I am to be reduced to reading the crappy new version of TV Guide? Starting today, the NY Times has discontinued its weekly TV listings magazine! Bastards. It was a perfect little supplement, easily read, all the local stations, no crappy articles to suffer through. I called the Times and the recording said, “from now on you may refer to our Web site or the daily listings,” which is a hell of a lot of use when it’s Sunday and you want to know what to record this coming Wednesday or Friday, and you want it circled on your coffee table, not on your goddam computer screen.
I may actually cancel my Times subscription now. I can get my news online, and I guess I’ll have to buy the local paper and toss out everything but their TV page.
Sooo, anybody know what the hell is on TV this week? Sonsobitches.
Yeah, but that’s pretty much useless: who wants to run back and forth to the computer and print stuff out, when you can have a nice little booklet handy on your coffee table in which you can circle the weekly viewing/taping? Plus, the trouble with daily listings (newspaper or online) is, I want to know what’s on later this week, so I can set my VCR if I’m going to be out of town or out late.
The only reason to get the weekend Times now is Christopher Gray’s “Streetscapes” column. Tomorrow morning I’ll go to the deli and paw through the local papers and see which one has a weekly TV listing.
The Denver papers just did something similar; they will only distribute the TV magazine to those who request it. Something over half the subscribers have already requested it, so I don’t know what they think they’ve gained except to piss people off.
I’m waiting for the day that they announce that they are going to discontinue printing the news in order to save paper. I understand that newspapers are in a financial crunch and all that, but damn! Somebody in the front office isn’t thinking these things through.
As someone who closely follows the newspaper industry (and hopes to be employed therein shortly), I’ve been keeping a close eye on the trend to eliminate all non-essential material in newspapers. The big push is to get rid of the stock listings. A lot of newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, have done this or are planning it, but it always solicits an outcry from readers who somehow want to play the stock market without keeping watch on prices on an up-to-the-minute basis. TV listings are also on their way out, thanks to the Internet. The newspapers figure that the money they can save in newsprint is more than the number of lost subscribers. I hate to think what this business model means played to its logical conclusion.
Gilda is on TCM tonight at 8PM EDT. The divine Rita Hayworth (“If I were a ranch they’d call be the Bar Nothing.”) plus Glenn Ford and George Macready doing their dance of sublimated seduction (“I was born the night you met me.”).
Here in Louisville, the Courier-Journal recently cut out all of the capsule reviews from its TV listings booklet. I was kind of irritated; I mean, even though I tend to get my television information from the Internet or from the capsule reviews available from digital cable, it’s nice to have another option. But a TV listings booklet full of nothing but grids is damn near useless. Apparently, plenty of other readers were less than pleased with the change, and the newspaper responded by restoring the capsule reviews.
Disgraceful, is what it is. I saw today’s “daily listings” in the Times, which is all they’ll have from now on: prime-time shows only, no hint as to what’s on before 6:00 p.m. or after midnight. And, as I said, just one night’s shows. Nothing about what’s on later this week.
TV Guide was always a piece of crap, but now with their new “No TV Listings at All, Just Articles!” format, it’s useless crap.
I hope some of the the local papers still have a weekly TV page . . .
Wow, until this thread I had honestly forgotten actual printed TV listings existed. For a few years now I have simply used the on-screen guide from the cable company on my DVR. I realize not everyone has this feature, but this thread made me realize how dependant I am on it. I actually don’t remember the last time I saw a printed TV guide. Weird.
Yeah, I use the on-screen guide that comes with my cable. I wish it didn’t suck. It’s wrong fairly frequently, it only goes out about 24 hours in advance (sometimes 36) and it doesn’t include descriptions until 12 hours or less before the program starts. I find it hard to believe that keyboarding monkeys are feverishly typing up program blurbs only 12 hours in advance of the broadcast, so goddammit, release the information!
Or the hounds. You could release the hounds, and sic them on the damn keyboard monkeys.
Nuff said about that. The little weekly magazine was a perfect life form: compact, easy to page through and think, “Hmm, I’ll be out late Thursday and there’s a good movie on, I’ll set my VCR.” Spend a few minutes on Sunday and circle what I want to watch that whole week, and all I had to do was glance at it thereafter.
I hope the Times gets a lot of furious complaints (they already have mine) and reconsiders.
Wow, your’s does suck! Our’s is pretty spiffy. You can see a week in advance, including descriptions, it has lots of nifty search features too to help you find something specific you may want to look for. I’m depressed for you, you need to go kick some keyboard monkey ass.
The solution is obvious. Just ask a friend who is computer savvy to print out a schedule for you every week.
Alternately, you could just move to Boca a few decades ahead of schedule. There you will find that besides mah jongg, canasta, and complaining, our elders enjoy refusing to deal with any technology invented after 1970. The Sun Herald and the rest will have a weekly TV guide for decades.
