TV Guide sold for $1

Remember TV Guide? I haven't seen TV Guide in years, so the real story here may be that TV Guide is still around at all.

Now TV Guide has been sold for only $1. Not just one copy (which sells for $2.99), but the entire magazine. Shit, I could've buyed it!

Poor ol' TV Guide. It's a guide to TV. That's why they call it TV Guide. And that's why its logo is shaped like a television screen. But now (not unlike TV), TV Guide is but a shadow of its former self.

Although TV Guide through much of its later history was part of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media empire, the magazine was once the most widely read in America. It used to feature pieces on the medium itself, such as articles about small desert communities trying to pull in distant signals.

TV Guide is also remembered for a series of synth-heavy commercials like this that flourished in the late '70s and early '80s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgRoHwXHtI0

Those ads were interesting because the synth sound reminds one of the old PBS bumper, and the voiceover guy sounds like Dan Rather. However, many viewers inexplicably report being terrified of these ads.

But the TV Guide of today bears little resemblance to that we remember. Reportedly, it even changed its page size, so the stores that still sell it have to crumple it beyond hope to fit it in the rack. Although the pages got bigger, the listings got smaller and far less detailed.

These days, the once-popular publication is a money loser.

Now, OpenGate Capital has purchased TV Guide for just $1 - one-third of the price of a single copy. A magazine that sold for $3,000,000,000 only 20 years ago is now worth a lousy dollar!

I could kick myself in the nuts a trillion times for not buying TV Guide. If I'd known it would cost only $1, I would have purchased it in a heartbeat.

Imagine being the owner of TV Guide! Maybe I'd bring back those old '70s ads.

(Source: http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=131756)