Some recent comments on other threads about the coverage and listings of some old TVG editions reminded me of something.....
In my younger days, when I had the time, money, and energy to do some traveling, I often took road trips throughout the Southeast, and up and down the Atlantic seaboard. (Nowadays, I have plenty of time, but the other two factors are in severely short supply...)
Like any good TV geek, whenever I would make a pit stop to get a slushie or some chips at a C-store or tourist trap, I always looked to see if the local edition of TV Guide was available, so I could purchase a copy and immerse myself in the vagaries and variations of programming as we all liked to do.
Now, don't ask me to recount the specifics, as this was a lot of years ago. But I do recall that there were at least a couple of occasions where at a particular 7/11 or supermarket, I encountered not one, but TWO different TVG editions BOTH being sold on the newsstand. In each of these cases, the store had affixed a hand-lettered sign beneath each slot identifying which edition was which. (Again, while I don't recall the specifics, I have the impression that one of those incidents was in the VA-NC border region, the very area that was the subject of a recent thread.)
I assume, of course, that these were communities that were straddling the line between two editions, and perhaps folks either had to buy both to get listings for ALL the channels they watched, or perhaps choose one or the other based on their own personal viewing habits. (There ARE rural areas roughly equidistant between two TV markets in which the local divide between those that watched one city's stations versus the other's was as heated and debated as Coke vs. Pepsi.)
So, those of you who did some road trips back in the day and liked to collect TVGs -- did you ever encounter this and, if so, where? And the follow-up question is this: if you were a TVG subscriber, did the good folks in Radnor ever allow people to subscribe to more than one edition, or to subscribe to an edition not technically assigned to their area but reflecting more accurately the stations that were actually available OTA where they lived?
In my younger days, when I had the time, money, and energy to do some traveling, I often took road trips throughout the Southeast, and up and down the Atlantic seaboard. (Nowadays, I have plenty of time, but the other two factors are in severely short supply...)
Like any good TV geek, whenever I would make a pit stop to get a slushie or some chips at a C-store or tourist trap, I always looked to see if the local edition of TV Guide was available, so I could purchase a copy and immerse myself in the vagaries and variations of programming as we all liked to do.
Now, don't ask me to recount the specifics, as this was a lot of years ago. But I do recall that there were at least a couple of occasions where at a particular 7/11 or supermarket, I encountered not one, but TWO different TVG editions BOTH being sold on the newsstand. In each of these cases, the store had affixed a hand-lettered sign beneath each slot identifying which edition was which. (Again, while I don't recall the specifics, I have the impression that one of those incidents was in the VA-NC border region, the very area that was the subject of a recent thread.)
I assume, of course, that these were communities that were straddling the line between two editions, and perhaps folks either had to buy both to get listings for ALL the channels they watched, or perhaps choose one or the other based on their own personal viewing habits. (There ARE rural areas roughly equidistant between two TV markets in which the local divide between those that watched one city's stations versus the other's was as heated and debated as Coke vs. Pepsi.)
So, those of you who did some road trips back in the day and liked to collect TVGs -- did you ever encounter this and, if so, where? And the follow-up question is this: if you were a TVG subscriber, did the good folks in Radnor ever allow people to subscribe to more than one edition, or to subscribe to an edition not technically assigned to their area but reflecting more accurately the stations that were actually available OTA where they lived?
