I cannot say who decided, or how it was decided, that some shows would get larger log lines than others. (In all honesty, I had to look up the term "log line" to make sure I was understanding, which I was, it's simply another name for the listing in general.) So far as I am aware, TV Guide did have a massive library of these, just how these were stored, retrieved, and compiled, I do not know. Especially noteworthy episodes of certain shows would get a half-page write-up in a separate block.
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TV Guide editions and online resources
- Thread starter IM42A
- Start date
I cannot say who decided, or how it was decided, that some shows would get larger log lines than others. (In all honesty, I had to look up the term "log line" to make sure I was understanding, which I was, it's simply another name for the listing in general.) So far as I am aware, TV Guide did have a massive library of these, just how these were stored, retrieved, and compiled, I do not know. Especially noteworthy episodes of certain shows would get a half-page write-up in a separate block.
I remember four incorrect episode descriptions for "The Andy Griffith Show". Eventually I think all of them got corrected.
For the pilot "Opie wants Aunt Bee to train his frogs." That may have been briefly mentioned. Later it was something like "Opie is upset that the old housekeeper left and he wants the new one fired." Meaning Aunt Bee.
The second episode was about escaped criminal Otis Campbell. There was an escaped criminal, but Otis was merely a prisoner who let himself in and out of a cell. If he was even in the episode. I was thinking that started when Barney arrested everyone in town and they came back as individuals after being let out.
"A farmer infected by a rusty nail refuses a tetanus shot." That didn't happen. Andy warned him, however, that if he refused, he could die if he got an infection from a rusty nail. After Andy told him what a hero that would make him and even sang a song that would be appropriate at a funeral, he changed his mind. I don't remember the new listing.
The strangest one was "Andy Griffith appears in this episode." When I watched, it was "Make Room for Daddy" and in the future, if that was shown in place of the regular show, it was listed correctly.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Last question first. Yes, there was a "master list" of episode descriptions, to facilitate stations only having to include either the production number for the episode, the original air date, or the season/week in their submissions to TVG. Such databases are still in use for on-screen program guides, like the one on my TiVo.
The rest of the questions in your second paragraph: As I understood it (and I am relying on a conversation I had decades ago with someone at either a station or at TVG itself ... it's been so long I do not remember which) there were criteria, having to do with available space once all the listings themselves had been calculated and then subtracting paid ad space from the remainder. Off-network reruns on out-of-market stations were the first cuts for log lines. Then time of day was the next consideration, and at that point there could also have been trimming of movie descriptions if aired in late night or daytime.
If that didn't free up enough space for everything to fit, repeats on the networks would get edited descriptions. Then would come those "big hit show" half-page descriptions, which you correctly surmise in your lead paragraph were only used for season premieres, specials, and episodes with some special guest star appearance.
And no, no one was being paid by the character/word/line count, and stations did not pay for the log lines, either.
In a few editions, out-of-market stations were limited only to network programming listings, and their full schedules didn't appear. WSBA York PA comes to mind, when they were listed in the Washington-Baltimore edition (they were later dropped).
A similar situation could be found in smaller, less-viewed stations only having their listings in the grids, rather than the daily program listings themselves, in the years when TVG featured both.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I remember that. Obviously more consideration for the limitations of each issue. My memory may be fuzzy, but I seem to recall that every edition of TVG had a consistent page count week to week. If I am remembering that correctly, then the process of determining the relative importance of log lines would naturally follow.
They did indeed. Some editions with fewer channels, such as single-market editions, were very slender. The proliferation of cable networks beginning in the late 1970s, and to a lesser extent the addition of distant stations earlier on, which were billed as "cable" stations (usually with distinctive channel slugs), gradually expanded the size of the magazine such that it became totally unwieldy by the early 2000s. The expansion of cable and other MVDS lineups, coupled with the new availability of online listings that could provide more and better information, spelled the end of TVG as it was known prior to 2005, with regional print editions. On-demand and even linear online streaming services came soon afterwards and revolutionized the entire TV landscape.
Here's a good article on TV Guide in its best days:
Before the Internet, TV Guide was the Place for Smart Criticism - Electric Literature
Carrying articles by John Cheever, John Updike, and Joyce Carol Oates was definitely a touch of class. It was the furthest thing in the world from a mindless, trashy magazine.
Before the Internet, TV Guide was the Place for Smart Criticism - Electric Literature
Carrying articles by John Cheever, John Updike, and Joyce Carol Oates was definitely a touch of class. It was the furthest thing in the world from a mindless, trashy magazine.
