TV Guide
From Freepedia
TV Guide is the name of two North American weekly magazines about TV programming, one in the United States and one in Canada. Although the magazines share the same name and a similar logo, they are owned by different companies and publish distinct editorial content.
In addition to TV listings, the publications feature television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and reviews.
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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.
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). Unlike most TV channels, the programs on the TV Guide Channel generally only last from 30 seconds to a minute, and thus are usually scheduled to play on the hour (for instance a show might appear at 12:45 and again at 1:45).
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. 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. 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 the best late-night movies on all 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.
On July 26, 2005, Gemstar announced that TV Guide would be retooled 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 reason for the move was due to viewers getting their TV information from other sources like the internet, cable TV channels (like TV Guide Channel), Electronic Program Guides, TiVo, and so on. The new version of TV Guide hit stores on October 17, 2005, and, fittingly, had Ty Pennington from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on the cover.
TV Guide is owned by Gemstar, which is in turn owned partially by News Corporation.
Canada
For many years, the Canadian edition of TV Guide shared editorial content with the American version. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, the magazine split off on its own and today publishes completely different stories, often with a Canadian focus. The magazine, which otherwise uses a similar logo to that of the American version, is published by Transcontinental Media. 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). With the change in format came the decision by the magazine to no longer print 24-hour listings; overnight programming is left off in order to focus on more frequently viewed hours. As of November 5, 2005, the Canadian TV Guide will reduce from 6 editions to 2, one for Eastern Canada and one for Western Canada.
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Categories: Listings magazines | United States magazines | Canadian magazines | News Corporation subsidiaries
