tv guide

In addition to TV listings, the publications feature television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews. Some even featured horoscope listings and crossword puzzles.

United States

The national TV Guide was first published on April 3, 1953. Its premiere issue cover featured a photograph of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's newborn son, Desi Arnaz, Jr.

TV Guide as a national publication resulted from Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications' purchase of numerous regional television listing publications such as TV List, TV Forecast, TV Digest, Television Guide and TV Guide. The launch as a national publication with local listings in April, 1953 became an almost instant success with the magazine becoming the most read and circulated magazine in the country by the 1960s. The initial cost was just 15¢ per copy. In addition to subscriptions, TV Guide was a weekly selection from its familiar rack at grocery store check-out counters nationwide; into the 1970s, each week's issue's features were promoted in a television commercial. Under the ownership of Triangle Publications TV Guide continued to grow not only in circulation, but in recognition as the authority on television programming with articles from both staff and contributing writers.

The TV Guide logo remains one of the most recognized publication logos today. Over the decades the shape of the logo has changed to reflect the modernization of the television screen. At first, the logo had various color backgrounds (usually black, white, blue or green) until the familiar red background became a standard in the 1960s with occasional changes to accommodate a special edition.

Under Triangle Publications, TV Guide was first based in a small office in downtown Philadelphia until moving to more spacious national headquarters in Radnor, Pennsylvania in the late 1950s. The new facility, complete with a large lighted TV Guide logo at the building's entrance, was home to management, editors, production personnel, subscription processors as well as a vast computer system holding data on every show and movie available for listing in the popular weekly publication. Printing of the national color section of TV Guide took place at Triangle's Gravure Division plant adjacent to Triangle's landmark Philadelphia Inquirer Building on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. The color section was then sent to regional printers to be wrapped around the local listing sections. Triangle's Gravure Division was known for performing some of the highest quality printing in the industry with almost always perfect registration.

Triangle Publications was a well-respected and growing communications firm which, in addition to TV Guide owned The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, 16 radio and television stations (WFIL AM-FM-TV Philadelphia, PA, WNHC AM-FM-TV New Haven, CT, KFRE AM-FM-TV Fresno, CA, WNBF AM-FM-TV Binghamton, NY, WFBG AM-FM-TV Altoona, PA and WLYH-TV Lancaster/Lebanon, PA) The Daily Racing Form, The Morning Telegraph, and Seventeen magazine and various cable TV interests. It was under Triangle's ownership of WFIL in Philadelphia that Dick Clark and American Bandstand came to popularity. Triangle Publications sold its Philadelphia newspapers to Knight Newspapers in 1969, its radio and television stations during the early 1970s to Capital Cities Communications and various other interests retaining only TV Guide, Seventeen Magazine and the Daily Racing Form which were also later sold to News America Corporation in the late 1980s in one of the largest media deals of the time.

In the 1990s, TV Guide acquired the Prevue Channel and renamed it the TV Guide Channel. Like its predecessor, it scrolls TV listings on the bottom portion of the screen. However the top portion now features celebrity gossip, movie talk, and commercials (in addition to the movie trailers that once took up the bulk of the Prevue Channel's programing). Until recently, the programs on the TV Guide Channel generally only lasted from 30 seconds to a minute, and thus were usually scheduled to play on the hour (for instance a show might appear at 12:45 and again at 1:45). Today, TV Guide Channel runs full length programming, including programs such as the weekly entertainment news magazine The 411, and red carpet event coverage hosted by Joan and Melissa Rivers.

From its inception until 2003, TV Guide offered listings for the entire week, 24 hours a day. Beginning with the June 21, 2003 issue (in just a few select markets), the 5am-5pm Monday-Friday listings were condensed down to four grids: 5am-8am, 8am-11am, 11am-2pm, 2pm-5pm. If programming differed from one weekday to the next, "Various Programs" was listed. This change became permanent in all TV Guide editions beginning with the 2003 Fall Preview issue.

Further modifications, none beneficial to the magazine's listings, continued to take place. Beginning in January 2004, the midnight-5am listings (and also 5am-8am on the Saturday and Sunday listings) did not include any out-of-town broadcast stations, just the edition's home market. Starting in July 2004 the overnight listings were taken out entirely, replaced by a grid that ran from 11pm-2am and had the edition's home market broadcast stations, with a handful of cable stations. It also listed a small selection of late-night movies on some channels. The daytime grids also changed from the 5am-5pm listings, to 7am-7pm. In early 2005 more channels were added to the prime-time and late night grids. The magazine also changed format to start the week's issue with Sunday listings, rather than Saturday listings, changing a tradition that started from the magazine's first issue.

On May 18, 2005, TV Guide launched TV Guide Talk, a weekly podcast available for free. The podcast is headlined by TV Guide reporter/personality Michael Ausiello, and is co-hosted by his co-workers, Angel Cohn, Daniel Manu, and Maitland McDonagh

On July 26, 2005, Gemstar announced that TV Guide would be change in format from its digest size format to a larger full-size national magazine that will offer more stories and fewer TV listings. All 140 local editions were also eliminated, being replaced by two editions, one for Eastern/Central time zones and one for Pacific/Mountain. The change in format was attributed to the increase in the Internet, cable TV channels (like TV Guide Channel), Electronic Program Guides, TiVo, as the sources of choice for viewers' program listings.

