A La Carte Print Media
Posted on | March 19, 2006 at 1:06 pm | 5 Comments
There was a strange notice in the TV Week supplement of my local paper today (the JOA-combined Denver Post/Rocky Mountain News) saying that if I wanted to continue receiving it, I had to either call them or fill out an online request. If not, then starting April 23rd: no TV Week. Nowhere in the notice does it say why they are taking such a measure, though I’m sure it comes down to money. There are some local ads in it, so you’d figure that partially funds it, but maybe not enough. A few weeks ago, they had changed the daily TV listings to only show the network programs and not the usual smattering of cable channels. Ironically, at that time, they said “Don’t worry – you’ll still get the cable channels in the weekly supplement!” But only for another month or so.
Truth to be told, the listings don’t help me a lot, since the channels they list are from Comcast, our local cable provider, and I have Dish Network satellite TV. So not only are the channel numbers wrong, but in many cases, the times listed are different as well (on the cable channels at least). But still, it was nice to be able to look through it every Sunday morning and see what shows were featuring new episodes that week, so I signed up to continue the service.
With the increasing market share of satellite TV and other alternatives, as well as things like TiVo, Electronic Program Guides, and iTunes, there are more and more people for whom the paper’s listings are partly useless. I think I remember reading that one of the reasons they cut back the daily listings was because of that. Although in this area, Comcast proliferation is still pretty deep. So I wonder how much money it’s going to save them to not include the guide in the weekly paper, since they’ll still have to produce it anyway. And they’ll need some system for placing it or not placing it in the Sunday paper depending on the subscriber, which sounds like it could be a hassle. I have a feeling that a lot of people will not see the notice and will be surprised on April 23rd when they don’t get their TV listings. So it might save them some money the first few weeks until people start requesting it back.
I really wonder what the deal is. Is this part of some national trend? I know that TV Guide recently dropped listings when they changed over to their new magazine-sized format, so maybe it is. But what’s next? Are they going to make Parade Magazine be On Request also. The horror. What about the comics? The Sunday comics have been featuring a reduced selection of the daily comics for a few years now (Wahh! No Sunday Monty!), and I know there was cost consideration going into that (fees to the syndicators?). I wish they would’ve at least ran a poll to see which ones people wanted to see on Sunday and which ones they don’t. I don’t really need BC and Wizard of ID taking up space on the daily page, much less the Sunday one where they could be displaying something funny instead.
I guess I should be happy they still have newspapers at all. Eventually I’m going to have to put a laptop on my breakfast counter so I can continue reading the “newspaper” with my morning meal.
Latre.
Comments
5 Responses to “A La Carte Print Media”
March 19th, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
I haven’t looked at a Sunday TV guide in years. It’s much easier to browse through the listings on my TiVo or online. Still, it seems to be one of those things that some people really care about, since every time the newspaper makes a change to it, a lot of folks get mad and write furious letters to the editor.
I agree that having to sort Sunday papers into TV guide/no TV guide sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. My Sunday paper comes with loads of sections I never look at, like the employment ads and the car section. Why not make those a la carte too?
I wouldn’t have cared so much about Parade before I became a fan of Tod Goldberg’s blog, featuring his weekly Letters To Parade. Now I have the fun every Sunday of trying to guess which letter to Personality Parade he’ll choose to mock.
March 19th, 2006 @ 4:47 pm
The TV listings are such an integral part of many people’s Sunday morning ritual. Taking them away is… Unamerican!
That Tod Goldberg blog is pretty amusing!
March 19th, 2006 @ 8:25 pm
We dropped the newspaper not long after the JOA. All my news comes from that great bastion of Truth, the Internet
(and NPR if I’m driving while news is on.)
March 22nd, 2006 @ 1:06 am
Let’s face it, newspapers are pretty much goners. It’s the advertising that supports them (commercial and classified) and as soon as everyone moves over to google local classified ads it’ll be time to hold a wake (when was the last time you looked in the classifieds?) Come to think of it, google’ll probably kill most magazines too.
March 22nd, 2006 @ 11:06 am
Google classifieds? What about Craigslist?
I think newspapers will be around longer than magazines, although the one great thing about magazines is they make good toilet reading. I’ve been dropping my magazine subscriptions like a bad coke habit. There’s pretty much nothing in a magazine that you can’t find online faster (and timelier).
There’s no real suitable replacement for newspapers yet though, and I think it will still be awhile before they come up with one. But certainly subscription revenue is going to continue to decline.