Remember TV Guide?

The first page had latest programming news on what looked like a yellow legal pad.

Still subscribe, still love it, still do the puzzle in INK!!!

12. Sue _ _ _ Langdon

I used to make up my own TV Guide. Are TV Guide perhaps one of those pencil-dialing things?

When color television shows were first being broadcast, the listing had a huge "C" next to the show's name. Everyone wanted to see the shows that were in color!

Of course, Ane.

In the 70s a friend at ad agency years ago showed me TV Guide's rate card. They had 120 local editions.

The mailing addresses for area stations were listed.

It was obvious several years ago that the crossword puzzles were being populated by computer because suddenly very obscure shows and characters were being referenced.

It was an actual guide to twenty-four hours of television. Now it only covers the hours from eight to eleven. Fortunately, my local newspaper guide has improved, but for a while there I was completely lost.

OP = Frank Costanza

They used descriptions like Comedy for each program and one was Melodrama. Old horror movies got this label.

It used to be so exciting when the fall preview issue would come out. Also, on a local level it was fun each fall to see which syndicated sitcoms would be showing on the different UHF channels in the early evening.

This is what I remember.

The little boxes for "special episodes" with detailed descriptions of what would happen on that particular show. %0D %0D And the shock the first time I saw an issue that WASN'T from my local area. That it was all different information.

Little House on the _ _ _ _ _ _ _

As the ----- Turns

R11, You wanna piece o' me??

Wasn't there a feature called cheers and jeers?

I liked the episode summaries. My favorite phrase was "hijinks ensue".

I used to love the Fall Previews too. But I'll be damned if the Fall Preview featuring The Golden Girls premiere didn't make it sound like the worst show ever.

Are they still doing those magazine style issues? I remember when they were little books.

Back when I was popular. Now I can't even get a return invite to a sinking wreck of the remake.

Remember the Art Tests they had in the back of every issue?

I have Fall Preview issues going back to 1979.%0D %0D The best one was 1976; it previewed a lot of great series including Charlie's Angels.%0D %0D

Mary!

I adored TV Guide when I was younger.

It was really the only place to find out what was going on. I adored the Fall Preview issues. Those were the best.

I also remember that they used to have (in the 1980s) a special guide with all the films that were on premium cable channels and I remember we couldn't afford cable so I always thought that was cool.

I also remember the ads were so corny and absurd.

Oh and the inserts where you could order cheap CDs and Columbia House videos!

I used to run to get the TV Guide aand go through it, circling shows that I wanted to see. This was back in the late 70's. My love started to fade when they went to the grid listings.

I stopped buying it when they started leaving out various TV/cable stations altogether and then didn't even list any shows that came on after midnight.

I saved about 20 Fall Preview issues. I also saved the special music issues because since I was a kid, I've loved music. So I've got all the Michael Jackson issues and Cher etc.

My mom told me I still have a box old TV Guides at her place. I wonder what treasures I have there!

The TV guides which came with NY's World Journal Tribune Sunday paper, in the mid 1960s, were hilarious. They were cheaper versions of the regualr TV Guide, with shiny papepr for the cover and the articles, the rest was printed on newsprint type paper.

The old movie synopsis' in the WJT were hysterically funny and it was on purpose. I saved a few of those WJT tv guides, one had Diana Rigg and Patrick McNee and the other had Ethel Merman, lol

Anyone remember these guides?

I also recall the NY Times had a separate tv guide, as did the Daily News, it was called The Vue which was all on shiny paper, now it's printed large size on newsprint.

Dude, I did that Art Test when I was 15. Instructors came to my house, and wanted me to join the Philly Art School. Naturally, my mom said "no". I didn't draw the pirate, but one of the other complicated drawings.

My first TV Guide that I bought was the Lucille Ball drawing on the cover. Supposedly, that's a collector's edition if you own it.

What year did they change their look? Wasn't it like 2002 or something?

Yes, r32.

As a kid, always looked forward to the new TV Guide each week. Cool covers, small magazine, and far-out puzzles!

