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AdAge is reporting that venerable magazine TV Guide has been sold to a venture capital firm. For $1. Really. The same price as a double cheeseburger at McDonalds. Not only that, but apparently the magazine is in such bad shape that former owner MacroVision, a company specializing in evil annoying copy protection, is loaning new owner OpenGate $9.5 million to get it back on track. Ouch.
I realize that the advent of on-screen guides has rendered TV Guide practically irrelevant as a tool to help viewers plan their TV watching, but you would think that people would still buy it for the articles. Though admittedly I haven’t bought an issue since about 1990. But I figured I just wasn’t the target market. I had no idea that the rest of the country was exactly the same as me.
You may remember TV Guide as a pocket-sized magazine that was a staple of supermarket checkouts. Apparently a while back they changed the size to be more inline with standard magazines. I honestly didn’t know this. I can’t remember the last time I noticed the magazine. Maybe the $1 selling price, which happens to be A THIRD of the price of a single issue, isn’t so surprising after all.
