Things I Just Love-TV Guide

 

This is something I have wanted to talk about for a long time. But how? Well let me start at the beginning. It may be hard to believe for those very young, but there was a time when TV Guide was the coolest magazine in the world. If you loved TV as much as I did anyway. It’s kind of hard to explain, and maybe it’s just me, but I adored this little book. When a new issue arrived every week it was exciting, I’d sit down and pour through it looking at all the awesome new shows that were coming the next week to look forward to. Then it was by my side as I watched TV through that week. At the end of the week, it had been so worn out that very often the cover had even fallen off.



Jerry Seinfeld himself summed it up in this clever bit:

These go way back my friends, to the 50’s since Desi Arnaz Jr as a baby was the very first cover. These things were collectors items, and no just because they could be worth money, and why not? They’re like little time capsules for what was happening every week years ago. I know what you might think, it’s a program guide so what? It’s hard to explain but I guess the one thing to remember is that this was before the internet. We maybe had Entertainment Tonight and that was about it. There was no Entertainment Weekly or cable guides. There were no spoilers or previews. And the best alternative for TV guides were the lame program grids in newspapers which told us nothing. TV Guide was all we really had to wet our appetites and make us look forward to whatever was coming along that next week.

How did they do that? Well you had the simple descriptions which not only old you the show but a simple plot summary. As I said this was before spoilers so we literally had no clue what the next episode was until we read it. It also gave you the whole week, daytime and nighttime, along with previews for things even further away. Then there were the ad’s. The kick ass ad’s! The ad’s in TV Guide were awesome, not to mention powerful things. I watched the first episode of The Cosby Show based solely on the beautiful ad that appeared in TV Guide. The ad that ran when Bo and Luke returned to The Dukes of Hazard was just beautiful (couldn’t find a good pic). And I watched the 80’s TV movie Crash Course based solely on he ad that appeared that week, which got me excited about the movie.

Here are a couple ads I found online just so you can see what I’m talking about :

But the big thing most people remember from TV Guide were the awesome covers. Each one brings back memories, if not to a personal memory than at least to that time in TV history. These covers are awesome, and that’s what I want to focus on. Now as I said these go back to the 50’s and the covers were amazing even then. However since I’m not THAT old, I am only focusing on the 1980-2005, which is when they chucked the digest format that made them famous and turned the magazine into just another entertainment magazine. Boring.  Damn I miss these today. And yes I went through every cover on TVGUIDE.COM to pick my favorites, and there was a tear of nostalgia in my eye as I did.

So hear now are my 20 favorite covers (yes, 20! But that’s a drop in the bucket really).

I picked three of these as examples, but let me tell you about the fall preview issues. I think Christmas Day was the only thing more exciting than when these came out. I would move hell and earth to get it, and read every stinking page. Not only did they tell you every new show coming out, good and bad, but the ads inside were always something awesome to see, bigger and better for all the season premier’s. Even for someone who loved TV Guide, these issues were extra special! The sad part is while I have saved a couple issues I didn’t save any of the Fall Preview issues. Damn it. These are especially fun to look back on and see what the editors thought would be hits…and how wrong they were!

I guess this could just be considered a cheat since I was only like 8 years old, but this is a beautiful cover to what became the TV show literally everybody in the world watched. Except me, but I’ve already discussed that elsewhere.

Yeah I remember this one, though was not much of a Happy Days fan at the time. This was when the show finally left the air after 11 years.

This is an iconic cover, if you were to list the five best examples of a classic TV Guide cover this would be on it somewhere. Yeah I know today it’s not looked at the same, but at the time this was a great cover for a fantastic show.

Lot of memories with this one. First of all, I’d had a surgery that week so quite literally I sat on my ass watching TV. This cover always stayed in my mind. I also loved the image of Lucy, I loved Lucy. The other thing that amuses is that of these two shows they’re hyping Lucy’s quickly died while Andy Griffith’s was a huge hit of course.

This is an example of a simple cover, showing Michael J Fox and Courtney Cox from Family Ties.

Who doesn’t love holiday specials every year? Well they all start by getting the holiday preview issues which were second only to the Fall Preview issues. Remember when we had real Christmas specials? Ah, that’s another subject my friends.

I never liked the covers that weren’t pictures but rendered images. I mean yeah they were nice and very well done, but they just weren’t the same. But I wanted to share one as an example like this from 1988.

This one is famous for all the wrong reasons. Before Photoshopping became a thing, TV Guide gave us this cover with Oprah’s head on Anne Margaret’s body! Did I mention they didn’t get permission to do that?

This was kind of an iconic image for the start of the 90’s, America’s Funniest Home Videos was in many ways the forerunner to the reality TV we have today.

I loved Regis & Kathie Lee, what else is there to say?

Surprisingly this cover made it into the office of the character Murphy Brown like other magazine covers did (ever try to figure out which were real and which weren’t?) but it’s a  good one.

When Cheers went off the air in 1993 we were treated to this really cool cover. C’mon, who wouldn’t have wanted the final scene of the series to be this image? Yeah Cheers final episode was a pretty big deal. FYI I still have this issue.

Some people think of Farrah Fawcett and they think Charlie’s Angels. You know what I think of first? This stunning cover from 1994. I couldn’t take my eyes off it that week, maybe because I never watched anything she did (at all, sad to day) so I hadn’t realized just what a beautiful woman she really was. No wonder men in the 70’s loved her in that red swimsuit.

There were lots of Star Trek covers over the years, seriously they could be a list by themselves, but I picked this one for reasons which I can’t really get into here.

Surprising how few Friends covers (and even fewer Seinfeld) there are, but this one I like.

I loved how TV Guide didn’t ignore the less popular shows. Some shows got covers that even surprised me, including this one of the underrated Just Shoot Me!

This is so awesome! Where else can you get a picture of Xena and Seven of Nine together? Yeah it was just for the pic, but c’mon that image is awesome!

Great picture of the Will & Grace cast before the got show painfully stale

This a very nice cover discussing what happened with Eight Simple Rules after John Ritter died. Juts like the way they have Ritter in the background, as if he were still watching over them.





Could I have posted any more? Are you kidding?????   I could have done another twenty easily! Remember, I didn’t include any before 1980 and there were some great one’s from the 60’s and 70’s also. There were also the special editions, multi cover issues, and covers based on movies and things outside the world of TV! Oh and did I mention the tributes for anniversaries, including their own? Maybe someday I will cover those, but that’s it for now.. Before I go, you may wonder how I felt when they changed formats ten years ago. I was pissed!







But……. I get the reason for the inevitable format change, and I get that the way things are today TV Guide could never give the detailed info it did in my day. We have a million stations, TV shows online, not to mention the fact we have other guides available to us from cable channels to DVR’s to our smart phones. Plus the fact that the internet gives us inside scoops and spoilers much easier than in my day. And I do still look at the magazine when it features something that catches my eye plus having the app on my phone, so it does still very much exist. All that being said, I will always miss the digest format and the great memories they bring back. TV Guide was as much a part of my childhood as any movie or TV show was. Yes all good things must come to an end, but for me these little magazines remind of a simpler happier time in my life and I simply loved it.