TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/052989/05298900.066

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 6KB | 108 lines

PRESS, Page 81

The Tarting Up of TV Guide

Murdoch brings wrenching changes to an industry watchdog

By Richard Zoglin


    In some homes, it makes a terrific coaster. In others, it is
a well-thumbed compendium of the week's TV programming, whose
surrounding color pages are ignored. Yet for 36 years TV Guide has
maintained a sturdy, if seldom appreciated, tradition of editorial
quality in those pages. Along with celebrity profiles and
background stories on upcoming programs, the magazine has done much
enterprising reporting on the TV industry. Most notably, in 1982
it ran a 13-page story exposing alleged ethical violations during
the making of the CBS documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Viet Nam
Deception -- charges that formed the basis for a libel suit against
CBS by General William Westmoreland.

    Those days, however, are swiftly becoming a memory. Last
September TV Guide's parent company, Triangle Publications, was
sold by Walter Annenberg to Australian-born press magnate Rupert
Murdoch for $3 billion. Murdoch, whose worldwide properties range
from tabloids like the Star to the London Times, has instigated
some wrenching changes in the familiar coffee-table companion.

    In the Murdoch revamp, stories are shorter, pictures more
plentiful and the fluff content higher, with a proliferation of
one-page features on such hot topics as "Geraldo's Compromising
Tattoo." The magazine has added a horoscope page and a rundown of
the week's soap-opera plots -- two low-rent staples of daily
newspapers. Its late-breaking news pages, once a source of knowing
industry tidbits, have become splashier and more trivial ("Rating
the Oscar Parties: The Best and the Worst"). Cover stories,
meanwhile, have kept both eyes on the newsstand: a January story
about rock music on TV, for example, had no timely reason for being
except to get Elvis Presley's face on the cover.

    At TV Guide headquarters, divided between Radnor, Pa., and New
York City, turmoil is mounting. A new publisher, Valerie Salembier,
was brought in last fall; she cut a swath through the advertising
department, firing the ad director and eliminating dozens of jobs
-- then quit after just five months. On the editorial side, the
managing editor and Hollywood bureau chief have resigned, and top
editor David Sendler must now answer to a new corporate overlord:
Roger Wood, former editor of the sensationalistic New York Post,
which Murdoch owned until last year. "There's no interest anymore
in analysis of the industry or in taking a serious look at the
content of TV news," says an unhappy staffer. "The watchdog role
that TV Guide has traditionally played is being totally abrogated."
A few exceptions remain, like last week's report "Is TV News Guilty
of Japan Bashing?" Yet Wood, according to insiders, singled out
that piece for criticism, claiming that such stories are impeding
"the popularization of TV Guide."

    As the largest-selling weekly magazine in the U.S., TV Guide
might seem to be plenty popular already. But with growing
competition from monthly cable guides, as well as from
Sunday-newspaper TV supplements, circulation has been slipping --
to 16.3 million for the last half of 1988, down from nearly 17.3
million in early 1987 and more than 18 million in the late '70s.
Advertising revenue too has flattened out, dropping 6% in the first
quarter of 1989 from a year earlier.

    Not that TV Guide is in any danger of losing its standing as
the nation's premier TV magazine. (Its last serious competitor,
Time Inc.'s TV-CABLE WEEK, expired after six months of publication
in 1983.) Officials contend that the circulation drop can be
explained by an increase in cover price (from 60 cents to 75 cents)
and a pruning of some expensive-to-acquire subscribers. Advertising
revenue, they add, was affected by last year's TV writers' strike
(which delayed the networks' fall promotions) and by the
elimination of a long-standing practice in which TV Guide traded
ad space to local stations in exchange for commercial airtime.

    "I want to rectify any illusion that TV Guide is broke and
needs to be fixed," says Joseph Cece, installed by Murdoch as TV
Guide president. "This is one of the most enormously successful
magazines in the history of publishing. What we're doing is looking
to take it to a new level." The goal is to boost circulation to 18
million, he says, mostly by increasing newsstand sales. The next
gimmick: a 16-page insert of discount coupons, to run at least once
a month beginning in June.

    The tarting up of TV Guide has dismayed many staffers. "The
Murdoch people do not understand the American magazine reader,"
says outgoing managing editor R.C. Smith. "TV Guide has belonged
to a small group of magazines, like National Geographic and
Reader's Digest, in that it has always managed to be respectable
so that people want to have it in their homes. (The new bosses)
have a virgin-and-whore feeling about journalism -- you're either
the Times of London or the Sun. The idea that there's a balancing
act in between, I think, is alien to them." So, apparently, is
openness to reporters: Smith, who had already announced plans to
leave at the end of the month, was abruptly fired after it was
learned that he had spoken to TIME.

    Some of the darker warnings about Murdoch's takeover have not
been borne out. TV Guide is not giving special editorial treatment
to the Fox network, which is part of Murdoch's media empire. The
listings section is still unmatched for comprehensiveness and
accuracy, and the magazine's personality pieces retain a healthy
edge of skepticism. Moreover, some staffers believe the old TV
Guide, with its rather stodgy format, may have been due for
rejuvenation. Yet that sober, even-tempered tone of voice always
provided an important bit of ballast for a business fraught with
glitter and hype. The danger is that when the current make-over is
finished, one of the TV industry's watchdogs will wind up as just
another part of the show.


-- William Tynan/New York