You can still get TV Guide as an application for the iPhone, but it's not really the same as the magazine.

[quote]I liked the episode summaries. My favorite phrase was "hijinks ensue".

I used to be one of the writers who'd write those. We used to purposely try to insert that term for its cheese value. We'd also challenge each other to come up with as many groan-worthy puns as possible.

I miss that job.

What I used to love in the seventies was that, during the course of the season, nearly every tv series got the cover slot at least once. Even if your favorite show wasn't at the top of the Nielsen ratings, you could be assured of a cover at some point.%0D %0D This all changed in the eighties, when they finally got wise to the fact that "hot covers" were much bigger sellers. At that point they began having Michael J. Fox on the cover over and over again. Or they'd do "collector's covers" with eight different Star Trek covers, so collectors would buy multiple copies of the magazine each week.

I had forgotten how gorgeous Mark Harmon was when he was young till I saw r21's link.

[bold]DOWN[/bold]%0D %0D 14. [italic]Glee[/italic] star _ _ _ Michele

Oh, and as for the crosswords, we'd actually get complaints from readers that the clues were too hard. Seriously.

[quote]What are your memories of the guide?

R32,%0D %0D [italic]TV Guide[/italic] switched out of the digest-sized publication in 2005. I think it may have been October 2005.

[quote]This all changed in the eighties, when they finally got wise to the fact that "hot covers" were much bigger sellers. At that point they began having Michael J. Fox on the cover over and over again. Or they'd do "collector's covers" with eight different Star Trek covers, so collectors would buy multiple copies of the magazine each week.

I seem to remember they finally gave up and started putting movie stars on the cover, people with little if no relation to that week's TV listings.

Of course now the tide has turned and it's TV stars who are the big draws on cheap magazine covers.

I want to hear more from r36. What other sorts of communications did you get from the great unwashed TV Guide audience?

Didn't it have by far more subscribers than any other magazine?

I could hardly wait for the Fall Preview issues, so I could play my TV watching schedule. I always bought my OWN copy because I couldn't depend on anybody to keep the family copy pristine - they would set drink glasses on it like it was a coaster! %0D %0D And I loved the pink Patty Duke cover, I think that was my favorite one ever (scroll down at link).

Yes Ms. Crist at R44 and I used to love how your Movies on TV column would tell you the original length of the film and how much it had been edited for television.

I loved their synopses too. Isn't TV Guide where THE SOUND OF MUSIC synopsis was famously: "Nun manque falls in love, charms kids, escapes Nazis."

R36, I loved the movie summaries. One summer I erased all of the war movies and westerns. I just erased the bold line with the movie description. It took my dad months to figure it out and I got to watch all of the shows I had missed.

Cleveland Armory...

I remember a reviewer's note about the Tony Randall/Swoosie Kurtz sitcom "Love,Sydney". It explained apologetically that the character of Sydney was indeed gay in the original TV movie, but that the issue of the character's sexuality would never,ever be mentioned in the series. %0D %0D The reviewer must have said that about three or four times.%0D %0D Ahh, the homophobia of the 80s.

R39, "cunt" is a four letter word, not three.

I still have a large collection of TV Guides from the early 80s until the mid 90s.%0D %0D I have framed a collection of four of them, each featuring Richard Chamberlain on the cover for his various TV projects (Shogun, The Thorn Birds, Wallenberg:A Hero's Story, and The Bourne Identity).%0D %0D Yeah, I'm a TV Guide nerd.

For R32 and r42 :%0D %0D The switch to the larger-sized format occurred in the late 1990s.

OOPs, I was wrong. R42 is right on the money.%0D %0D It seemed to me like the switch occurred earlier than 2005.%0D %0D Anyway, I haven't really read a TV Guide since about 1999.

R51,%0D %0D I was referring to the physical shape of the publication.%0D %0D That was in 2005.

Gotcha, R54. See above. I already conceded that I was wrong.