But then again TV Guide was ultra famous for its easy crossword
The North Dakota edition excluded Dickinson (which was in the Mountain Time Zone) until about 1977. Then they started including Dickinson with a note included for Mountain Time Zone residents to subtract an hour from the listed time to know when a program would be shown in their time zone. I was confused as a kid when I realized that South Dakota did not have its own edition, instead you had that Northern Colorado edition that included the Rapid City market, and the Sioux Falls market got included in the Nebraska edition. Poor split South Dakota while in North Dakota we had our own edition for the whole state. When we went on road trips I used to like buying a TV Guide from each state we were in, that's how I learned about these other areas.
I've got a '72 W-B edition where York PA's 43 (WSBA at the time) was listed, but by '76 it was gone.
A random musing to add: Years ago I got some Northern Wisconsin issues, and the fall '87 lists a "Movies Day By Day" section that I have never seen in any other edition. Maybe a spiritual successor to the "TV Movie Guide", but pretty much just a straight list of every movie for the week.
I'm super happy to pick long time collectors brains and try to learn more about how all the various moving parts of TV Guide worked
And I'm super happy to have my brain picked! I've been a collector and a fan since 1980 when I was 5.
Generally speaking, TVG circulation areas tended more or less to obey time zone boundaries. It wasn't absolute but it held true in the main. For those counties along the edge that got a TVG with their available stations in the time zone where these stations were located, readers likely just made the mental note that they were used to making in their daily lives in general.
I started collecting TVGs fairly young (probably around 10 or so, that would have been circa 1970) and figured out where the different editions were sold in my family's modest travels, then in 1976 I wrote to TVG's regional office in Cincinnati, asked how to get TVGs from different markets, and they sent me a large package of TVGs from throughout their district, along with an editions map (which is how I learned of the "No TV Guide Edition" area in the northern Midwest). Sadly, that map is long gone, as are all of them except for a January 1971 West Virginia edition (I have repurchased some from the approximate time frame that were in my collection). The books were the 03/27/76 issue with Jack Palance on the cover, I distinctly recall:
I once had a collection of about a thousand TVGs, both unbroken or near-unbroken runs of local editions (South Carolina and Eastern North Carolina) as well as at least one of every regional OTA edition (as opposed to cable company-specific editions) in the US and Canada. Unfortunately, they were stored in a humid garage for over a year, took on mold, and I had to dispose of practically all of them, saving a choice few and removing the channels listed page from each edition (I scanned them as well as keeping the originals). I have reconstituted a small collection of about 40 different editions and other issues of note, and am adding to it piece by piece when I find TVGs in good condition on eBay for a reasonable price, working within a somewhat limited budget.
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I got Dec- 5 through 11 1998 with Hulk Hogan, & Stone Cold Steve Austin as I wanted that one but got Hulk Hogan in the mail as my parents had TV Guide for many years. For South Bend/Kazoo/GR/ & Lansing interting that WSYM FOX47 in Lansing had news before WXMI FOX17 which launched in Jan, 1999 which they aired syndication shows from the weekend Mon was VIP at 10PM, Baywatch Thur etc.
In the later years, TVG would do multiple covers for the same week, to highlight various personalities. I don't know how they decided which ones to send to subscribers. Probably just random distribution.
Perhaps I didn't look very hard - for the last digest-sized issue, it seemed like all I saw was the Lucy recreation with Reba, whether it was mailed or in stores.
The last digest-sized issue was 10/09/05, with a wide variety of covers:
TV Guide Magazine: The Cover Archive 1953 - today! | 2005
Yes, it was - what I meant to say was while I knew there were quite a few covers, I only ever remember physically seeing one.
When the mailman delivered the Hulk Hogan one, I bet you told him, “Give it here, brother!”
I did some further digging, and the Rapid City stations were added to the Colorado (not Northern Colorado) edition with their own listings sometime during or before 1977. A 1974 edition shows channel 3 in Rapid City and channel 11 in Lead (pronounced to rhyme with "deed", not "bed") and Deadwood under the "for programs on" section, with a reference to KDUH-4 Hay Springs (satellite of KOTA-3), which had its own full listing. This was the same edition that contained KREX-5 Grand Junction with a similar redirector for channel 6 Durango and channel 10 Montrose.
The Northern Colorado and Southern Colorado editions came into being sometime during or before 1983. The NoCo edition contained Rapid City stations and dropped Colorado Springs/Pueblo and Grand Junction stations, which now appeared in the SoCo edition. Denver got its own metro edition which, curiously, had listings for channel 31 (SIN) and the ham-like calls KA2XEG. It was the very first satellator, which may be why it had the distinctive call letters (per Wikipedia it also had the calls K31AA, not clear if that was concurrent with KA2XEG or whether the calls changed before or after). It is now full-power KDVR and is Fox.
