Goodbye (?) TV Guide

As a kid, I collected TV Guide covers. I don't recall if I had the very first one, a photograph of Lucille Ball and her son Desi Arnaz Jr., published on April 3, 1953, but I had most of them from around that time. TV Guide cost 15 cents a week and was indispensable. My mother made sure she purchased a copy during each week's shopping trip to the grocery store. Later, when I became an adult, I subscribed to the magazine. To this day, I have no idea where exactly Radnor, Pa., is located, but I know I sent a lot of subscription checks there. Apparently, so did a lot of other people. TV Guide consistently ranked with Readers' Digest as the magazine with the highest circulation in America.

TV Guide was owned by Triangle Publications which also published another newspaper that was to become indispensable to me as well, The Daily Racing Form. Triangle also owned 16 radio and television stations, one of which, WFIL-TV in Philadelphia, was the birthplace of American Bandstand. Triangle eventually sold TV Guide, the Racing Form and another popular publication (never read by me, however), Seventeen, to the News America Corporation in the late 1980s.

By that time, however, TV Guide had become largely irrelevant. The introduction of cable began to spell the end for the publication. Cable companies listed their own guides within their systems, available through remotes. The amount and diversity of programming offered via cable made it difficult on print guides. While TV Guide's circulation in 1970 hovered around 20 million, by last year it was down to three million.

Which is probably why its current owner, Macrovision, has recently fired the magazine's editor-in-chief, its two managing editors and its entire marketing department. From what I've been told, in the deal in which Macrovision purchased Gemstar (the makers of the VCR Plus) for its digital technology, Macrovision didn't even know Gemstar was throwing in TV Guide as a part of the deal. Some folks are telling me they'd be surprised if TV Guide lasts another month, but are certain it will be gone by the end of the year.

As for those covers, I have no idea where they disappeared to. Right now, I wish I did.