TVSquad

Sometimes this site should be called the snark squad.

As good as ABC's shows were last season (Pushing Daisies anyone?) this kind of promotion can't hurt simply because the strike pretty much derailed whatever momentum the alphabet net had.

(As far as that goes, Eli Stone could use the promo blitz as well.)

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I was a TV Guide subscriber my entire life, but I dropped my subscription a while back. It wasn't the internet that gave me the desire to no longer receive what had been a staple in my home, it was the format change. When they enlarged it from the booklet size to a more standard magazine size and changed the entire thing to be the "People Magazine" of television is when I dropped it like a hot, rotten, contagious potato.

It was no longer the same product and I didn't want a different product. To add insult to injury, for a while after the format change they didn't even have my time zone (central) included where before they did.

It was the only magazine I subscribed to and now it's gone from my home forever.

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TV Guide? Hell, I've watched TV exclusively via DVDs or Hulu or torrents for years...I haven't had a working TV in probably 8 years. TV Guide was never even consider; IMDB, Netflix, Wikipedia...the internet trumps it in every way.

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I'm betting the free dvd will only be available in stores and the loyal subscribers will be left out again.

Anyway, in response to the person above about ending their subscription because of the format change, well, I did the exact opposite. I subscribed in time so that my first issue of tvguide was in the new format. I love it. But then again, I love entertainment magazines. I also love the website and love the message boards over there.

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The DVD is of course only available to...get ready for it...subscribers in the NY and LA areas (groan).

I am done with TV Guide after October. The new redesign with six fonts per page, the fact that I can get every "Cheers and Jeers" item via an RSS feed as it comes out, the weekly ode to Mario Lopez's abs (I think Macrovision requires at least one picture of him every week), and the vaguest listings outside of your average small-town newspaper have sealed it up for me. Thank goodness I got an internet deal where I only pay $8 a year for it.

I can say this for ABC at least though; good for you. For one week you've saved me from having to tear out Franklin Mint ad cards for junk I don't want.

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You're right Leah. As usual subscribers get shafted and don't get the DVD. You'd think they'd give the bonus to subscribers for being, you know, subscribers. Instead they seem to prefer to punish you for subscribing.

Just for the record, I don't subscribe to this awful excuse for a magazine. It's my mother's. I get my news from sites like this one, and my listings from the onscreen guide on my DirecTV box. This wannabe US Weekly is useless to me.

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I don't use tv guide for the listings, I like the articles, interviews and pictures.

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oh wow! they're hiding a mountain in TV Guide? ... or maybe it's a sneak peek.

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TV Guide was unique and the big fish of the pond, before the format change. Instead of making improvements on that, they decided to change the format and become one more small fish of hundred/thousands of other celebrity 'tabloid' magazines in the overpopulated pond. With this change like most companies the subscriber is not important, instead always going after the elusive one, hence another 'extra' (this ABC promo DVD, the H. Montana 3-D glasses, and others from the last year) that subscribes have to BUY an additional copy from a newstand to get.

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I never subscribed to "The Guide", but for years I bought it every week, when I started it was a quarter. That was in the days before the internet & the Tv Guide channel. I've bought it once or twice since the format change & won't again, the listings were incomplete, the articles weren't nearly as well-written & it felt like a rip-off for what it cost. To me, it's obvious why they've lost subscribers.

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