TV LISTINGS? NO, THANK YOU

TV GUIDE used to be the most popular USA magazine.

Selling many weeks more than 20 million copies.

Today it sells less than 4 million copies.

Why?

Becasuse readers don´t want and don´t need listings, but guidance.

Less TV, more GUIDE.

Period.

The New York Times weekly TV Guide is gone.

But its TV and entertainment coverage is improving.

The New York Times daily Stock Market listings are gone.

But the online coverage is better and updated all the time, and the new print pages more readable than ever.

Los Angeles Times is going to do the same with the TV Guide, that from September 30 will be available under request only to subscribers of the papers.

And I am sure that the same is going to be done by the Chicago Tribune and the rest of the Tribune papers.

Reasons?

You save a lot of money.

Readers don´t need print guides as almodst all the TV systems offer on-screen guides.

Advertisers don´t advertise on them, so their more cosinefficientnt than ever.

And they can not get the last-minute changes of the programs.

But the most important issue here is this:

What is our real business as newspapers?

Not to produce (and we don´t produce these listings as they are computer generated by outsiders) just data, but to offer guidance and advice.

People watch TV more than ever, so they need our critical guidance more than ever.

If you cut these supplements (and recommendend thids to all our clients), increase the pages devoted to TV issues (programs, reviews in advance, celebrities, controversies, news behind the cameras and the screens...) and you readers will be more than happy, and nobody, I mean nobody, will remember these boring and usefulness "books" from the pre-internet era.

REFORMA in Mexico City has done more than that.

They don´t offer anymore daily TV listings, but a very extensive and quality guides about what it´s worth to watch tonight or tomorrow.

Results?

No complaints from the readers.

And, oh boy, ads and ads from the TV networks PAYING to advertise their own shows and soap operas.

Let´s concentrate our newsrooms in real journalism, not in managing computer-generated raw data.

Tell us about your experience.