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TV Guide is Updating an Old Format in a Changing World

Once upon a time in this country, if you owned a television set, chances are you bought TV Guide to go with it.  TV Guide is the weekly publication that served for years as the Bible for television viewers.   You either bought it at the supermarket, or if you were really in the zeit geist, you had a subscription.  It was the last word for consulting TV programming.   The television directories that most newspapers included in their Sunday editions just didn’t cut it.

But life was simpler.  For one thing you didn’t have six thousand odd channels, or whatever it is.   You had but a few.  And then a few more.   And then you had cable.   So then the TV Guide was comfort food.  That and the horse racing handicapping publication were the pride of the Annenberg Group.  Then TV Guide became outdated.

So TV Guide went on television, appropriate enough.   There you could consult the programming listings.   But every local cable channel did the same thing.   TV Guide as it was, faced obsoletion.   The end of the era.

But then TV guide got the idea to develop its own original programming.   Features, etc., mixed in with channel listings.  Not bad, but still a little threadbare.  So what to do for the current and gradually disappating viewership.

Macrovision, the owner of TV Guide, just sold it to One Equit Partners for $300 million.  to some, that may seem like a lot of money, but in its day, relatively speaking, TV Guide would have commanded a lot more money than that.   Projections as low as they were, initially had the sales figure higher.Times and all of its changes.

Allen Shapiro, noted producer, and one of the new owners intends on making the TV Guide Network a destination site for original program.  No more mere listings, punctuated by a few features here and there.   TV Guide instead will be a full blown destination site with original programming.   It should be interesting to see how this progresses.

So the moral of the story, at least for now, is when you deem your product obsolete, but the branding is still strong, then look to repurpose it so that it will find appeal in the current time.   Recycling older brands is a bit of an art form and you will need the right employees to render the changes.   Maybe you will find employeees in-house, or maybe you need to outsource.  You may consider hiring new personnel, but if you do so run the proper background checks so you can judge if they are qualified to make all the necessary changes.

Meanwhile, we shall watch and see if viewers once again watch TV Guide

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.