New look TV Times (at last)

TV Times has had a much needed revamp, but though they now dedicated more pages to listings, there just seems to be less IMO.


Radio listings have been axed and moved to the website, while no place has been made for the recently axed Children's listings.

The Pick of the Day pages are now a double spread, while the terrestrial listings follow the standard layout.

It's the digital listings which have been revamped most, including a prime-time planner. Two pages are given over to general entertainment, while factual channels, movies (looks like Sky Movies 9/10 ruined their plans!) and sport (in just two columns) are on the next two pages.

Though they do look much better, there just seems to be less content in the listings though.

The terrestrial listings now have an "easier to read" font - which basically means bigger text, less content - so for example on Five in the morning they just list "Milkshake", rather than each programme.


Anyhow - some caps at http://www.tvtimes.co.uk/


It's a shame TV Times isn't the magazine it once was - I'm finding the new kid on the block, TV Easy, the best on the market at the moment - even if EastEnders is on the cover every week!

Sorry BB, it's Coronation Street on the cover of TV Easy this week!

I like the new look TV Times, looks very smart and up-to-date, a great choice of colours, love the use of Clarendon, adds a nice retro touch to the pages, and the new satellite pages reminds me a lot of the TV listings in Nuts, maybe because it's the same font...

My unbiased opinion for you there

What? You mean the dark days when you had to buy both TV Times AND Radio Times just to get the listings for 4 channels between them?

It does surprise me that the listings guide market has managed to survive as well as it has. Aswell as the fact that no listings guide lists every available channel, I've really never felt the need to have one since the arrival of the EPG. And if you only have analogue or DTT and so don't need listings for hundreds of channels, then surely you can make do with the freebie guides that are thrown in with the newspapers?

I know that in our house we used to get TV&Satellite Week because it carried listings for the German channels available on Astra 1, but gave up on that in 2001 when they stopped doing so.

I don't like it. The font used in the listings of TV Times has for a while been bigger than the likes of What's on TV therefore meaning less room for a description.

Some parts of the listings are really poor, for example look at Saturday on BBC2:

6.00am Children's Programmes
12.00noon See Hear

The only way to improve matters in this multi-channel era would be to dedicate an extra double spread per day but this would obviously increase production costs

Would have thought they'd've taken the time to make their (not particularly inspiring, nor noticable) logo a bit more up-to-date.

Looks ok, Did ITV/Granada not run it a few years back or did I just dream that?

It used to be owned by ITV Publications (I think, though correct me if I'm wrong) which was sold off towards the end of the 1980's (They also produced Look In magazine), plus I think there was some deregulation at the turn of the 1990's which meant RT could publish ITV and C4 listings and TVT could publish BBC listings. This was also the time when other magazines started up, though the only ones that still survive to this day are TV Quick and What's On TV.

Frankly I won't buy TV Guides, unless I'm dying to know what's on. They're usually expensive or focus too much on soaps, I prefer getting the free ones with the Newspapers at the weekend.

I dont like the new look TV Times either - it looks like a simular layout to its sister magazines Whats on TV and TV Easy, just in more detail.

Personally I find Whats on TV to be the best value for money (even though I dont agree with Eastenders being on 4 out of 5 covers) - at 40p it has everything you need and quite indepth articles. TV Quick is probabaly my favourite tv magazine but isnt as good value for money at 70p as WOT is at 40p.

I was surprised to see TV Easy had a Corrie cover for the first time ever. It would be interesting to know if sales dropped dramatically this week because Corrie was on the cover (as they say EE sells more covers than Corrie, however Tracy Barlow must sell a lot of covers as she is on magazines a lot when Corrie DO get covers) Ive never bought TV Easy not because of the EE thing but because of the size of it.

That's what they have done - it's 8 pages per day rather than 6.


I used to like TV Quick's cheeky listings pages, but since they began sharing listings with TV Choice it's not the same. TV Easy have some quite sarcastic "Pick of the Day" commentaries though. Maybe Harry Hill should begin a TV guide!


When I say TV Times isn't the mag it once was - it's more value for money. At 90p it's priced at the higher end of the market and though it has a couple of good features, I don't think it's worth the price. I'd prefer Total TV Guide.


I said this before, but with TV mags now having less regional editions (generally just England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) I think they should produce two versions for each region, one specialising in Freeview and one in Satellite / Cable - so for example in the Freeview guide less prominance would be given to the Sky Movies and Sky Sports channels.

What's on TV still produces all the regional versions

Although people may say there is no point in having regional versions thesedays, there is to some extent. Just look at the England editions on a Thursday. With 3 regional programmes airing on ITV1 half the page is taken up listing them!

Im surprised so many different tv magazines can survive in the market these days. There are about 8 different ones, not to mention the listings in magazines such as Heat, and all the free guides in the weekend papers. I noticed about a year ago TV Choice and Whats on TV both reduced the prices. How they can compete I dont know.

With regard to regional versions, I agree its still worth having them. In the Wales/West issue of Whats on TV they still call it HTV Wales and HTV West..

Never bought either apart from when I was a kid when we used to buy the Christmas editions of the Radio Times and TV Times every year! (Back in the day when RT only did BBC and TVT just did ITV and C4).

The RT website's dead good tho with it's 'My Programmes' feature - you just select your favourite programmes and each day it lists which are on, whatever channel they are on.