edition (Cumberland County, the home county to Portland).
 
I have always been kinda confused as to why the Richmond, Virginia stations ( at least WTVR, WRIC/WXEX and WWBT ) never made it to the Washington-Baltimore edition of TV Guide. Spotsylvania & Stafford counties and the city of Fredericksburg, all three are in the DC DMA but yet for years the viewers there on cable & OTA also received the big three Richmond stations as well and considering the amount of population growth that has occured there ( and still continuing ) it would had made sense to feature Richmond too.

Maybe it was politics. I know the DC and Baltimore stations for years seemed to be like this one big family despite being two different markets and for years viewers in both cities often would enjoy each others television ( WTTG for example was very popular in Baltimore while the WJZ newsteam of Al Sanders & Jerry Turner actually has almost as many fans in DC as they had in Baltimore )

On the other hand I have heard several years back that the DC stations had this love/hate relationship with the Richmond stations. Maybe that was the reason why the lack of Richmond in the DC/Baltimore edition.
 
WKYH Hazard, KY signed on in 1968 and wasn't mentioned in TV Guide until about 1980. I don't remember which edition came first but it was listed in the Kentucky, West Virginia and East Tennessee (or whatever the edition was called). The station was purchased and upgraded in the mid eighties and became WYMT.
 
TBN station WWTO-35 LaSalle (which signed on in 1986 on the former channel number of the old WEEQ-TV, which was once a full-power satellite of WEEK Peoria) has never been listed in either the old Western/Eastern Illinois (which both had previously mentioned the presence of the channel 35 translator back in the WEEQ days) editions, the Illinois-Wisconsin edition (as WWTO also has a translator in Rockford), and perhaps not even the Chicago edition (its home market).

Religious station WTJR-16 Quincy also was never listed in the Western Illinois edition of TVG ever since its Day 1 of broadcasting around 1987.
 
it seems to me wlox tv was not in the gulf coast edition at first i heard it went on in 1962 and was not in there till 1963
 
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