I find it amazing to type that TV Guide as we know it is coming to an end. The issue currently on the newsracks is the last in the traditional digest-sized format on cheap paper. Next week, it becomes an eight-by-ten-and-a-half inch magazine full of color — i.e., less handy to use but more conducive to big advertising buys. The change probably signals a recognition that its primary raison d'être — to serve as your handy-dandy guide to what's on the telly — has long since expired. Onscreen program guides seem to have made riffling through a little magazine obsolete. You'd think the explosion of new channels would make such a publication more of a necessity but I think the opposite occurred: It made TV Guide too unwieldy to be of much use. I haven't subscribed for more than a decade and when I page through a copy at the checkout counter, it all looks like a blur to me.
Back then, it was the best-selling magazine in the country. Some of my friends would go through each isssue with hi-lighter pens and plan their week's viewing. I had one buddy who used two markers: Pink for must-see, yellow for might-watch. Another friend, once he got his first VCR, would use it to make out an elaborate taping schedule. So much of our lives revolved around it that I would have bet then it would be around forever and in pretty much the same form.
Historians of the magazine — if there ever are such people — will probably divide its history into two periods: The Annenberg regime, when it was founded and run by Walter Annenberg; and the Murdoch era, which began in '88 when Annenberg sold out to the Australian media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. Amazingly, it was less a right-wing publication after the owner of Fox News took it over, Annenberg having been a close Nixon buddy. There was a period after Nixon's downfall when articles were filled with gratuitous asides that supported the publisher's pal and I seem to remember one issue where the article section veered from the topic of TV to predict history would judge the ousted president in ways that history has yet to judge him.
It was also a petty institution. Around 1978, I tentatively sold them an article on Johnny Carson and the then-current rumors of his imminent retirement. The piece was accepted, scheduled for publication…and then some higher-level person in the TV Guide organization placed Mr. Carson on the magazine's Enemies List. Johnny, it seemed, was not being "cooperative," doing awful things like refusing to pose for cover photos and such. I was told my article suddenly needed to be rewritten. Instead of being a fearless (and accurate) prediction that The King of Late Night would remain on his throne for years to come, it had to be changed into an exposé about how everyone in the industry felt he should step down, which was not true. My editor was embarrassed to tell me this and not surprised when I elected to withdraw the piece instead.
When Murdoch took over, he brought in people to try and "modernize" the article section and they went to stunts like multiple collector covers. I suppose they kept the circulation up (or kept it from falling faster) but by then, I'd discovered that I wasn't even opening my subscription copies and when it came time to renew, I didn't. Guess I wasn't the only one.
I wonder who, if anyone, will be the beneficiary of this format change. The underlying strength of TV Guide's circulation for years has been the little rack of the magazine that's prominently situated at something like 95% of all supermarket check-out counters. That is prime marketing space and the items that are displayed thereabouts are the result of complicated financial arrangements. As a couple folks in the comic book business learned when they attempted to market digest-sized comics, you can't just publish in that size and expect to be available at Safeway, right next to the Tic-Tacs and those little booklets on astrology or recipes. You have to make deals and negotiate, and the fact that the Archie digests and Disney Adventures are usually there is a result of years of effort. One assumes the new magazine-sized TV Guide will be elsewhere on those checkout stands but there's a space now…a physical space that can accommodate something else of comparable dimensions. Maybe it'll be a new digest-sized magazine…or maybe it'll be more Altoids. I'm guessing Altoids.