Does anybody want to remember TV GUIDE magazine back when it was a digest , in its heyday when it sold something like 20 million copies a week ?
Back at the CBG boards we had a line discussing TVG when it went magizine-sized .
About that time , in San Francisco , Wondercon was held that year and the new GIANT-SIZED TV GUIDE-THING was one of the sponsors , and the handout plastic bag from the convention had their logo occupying one side of the bag .
One curiosity of TVG's last years in the digest-sized format was that they periodically put out bonusues , taped to the front cover , of audio CDs in the 3" CD format ! ~ which had flopped bigtime as a commercially sold format in the late 80 but for some reason late digest-period TVG was enamored of as a marketing bonus .
They also took alternate covers to a REAL extreme in those years ~ Sound familiar ? ~ and were endlessly doing " Top ___ TV ____s Of All Time " lists .
For comics , there were , of course , George Reeves Superman and Fred Flintstone covers of TVG (I once had the latter) ~ I'm pretty sure there was an Adam West Batman one , but - .
Golden era TVG was noted for their pithy descriptions of TV shows' episodes , as teasers ~ A lost art form ! :-)
Remember how TVG would designate the TYPE of movie a movie was ~ " Comedy " , " Musical " , etcetera . I think that went for ongoing series , too , didn't it ?
Are there any TV Guide collectors insane enough to try and collect every American version of a particular issue ? Or , more narrowly , are any particular regional editions in more demand ?
I have some theories about what editions of TVG might be the easiest to find , which might seem counter-intuitive .
I remember when , going from my suburban New York area home to a vacation in my grandparents' East Texas county , being suprised to find a page of single-panel cartoons in the TX copy of the same issue down there that was not in the NYC one ! Less advertising in a smaller area , I would guess .
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I miss the digest-sized TV Guide, but it changed as the world changed. Particularly in that there no longer are editions with listings localized for any given market, which used to be the main reason it even existed.
The last one I got had four different covers for the launch of Smallville. Or was it Lois & Clark? It was a while back!
I still have lot of them. Funny I have more channels to watch now but I end up watching less tv than ever.
As I recall, they managed to keep the price low (was it 15 cents?) throughout the 1960s and maybe beyond. It was tough to pass up at that price!
It would be great to have an online archive for historical research purposes. (The listings, I mean. I wouldn't care very much about the articles.)
...But what market's version would you want to use as the basis/be scanned , Don ???
Don Mankowski said:
Good question. I suppose that New York would be most logical.
...:-) . Thank you .
Don Mankowski said:
I haven't heard the term "melodrama" used since TV Guide used to so label any horror film.
Why not archive all editions?
...I suppose the old , localized , TVG was a creature of an era when there was a little more variation in even the times of national programming locally , and more locally programmed movies and somewhat more local talk/whatever programming , even if there were far less STATIONS then .
When was this , Don ?
In the 50s/early 60s ?
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