• by John Gaffney , December 16, 2002

Must-See TV Guide: If I’m J. Scott Crystal, new publisher of TV Guide, I would focus first on making this product more readable online and offline to my audience. From a business focus, things look OK here. It averages about 340 pages a month. Gets unparalleled distribution at cash registers where its target audience shops. But the Achilles heel, and the thing I never understood, is what makes it special. Why buy TV Guide when any daily or weekly newspaper will give me the same information. Seems to me that TV Guide has missed out the interface between online and offline. Ever been on the TV Guide site? This whole operation needs to get interactive, quickly. That will give viewers more reason to be loyal, and a loyal audience brings more ad revenue.

Buyography: Pretty active rumors that Biography Magazine is on the block. From a purely speculative point of view, I actually think the magazine is better off at a new company. Rodale, who owns Prevention, would make a good content fit. G&J, who you might remember lost a women’s oriented magazine this year, might have the marketing muscle and synergy to push the title over the top.

Spirited Parting Shot: I thought the news media (print, cable, network) did an excellent job last weekend of filling in the blanks the Bush administration left in the smallpox vaccine story. It made sense of the story without blowing it up. It laid out the risk without politicizing. Now I have just one question. Did Sean Penn get a shot before he left for Iraq?