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TV Guide Sold for a Buck (Dinosaur Media)
Advertising Age ^ | October 15, 2008 | Nat Ives

Posted on 10/18/2008 9:11:45 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla

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TV Guide. Not that long ago everyone with a TV set had to subscribe. Now the whole magazine sells for 1/3 of the price of a single copy.
1 posted on 10/18/2008 9:11:46 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

your so-called

“dinosaur media”

are regrouping on the internet.

yahoo, for example, is now hosting advertising for newspapers.


2 posted on 10/18/2008 9:12:57 PM PDT by ken21 (people die and you never hear from them again.)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

>Yahoo inks ads, content deal with 176 newspapers
Seven-chain deal is a rare blow to Yahoo’s search archrival, Google<

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?siteid=mktw&guid={FF267AFA-58E0-4822-B26A-D96D7D6402D0}


3 posted on 10/18/2008 9:16:21 PM PDT by ken21 (people die and you never hear from them again.)
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To: ken21

It was too small to use as a bird cage liner..so they kind of lost out.


4 posted on 10/18/2008 9:16:51 PM PDT by Oldexpat (Drill Here, Drill There..we must drill everywhere.)
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To: ken21

Does TV Guide still exist? Once they changed the format so I could not tell what was on or when, I stopped buying it. Seems obsolete now with all the listing available online, or on the cable/DVR.


5 posted on 10/18/2008 9:18:46 PM PDT by TNCMAXQ
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To: TNCMAXQ

sorry, i do not know.

i haven’t watched tv in decades.

let’s see... i gave up on tv when bill clinton burned those innocent people at waco.

at the dinner table, “mom, is this real or a made-for-tv movie”?

most americans couldn’t figure that out.


6 posted on 10/18/2008 9:23:03 PM PDT by ken21 (people die and you never hear from them again.)
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To: TNCMAXQ

Exactly. If they are smart they’ll not renew the subscriptions and license the name.


7 posted on 10/18/2008 9:23:35 PM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

TV Guide was bought by Gemstar several years back.

Gemstar also bought a company called Starsight, where my hubby worked.

Gemstar was run by an evil guy name Henry Yuen. He and his CFO cooked the books, and the stock soared to over a 100/share. We had purchased some of my husband’s stock options, but we were holding on to it for 1 year so we would pay long term capital gains. (This is what we had been advised to do by our tax guy and some other financial person.) Anyway, Henry was exposed, and the stock crashed ($3/share). We were lucky and had sold enough stock on same day sale to pay for AMT taxes on our options. We didn’t loose any money, but we didn’t make anything.

Lots of my husband’s co-workers lost tons of money because they were holding on to options and didn’t have money to pay taxes. His boss ended up losing his home because he couldn’t pay his taxes.

Henry ruined Starsight and TV Guide. TV Guide never recovered, and Starsight was totally wiped out.


8 posted on 10/18/2008 9:23:54 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: TNCMAXQ

They own all the licenses for the online TV guide listings.


9 posted on 10/18/2008 9:25:02 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: luckystarmom

They are the only source with connections with the networks. I know someone who works there here in L.A. and she said that the environment there is so negative, they expect their desks to be emptied and called into the office any day for layoffs.


10 posted on 10/18/2008 9:31:44 PM PDT by max americana
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To: max americana

Starsight was a really nice company before Gemstar-TV Guide bought them.

My twin daughters almost died when they were babies, and one of them was in the hospital for a month. My husband didn’t go to work that whole month, and Starsight never took vacation/sick days out of my husband’s pay. It was a small family atmosphere. They were the engineering group that did the online TV Guides.

I don’t like my hubby’s current company as much.


11 posted on 10/18/2008 9:38:43 PM PDT by luckystarmom
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To: abb; Milhous

Dinosaur Media Ping


12 posted on 10/18/2008 9:44:39 PM PDT by TenthAmendmentChampion (Lord please bless our nation with John McCain as president and Sarah Palin as Vice President! Amen.)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

the internets are the great leveler. and try as they might, the dems aren’t going to be able to shut us down.


13 posted on 10/18/2008 9:52:02 PM PDT by Harry Wurzbach (Joe The Plumber & Rep. Thaddeus McCotter are my heroes.)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

I never have time for tv anymore. I remember my parents used to get TV guide until the mid-1980’s


14 posted on 10/18/2008 10:02:21 PM PDT by rdl6989 (What isn't above Obama's pay grade?)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

I’ve noticed that many old programs like westerns from the 50s and 60s are on the internet now and the kids who are seeing them for the first time are commenting how great the shows are and why TV is now just crap.


15 posted on 10/18/2008 10:03:49 PM PDT by Kirkwood
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla
Ah, I MISS the old, old format of TV guide


16 posted on 10/18/2008 10:21:39 PM PDT by lowbridge
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To: TNCMAXQ

Same here.Was a staple in our house for years until it went off the rails.


17 posted on 10/18/2008 10:24:04 PM PDT by John W (Maverick I can do, but, Messiah is above my paygrade)
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To: lowbridge

Me too, it was convenient the size it used to be. When it changed to a big magazine I canceled. I have a bunch saved for memories sake, some of the special issue type too.


18 posted on 10/18/2008 10:37:38 PM PDT by tina07 (In loving memory of my father,WWII Vet. CBI 10/16/42 - 12/17/45, d. 11/1/85)
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To: lowbridge

The old format was great, but if they gave that much space to all cable channels, the thing would be the size of a pocket dictionary.


19 posted on 10/18/2008 11:07:10 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (White Trash for Sarah!)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

Compare this to when Walter Annenberg sold it for $3 billion just twenty years ago.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEEDC123BF93BA3575BC0A96E948260

THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Murdoch Agrees to Buy TV Guide In a $3 Billion Sale by Annenberg
By KURT EICHENWALD
Published: August 8, 1988


20 posted on 10/19/2008 2:37:31 AM PDT by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
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