Same here, R28.%0D %0D I liked when they would provide a synopsis of what happens on the episode, that way you could tell if it was an episode that you'd seen before.%0D %0D When they went grid, they skimped on the synopses.

I can understand buying TV Guide for the articles but you guys were buying it all these years for the TV listings? Why? Were you too lazy to look them up?

Sent from my iPhone.

r57, TV Guide began in the late '40s. Where else do you think we could find detailed listings in one place until the internet arrived fifty years later?

.

Television broadcast schedule weekly magazine

_ _ Guide.

Bump.

I love looking at old TV Guides.

Did you know that 33 years ago, the panelists on the "$1.98 Beauty Show" were Joanie Sommers (?), Wolfman Jack, and Dody Goodman?

I was probably watching Benny Hill instead.

Back in the early 90's when I was between jobs and living at home there was literally only one thing I had to look forward to and that was the new Tv guide. I had no friends and no ambition at the time.

Fortunately my prospects improved in the 2000's and I am doing all right for myself.

1956:

I Love Lucy - Lucy wants to be in the show. Ricky is upset.

1972:

Maude - Maude has a abortion. Walter is upset.

Me too, r61! The new TV Guide for the iPad is not the same.

When I was young, the only families who subscribed to TV Guide were rich, or at least upper middle class. The rest of us got TV listings from the daily newspaper.

Nowadays, I can't imagine anyone subscribes to it. It is only a cable station now, right?

Oooh, after a rousing edition of "Match Game", featuring Betty White and Nipsy Russell, stay tuned for "Dinah!" where her guests include MacLean Stevenson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Shaun Cassidy!

How random!

Loved the soap re-caps each week but, mostly, loved the big, fat Fall Preview issue with each new show getting it's own page with pictures of the cast.

I loved cheers and jeers, r19!

We had two TV Guide subscriptions for awhile, one for me and one for my father. He cut the monster movie ads out of mine so I wouldn't have nightmares about Rodan and Godzilla. Wasn't that nice of him?

I was the OP of the recent Reader's Digest thread. The magazine that everyone poops to.

The TV Guide is the second place magazine to poop to, of course.

The new TV Guide sucks. It doesn't have local listings (no more local editions) and it doesn't even list newer national programming services like MeTV or Antenna. I sometimes read it for the articles, but I use zap2it.com for TV listings.

Your dad sounds awesome, R69.

[quote] 12. Sue _ _ _ Langdon

LOL!

R72 Yeah, it was kind of surprising how awful he was about my being gay, after being that kind of dad for so long.

[quote]12. Sue _ _ _ Langdon

Bitch can't even spell her name right.

I wonder if my dad let us kids watch The Wizard of Oz, when it was on the same time as Bond. Back in those days, a lot of households only had one TV, so you had to fight it out. Dad - being the breadwinner - usually won.

I figure we had a shot at watching Dorothy, only because this was faux-Bond Lazenby.

I agree the crossword puzzles obviously are now made by computer because they reference characters from shows I never heard of.

It would've been impossible for the magazine to keep up its old format with hundreds of channels now.

My sister and I could hardly wait for my father to return home with the TV Guide after his weekly grocery shopping on Friday nights. (My father was so cheap he wouldn't allow my mother to shop for groceries because he thought she'd spend too much money).

We'd rip through those grocery bags looking for it.

"I got it first!"

I remember seeing The Afams Family and My Favorite Martian described in the Fall Preview issue. I couldn't wait to watch them.

See, you really need that little episode description. Otherwise, how else would I know whether to watch Andy Griffith at 5:30 on channel 2, 5, or 7?

I had forgotten that they had the main market channels in black and the secondary market channels in white. It was so disappointing when our local NBC station didn't show the DC Super-Hero shows, but the station 50 miles away did! If I only I could get the antenna pointed just right could I get that channel.

The Facts of Life. Jo (Nancy McKeon) has nowhere to go on Christmas. Mrs. Garrett: Charlotte Rae, Blair: Lisa Whelchel, Tootie: Kim Fields, Natalie: Mindy Cohn.

