The new format of TV Guide is touted as a success (sales up 38%!)... until you read the last paragraph (circulation down 60%! -- rats, it really does make a difference what year you compare to, doesn't it?). The operation was a success but the patient died.... well, almost... should we really count it as a new magazine? It's nothing like the old one.A friend of mine used to love TV Guide, but admits that she now hates it since the redesign. For those who don't know, last year, the venerable TV Guide, in trouble because TV listings can now be found for free and more easily via the Internet and even most home cable systems these days, changed their format--upping their trim size, ditching their listings, and becoming an "entertainment and lifestyle magazine" because, goodness knows, there's no competition in that market.
For many publishers, it seems to me that strategies like that (or even book publishers' thinking that the solution to sagging mass market paperback sales is to make the trim size bigger) has kind of a "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" feel to it. People are just reading fewer books. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on.
Gemstar, the owner of TV Guide, was an early player in the once-hyped-but-now-decidedly-moribund e-book market, having marketed and sold (although "sold" is probably too optimistic a word) an e-book reading device that, quite frankly, kind of sucked. I was at a party back in late 2000 and had a conversation with an editor at Publishers Weekly (who was very pro-e-book) and he intimated that Gemstar had some kind of TV Guide/e-book/PDA convergence strategy (but then, who didn't?). I'm guessing no part of that worked out.
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