The new version of TV Guide hit stores on October 17, 2005, and featured Ty Pennington from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on the cover. The listings format, now consisted entirely of grids, also changed format to start the week's issue with Monday listings, rather than Sunday listings.

On December 22, 2006, TV Guide introduced the magazine's first ever two-week edition. The edition, which has Rachael Ray on the cover, was issued for the week of December 25, 2006 to January 7, 2007.

TV Guide's iGuide ( a joint venture with Comcast and Cox Communications) offers cable viewers all of the resources of TV Guide in digital form. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguide for more information. It is a perfect monument to the memory of Walter Annenberg (see http://www.slate.com/id/2071870/ for some historical background).

TV Guide is owned by Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc., which is in turn owned partially by News Corporation.

Canada

For many years, the Canadian edition of TV Guide was virtually the same as the US version, right down to the US ads in the color section (prior to the mid-1970s, some Canadian TV Guide editions were also sold in some border American markets). The only differences were the price (in 1972, the US edition was 15¢, while in Canada, it was 25¢) and the publisher (the "Saturday" listings featured the disclaimer, "This Canadian magazine is distributed, assembled and prepared by McMurray Publishing Company, Ltd...."). At least eleven editions were available across the country covering the major cities.

Beginning in January 1977, however, the magazine split off on its own, at first using some of the same stories and covers as the US version, but eventually publishing completely editorial content, often with a Canadian focus although the Canadian edition also published features and photos on American productions that did not appear in the US version. The magazine, which otherwise uses a similar logo to that of the American version, was published by Transcontinental Media. A series of sharp price increases were applied, rising to 30c, 35c, and ultimately close to a dollar per issue.

In 2004, the magazine changed its format from a digest size, similar to the American version, to a larger format (similar in size to a comic book). The need to keep the page count reasonable while listing an increased number of channels was cited in the first new issue as the primary rationale for moving to larger pages. With the change in format came the decision by the magazine to cease printing 24-hour listings; overnight programming was left off in order to focus on more frequently viewed hours, which elicited reader complaints.

As of November 5, 2005, the Canadian TV Guide was reduced from the six remaining editions to two, one for Eastern Canada and one for Western Canada. This change has been controversial.

After receiving numerous complaints about the new format (one which severely condensed cross-country listings), superficial changes were introduced in the November 26 edition. A year-end double issue for the December 24, 2005 to January 6, 2006 period was entirely in colour and included further scaled back listings. It also included an extensive survey, purportedly to gauge relative interest in the different sections of the magazine. The survey, however, was not intended to determine if the magazine's format switch from regional editions to semi-national editions, should remain.

On October 19, 2006, Transcontinental announced it would cease publication of the Canadian edition, with the last issue to be dated November 25 (and on newsstands November 20). Transcontinental said TV Guide will be transitioned to a "web publication", as the defunct magazine's website will be expanded.

The new website is now (December 1st, 2006) active at http://www.tvguide.ca and is being hosted by Sympatico/MSN. Once a cable/satellite provider has been selected, all channels appear (the list cannot currently be edited to remove unwanted channels). The grid is fixed at a two-hour width, requiring "scrolling" (actually a page refresh) to see anything outside this range. "VCR Plus" numbers are not available.

TV Guides in other countries

Other countries also publish national TV guides, none believed to be affiliated with the North American publication. In the United Kingdom, the Radio Times and TV Times are amongst the most popular.

In Germany, people has the choice of over 40-50 different TV Guides; some of them showing the TV listings for the next 2 or even 4 weeks ahead.

During the 1970s there was an Australian version of TV Guide, which was published under license by Southdown Press. But that version soon merged with the more successful enemyl TV Week in 1980.

There is a digest sized publication in New Zealand called TV Guide, although it is not linked in any way to either the United States or Canadian publications. It has the biggest circulation of any national magazine, and is published by Fairfax Media. [1]

In popular culture

• The Lost Boys- a bored Sam notices a TV Guide magazine in Grandpa's house and excitedly asks Grandpa if he has a TV. Grandpa responds "No, I just like to read the TV Guide. You read the TV Guide, you don't need a TV."

• Seinfeld- George's dad, Frank, collects the magazine. He enjoys the fall preview editions the most. In 2000, Frank was featured in ads for the Canadian TV Guide, singing the praises of its new features, including perfect binding.

• 'Mama's Family, Vinton Harper reveals that he has been collecting TV Guides for more than 25 years. He knows off-hand how many times Mister Ed (Naomi's favorite TV character) has made the cover: twice.

• The Bundys from the TV show Married... with Children also enjoy reading TV Guide; in fact, it is their only reading material, especially for Al Bundy.

• The Simpsons, Homer says the 'Three Rs' are "Reading TV Guide, wRiting to TV Guide... Renewing TV Guide."

• In the 5th episode of Season 2 of Hell's Kitchen, the reward for completing the challenge was a photo shoot at TV Guide.

• The X-Files, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) holds up an issue of TV Guide to a bunch of mental patients, asking if the person on the cover (Jay Leno) was the person they claim committed the crime. They all agree he was. (She is holding up a copy of the Canadian edition of TV Guide. While the show at this point was filmed in Vancouver, this episode was set in the United States.)

• In the Animaniacs song "I'm Cute", Dot mentions that TV Guide has her on the cover.