[quote]Remember the Art Tests they had in the back of every issue?

R24 I think that was the entrance application for Clarence Thomas's law school.

I always wanted to get the TV Guide but my parents didn't order it. (They are very frugal). We just looked at the newspaper for the TV guide.

Alright, one last post, but only because I found this page of an old TV Guide featuring ABC's Tuesday night sitcoms, including "Angie" with DL's own Donna Pescow.

Of the 16 actors featured in this ad, 3 of them are no longer with us. Do you know who?

[quote]I used to love the Fall Previews too. But I'll be damned if the Fall Preview featuring The Golden Girls premiere didn't make it sound like the worst show ever.

What about me?

R85 John, Debralee and Jeff.

r85 Jeff Conaway, Debralee Scott, John Ritter. Keep posting them I love this!

R85: The dead ones are:

John Ritter from "Three's Company"

DebraLee Scott from "Angie"

Jeff Conaway from "Taxi"

Do I win a personalized review from Cleveland Amory?

I did like TVG when it was in small format. It lost whatever magic it had when it went to magazine size.

For the dialing-the-phone-with-a-pencil crowd like us, all that minutae was heaven.

For anyone with a love of Fall Preview editions, here's a great blog that covers Fall Previews from the 80s. You can read capsules of all the shitty shows that only lasted 12 episodes!

Did you know Rob Lowe played Eileen Brennan's son in some failed show in the 80s?

Back in the 1970s and 80s, as a closeted gay boy, I would eagerly await each week's new TV Guide to check out the descriptions for the shows and figure out which ones were likely to feature TV hunks getting shirtless. If the descriptions said the Dukes of Hazzard get caught skinny dipping, or Tony from "Taxi" enters the boxing ring, or "Real People" was featuring a segment on male strippers, I made damn sure to watch!

Whoops - my link didn't take at R91...

One of those listings had "You can't do that on Television!" I used to love that show, I don't know what happened to it. Oops, I said I don't know...

I used to get very excited about tv shows featuring young stars, like The Monroe's, The New People, Never Too Ypung. But they never lasted.

I'd glean tv guide to see if any of my crushes were on a tv show or in a movie that week. Tim Matheson, Andrew Prine, Barry Brown, Don Stroud.....

I spent part of my allowance (15 cents) each week on TVG, and poured through it. One of the windows on my desktop is always on TVGuide.com. It's funny, but some of the movie descriptions from back in the 60s are still used today.

That link R91/R93 is a real treasure trove of bad 80s' TV. I wish there was a channel where one could watch all those failed shitfests in their resplendent mediocrity.

It's just not the same, this is from a Cheers section:

"Cheers to Zosia Mamet for keeping it in the family business."

Wtf? Who the hell are they giving Jeers to if that fug gets Cheers for nepotism? Maybe a Jeers to Lens Dunham for being gross every week..

I used to read the synopsis of the prime time programs. Once there was a synopsis of the Mary Tyler Moore Show where Mary won't reveal a source and she goes to jail where she meets a prostitute. I was about 8 yrs old and asked my mom "what does p-r-o-s-t-i-t-u-t-e mean"? My mother said it was a woman who gets paid by a man and has to do anything he wants. I was 8 yrs old and the worst thing in the world to me was cleaning my room. So I replied, "you mean they can make the lady clean their house, even if she doesn't want to"? My mother said yes. For the next 6 years I thought a prostitute was a maid

So did I! r99

R97 Not to mention bad HAIR!

TV Guide's fall preview was often the first place I'd learn of a series.

It was certainly the first time I'd believe a show was truly coming.

Now, we're inundated with free info from and on the Web 24/7.

It's all too much.

21 Down: Television Actress: Mary ----- Moore.

Old Seinfeld joke:

You know in the back of the TV Guide, they have a phone number, ninety-five cents a minute, they will give you the answers to the TV Guide crossword puzzle? My question is, if you can't do the TV Guide crossword puzzle, where are you coming across ninety-five cents?

