Dear TVGuide...

[Colleengael]

Dear TVGuide...how can you claim to be a guide for what is on television when you only show programming for four hours out of each day. I used to love your magazine but I used to buy it to find out what is on and when it is on. Your reviews are shallow and play to shows produced by your advertisers. What a waste of time and money.

From now on I will just schedule extra time each week to search for my programs on the cable listings. It may take longer and I will have to keep a notebook nearby to make notes... but they carry 24/7 listings for every channel. I am bidding farewell to your now overpriced and useless magazine.

Sincerely,
A frustrated former customer

(Yes, I did send a complaint letter to them. I know they will just ignore it because I don't buy advertising in their magazine.)

[Takk]

To be fair, TVGuide is a relic of an age before digital boxes provided on screen guides to viewers, and websites provided channel schedules. The magazine's purpose was once to be the definitive guide, but with almost every channel providing their own definitive guides, which can be collected and presented by anyone, they have since been required to evolve into a general TV media magazine in order to stay even remotely relevant.

[mathpiglet]

True, Takk,and the number of channels has made it impossible to list them all.

[Colleengael]

Mom used to get them back at the beginning of this century. It actually had listings for the same number of channels but with 24/7 listings. Each program was also listed in the index at the back in alphabetical order and dates and times shown. The smaller sizes magazine had more pages and content.

I hate the digital guides because it takes too long to find out what is on and when it is on when you can only see a few hours at a time for three or four channels at a time. Too time consuming.