It’s still being published.
The online service, tvguide.com, is operated by the original parent company, which sold off the magazine in 2008.
I don’t think they actually publish channel listings anymore, though. The modern version is a general interest magazine profiling hit shows, not a catalog you can review to find out what’s showing on your local cable network at 3:30 PM on Thursday, with an index in the back that you can check to find out how many times Spunk Crashfart and the Tomb of the Were-Bitches is going to be airing this week.
Are dot matrix printers still being made?
Ah. I did not know that. I subscribed decades ago, but haven’t so much as seen a copy in at least a decade.
Impact printers are, for certain business use. Okidata is still a major player. Typically multipart forms.
Dot matrix is a type of impact printer.
Having never had a subscription TV service (i.e. cable) I have to ask how far ahead can you look? Is it several days like the print Guide was so you could plan to catch that movie you’ve consistently missed?
Usually no more than 2-4 weeks, but TV guide was typically one week.
Improved, then. Doubly so if it is seachable.
Lessee… ah, here we are [%gone wild]
It seems unimaginable now, but in the days when TV Guide was widely sold, the evening listings for all the channels could fit in one page. That probably speaks more to how few channels there were in those days than to anything about the magazine.
The NYC one had both NYC and Connecticut. Including all the UHS channels there must have been something like 30 channels in the listing.
Some people lived in an area where you could get both NYC & Philly stations, but TV Guide didn’t have a version for that. I remember someone bitching about why they got Connecticut and not Philly.
The San Diego TV Guide had listings for the major LA channels too, because tropospheric propagation causes analog TV broadcasts in southern CA to propagate from farther away and the two markets had to share the VHF spectrum. You needed a pretty big antenna to get the LA stations from San Diego, but the overlap caused a few quirks in channel assignment - our NBC affiliate was channel 39, for instance, and the Fox affiliate was on a station based out of Tijuana.
Do some of you remember when those things were always mailed with utility bills? They would often bear the famous message: “Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate”. I understood the purpose but it always struck me as funny that they would mail you something for which you had absolutely no use, and whose sole purpose was for you to mail it right back.
I live in such a neighbourhood, but the absence of traditional copper telephone wiring doesn’t mean the absence of traditional wired telephones. We have both coax and fiber, and both can be used for telephone, internet, and television service. And I do have a land line.
As a kid, I was a TV fanatic and loved that magazine. I incessantly bugged my parents to get cable, which in those days was in its infancy. They finally relented, which meant that instead of being limited to just two channels I was in the heavenly state of having access to five!!
Talk about fancy, we just had the free TV guide from the Sunday paper.
Before the local paper died, they started charging an extra 50 cents a week for that TV guide in the Sunday paper.
I don’t know about you, but in our house, we don’t use our TV to ‘watch TV.’
We use the television for Netflix and Nintendo, and if we feel particularly old-fashioned, we might pop in a DVD. But we never use it to watch broadcast programs. Off the top of my head I don’t even know how to find the program listings.
And increasingly, the kids don’t even want to use the TV set for Netflix or their games. They prefer their iPads.
ETA: It’s funny to think that we have gone from watching movies in movie theaters, to seeing them on large screen TVs at home, then on iPads. And now I do most of my viewing on my iPhone while I exercise. Smaller and smaller screens…
Pretty much the only time we sit together and watch out tv is presidential debates. Otherwise we watch movies on our tablets.
Do you know why this is ? I can see watching Netflix on a tablet if I’m sitting in my yard or otherwise in an area without a TV to watch or if I don’t own a TV - but I don’t understand why a tablet would be preferable to a TV.
It’s private/personal for one. Plus if I need to pee I can go and do that without pause if I want. My gf occasionally watches a “chick flick” or “romantic comedy” while I wouldn’t watch either ever. So we can both be in the living room, petting the dogs, watching what we each want to watch.
Our TV Guide also included channels from other nearby cities which we couldn’t get. That was where I first found out about this mysterious show called “Doctor Who,” which was aired on the PBS station out of Terre Haute, but not the station from Indianapolis, which was the only PBS station we could receive.
There were these tantalizing episode descriptions in the listings for this “Doctor Who” thing, which sounded like just the kind of program I would have enjoyed watching, but it was ever to be denied to me!
What a fun thread, and I’m only up to post 100!
I thought this one was especially interesting.
Because a tablet is just inches away from your eyes, so its small screen is actually more immersive than a TV. It’s like your own private movie theater, and you can watch it anywhere.