Whatever happened to TV Guide?
Apparently it has been decided that no one cares about channel listings in a magazine format anymore. After all, everyone gets them from on-screen menus these days (everyone except those of us who have relinquished cable and satellite).
So TV Guide has gone from its unique 5-by-7 format to the ordinary, full-size 8-by-10 style. And lots more garish color.
There are still show-listing grids, but they have been somewhat abbreviated, and there are now full-page "highlights" of selected episodes — with East Coast show times, thank you very much, at least in the edition I'm getting.
And there's nothing local; TV Guide has gone from 140 regional editions to two, for the East Coast and the West Coast. (Circulation had dropped from 20 million at its zenith in the '70s to 9 million.)
There is also a Web site, www.tvguide.com/listings, which is supposed to have up-to-date local show times you can print out.
All of which would be fine, but now the magazine looks just like its sister publication Inside TV — and they both look like People or US. Except less substantive.
If that's possible.
Not that TV Guide was ever in competition with Tolstoy. But there was a time — back when the magazine had a smaller arena in which to compete, and TV only had three networks — when the stories often were more interesting, even occasionally provocative.
Now it's lots of quick-read factoids and gossip about TV stars. Lots of fluffy, abbreviated interviews with TV personalities. And some stuff about people who aren't in TV, with only the most tenuous TV links.
Hence the story on George Clooney's latest film . . . which just happens to be about TV.
Or the item on "Capote"; the screenplay was written by Dan Futterman, who was a regular on "Judging Amy."
Or the "Just the Facts" lead item about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. That's right. Holmes was once a "Dawson's Creek" star. And perhaps Cruise has watched television.
Oh, there's still Matt Roush's reviews (he loves "My Name Is Earl"), Susan Stewart's "Hits & Misses" (she didn't care for HBO's "Last Best Chance") and the uncredited "Cheers & Jeers" column (cheers to "Kitchen Confidential," jeers to "West Wing").
But just about everything else is pretty much rah-rah boosterism.
We also now have "The Love Column," with Ali Gazan describing "hookups and breakups on your favorite TV shows," such as "Desperate Housewives" and "One Tree Hill." Yikes.
The magazine is even copying TV by amping up the self-promotion: The first issue has a big photo of a truck and a stack of boxes, all with the TV Guide logo on the side.
There are also a number of specific elements taken directly from other magazines, such as Entertainment Weekly: Quick-read one-liners from shows, a chart dubbed "What's Ranking and Tanking."
I've been a TV Guide subscriber most of my adult life, and my parents took it before that, so, for me, it's always been around.
I even have some old TV Guides — dating back to the 1950s — that I skim through when I'm feeling nostalgic. (Hey, that's the privilege of being a baby boomer.)
There was something kind of nice about that digest-size magazine on the night stand or coffee table, which told me when to tape "My Name Is Earl" or "Desperate Housewives."
But, in truth, the magazine's listings were becoming more and more unreliable. The networks so often shuffle things around at the last minute that a magazine printed three weeks ago just can't keep up.
The powers that be saw that TV Guide had become impractical and out of date, that it hasn't been able to keep up with the times or the competition.
So now it has become the competition. And lost one subscriber.
E-mail: hicks@desnews.com