Does anyone have a favorite cover? This is mine.

2 Across: TV series: The Carol Burnett _____.

3 Down: TV slogan: Must-___ TV.

16 Across: Network news anchor: _______ Cronkite.

17 Down: Daytime soap opera: All __ Children.

18 Across: Daytime soap opera: The Young ___ the Restless.

I bought it primarily for the articles, the pictures were secondary.

OP is not only old, he has no life past and present. How sad.

That being said, I remember when the magazine version came out. It's interesting that they changed it when they did since today that old fashion TV Guide wouldn't have sold. No one needs tv listings in print anymore to watch something. We have guides and shit on our DVDRs.

Does anyone remember the episode of Married... with Children where Peggy's entire day revolves around the new Fall Preview issue? They had so many funny new show titles. I recall one being, "We Are FamiLee," a show about an Asian family.

[bold]ACROSS[/bold]

3. [italic]Laugh-In[/italic] star Goldie _ _ _ _

9. Larry Hagman's [italic]Dallas[/italic] character (two words)

14. [italic]Guiding Light[/italic] star _ _ _ Zimmer

18. State locale of Bob Newhart's [italic]Newhart[/italic]

22. Ray's wife on [italic]Everybody Loves Raymond[/italic]

30. Late-night talk-show host Jimmy _ _ _ _ _ _

38. Breakfast food sold by the dozen

44. 2012 Republican presidential nominee _ _ _ _ Romney

50. Oscar winner Anne _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

r110 you made up number 50.

R111 The answer is B-A-N-C-R-O-F-T.

[quote]OP is not only old, he has no life past and present. How sad.

Sadly, you're right R108. OP began this thread in February 2011 and he died the following month.

[bold]DOWN[/bold]

1. Film star Channing _ _ _ _ _

6. Funny woman and talk-show host _ _ _ _ _ DeGeneres

10. [italic]General Hospital[/italic] star _ _ _ _ _ Francis

15. The Temptations hit "_ _ _ _ Was a Rolling Stone"

19. [italic]Law & Order: Special Victims Unit[/italic] star Mariska Hargitay's character's first name

20. 1994 Oscar winner for best picture (two words)

28. 1990s ABC detective drama [italic]NYPD _ _ _ _[/italic]

32. Donna Mills's character on [italic]Knots Landing[/italic]

36. MSNBC's _ _ _ _ _ _ Maddow

42. Popular family sitcom [italic]Leave It to _ _ _ _ _ _[/italic]

47. Infamous Romney speech alluding to a certain percentage of the electorate who would not vote to elect him president of the United States.

I liked the "Close-Up" feature boxes. Those were reserved for the really big movie, miniseries, sports and variety premieres (the ones for the Academy Awards were always a full-page). And of course, "Close-Up" was also for the "very special" episodes. Here's the one for the All In the Family episode dealing with Beverly LaSalle's death:

I like this psychedelic 60s Lucy cover art for TV Guide.

I used to love the little TV guide..we usually used the newspaper listings, but I would buy it when I could, especially the fall preview issues. I had saved them all from the 80s but I think they were finally thrown away. Sometime in high school, we started subscribing, and my dad and I would always fight over who got to do the crossword puzzle.

Thirty-five years ago, JR, Sue Ellen, and Kristen Shepherd were on the cover of TV Guide.

Christ, how time flies.

Fifty years ago this week: Bewitched

Forty years ago this week: Fantasy Island

Thirty years ago this week: The Oscars

Twenty years ago this week: Sports Night or Wrestlemania (multiple covers)

I used to love Cheers N Jeers and the soups updates. They did the best soap updates. I would also love going through it and finding out what deserved a close up.

Remember how exciting it was when the Fall Preview issue came out?

My favorite cover.

One rainy Sunday afternoon in January 1980, I flipped open TV Guide to find something, anything, to watch; I found this gem in its listing for the day: