TV Guide Gets Hipster Makeover. Jeff Jarvis Weighs In
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Written By Reprise Media | July 26, 2005 | Share This
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I don’t know why I find the news that TV Guide is changing formats depressing. I don’t even read it. I generally put it in the same category as 60 Minutes and Werther’s Originals, that is, things that old people enjoy.
Even still, it bothered me so much that I went looking to find out why. I found it in a post on Buzz Machine titled The Incredible Shrinking Magazine.
In it author Jeff Jarvis talks about the magazine’s shrinking audience, the increasingly difficult task of adapting its regional publishing model to multiple cable systems, and the threats on-screen listings and print competition present. He calls the magazine’s decision to scrap local listings and instead focus on feature stories, photos, and celebrity gushing “inevitable” and says:
“This is an important moment in the history of TV, pop culture, and publishing. This is the official end of the mass market.”
In addition to growing up big and strong like a “real magazine”, the newly revamped TV Guide will carry a mix of 75% features and 25% listings, a reverse from the 75% listings, 25% features format of the past. TV Guide will also be going after a new audience - young women ages 18 to 34, as opposed to the more family-focused target of women 35 to 54 used in the past.
Read the rest on the TV Guide press release and snatch up old issues of the soon-to-be-retro small size version in these auctions on eBay.
Topics: Media Convergence |