The Observer axe TV guide

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/26/stephen-pritchard-readers-editor-comment

Not gone down too well - they've axed their 7-day TV guide, citing the usual excuses rolled out about the internet and EPGs - though surely those who rely on the internet for their TV guides are likely too for their news too, so wouldn't buy the paper in the first place.

Personally although the EPG is handy for finding programmes you know that are on, to record them, I think it would be virtually impossible just to browse them to find out what's coming up in the next week - much quicker to scan across a couple of pages of a TV guide.

As for the internet - I've had Digiguide for a few years, but rarely find myself using it now. Still browse through the TV guides every Tuesday though, and again through the free ones at the weekend (which you pay more for!).

To be honest the Observer TV Guide was never up to much - far inferior to the "Guide" in the Guardian the previous day which also includes cinema/theatre/club etc listings. But I imagine there are people who only get the Sunday paper and have relied on that, and it seems miserly to take it away when the paper now costs £2 (although thankfully I pay far less thanks to the rather good voucher-based subscription scheme they run).

I'd hope there will always be a place for paper listings magazines, certainly a decade with EPGs and internet listing hasn't seen off the listings mags.

Interesting move.

Although 7 day guides became possible in 1991, it took until the mid to late 90s for most of the serious Saturday and Sunday papers to start publishing them. Only the red-tops and the middle market papers saw the opportunity at first.

The questions for The Observer were:

*How many might they lose by dropping the guide.

*would a small drop in sales be more than balanced out by the money saved.

I wonder if any other quality papers may follow suit.

Certainly, as RT often points out, they charge readers £1.10 for information which is freely available. Their selling point is the quality of the magazine, the quality of the previews and the high level of detail for the main channels. How many of the newspaper guides are really any more than times, titles and a wee sentence of info.

I'd imagine it's a cost thing. Presumably they have to pay the broadcasters for the information, so there is an inherrent cost to including a 'free' TV guide in their paper. Newspaper sales are certainly not what they once were so I reckon they're just trying to improve profits here and there...

They're moving with the times, that's all. Smash Hits went under because it filled its pages with song lyrics that were freely available elsewhere. Why should the Observer print a TV guide that presumably few people read?

It does seem strange for a publisher which has excellent coverage of the media to go along with this.

Because they print the news which you'd presume few people read too considering it's freely available elsewhere.

Bit off-topic, but it appears that the Sun still uses the purple BBC Two logo, but has updated the one for BBC One and ITV1. I can't remember the C4 and Five ones though.

Channel 4, Five and Sky1 all appear correct in The Sun's TV listing, IIRC it's been like that for some time.

Although if you read the Express or Star they tend to bunk ITV's channels all together, but for sometime now in those papers ITV1 has simply been good old ITV.

Do any papers still use the old regional names? Last time I was home The Guide in the Guardian listed ITV1 as "Granada", although here in London it's ITV1 (presumably because of the old Carlton/LWT split).