Jack, here's the WSJ article on TV Guide. They've already got 1.5 min paying subs. Wait to they add the Actv applications that they talk about. They'll being doing handstands.
TV Guide's New Vision of Life
Off the Page: Web, Cable Listings
By WENDY BOUNDS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
At sea amid television's fast-changing technologies, TV Guide is about to begin the biggest overhaul in its 46-year history.
With ad pages and circulation slipping and its ownership changing hands, the nation's largest-circulation weekly is set on Monday to unveil the TV Guide Channel, a cable-TV viewing guide that it hopes to turn into a base for further expansion into electronic listings, advertising and retailing. Also in the works: several new editions of the magazine, including one for young viewers.
TV Guide, a unit of News Corp., has been slow to prepare for the future of cable and digital programming. But it has been changing fast in recent months, scrambling to find a place on the Web and digital TV.
Last June, News Corp. agreed to sell a stake in the magazine for stock plus $800 million in cash to United Video Satellite Group, a Tulsa, Okla., company controlled by cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. As a result of the transaction, which is expected to close by the end of February, TV Guide and United Video will combine to form TV Guide Inc., with equal voting stakes for News Corp. and affiliates of TCI.
The new team is planning a multimedia blitz. One big change: putting the TV Guide name on the Prevue channel, United Video's cable-TV listings, which are seen in more than 50 million households.
In addition, on Monday the Prevue channel's Web site will combine with News Corp.'s Internet site, called TVGEN, to form TV Guide Online, a site with TV-show listings and celebrity news. Eventually, the site will offer an outlet for ordering merchandise and pay-per-view TV shows.
TV Guide's plans also call for an upgrade to Prevue's interactive digital-TV service. The magazine envisions one day offering interactive selling capabilities. Like actress Jennifer Aniston's new necklace? Or that "Party of Five" soundtrack? TV Guide would like viewers to be able to buy them, with a click of a remote control.
Ultimately, TV Guide envisions a world where instead of sending flowers, movie lovers could hit their remote control to send a long-distance romance an evening's showing of "Sleepless in Seattle." Hedging its retail bets, the magazine is also making plans to do retailing the old-fashioned way, with TV Guide stores planned for Hollywood and Los Angeles.
"One of our frustrations with the magazine is that we had not succeeded in taking it beyond the printed word," says Anthea Disney, chief executive of News Corp.'s News America Publishing Group. Ms. Disney is expected to play a role at the new company, although it hasn't said exactly what her position will be.
TV Guide's move into electronic media comes as the print business is getting tougher. Ad pages for 1998 slipped 6.6% at the magazine. Paid six-month circulation at the end of June totaled 13.1 million -- 12% below the comparable period for 1992.
The diminutive magazine is moving to counter growing competition from new sources of TV-industry news, including magazines, Web sites, TV shows like "Entertainment Tonight," and newspapers' TV-listing inserts. "The problem for TV Guide is that ever since the world went cable, they've never found a way to make 75 channels digestible," says Steven Stark, author of the book "Glued to the Set."
TV Guide is planning a number of new print editions, which it plans to launch this year. It has developed a regular-size edition, with bigger pages offering more room for more listings. And in much the same way Time Warner Inc.'s People magazine has created Teen People and People Espanol, TV Guide is planning a new edition for readers 18 to 44 years old who crave coverage of movies and prime-time shows like WB Network's "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," and Comedy Central's raunchy hit cartoon, "South Park."
Viewers in the average U.S. household already spend about 7 hours and 18 minutes a day glued to the tube, according to the most recent data from Nielsen Media Research. As the arrival of digital TV brings even more channels into homes, TV Guide expects a comprehensive print and electronic guide to be essential.
"It's a little daunting," says Allan Broce, chief of marketing and on-air promotions for Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks, a TV Guide advertiser. Aside from the cable music-channels MTV and VH-1, the network also offers several lesser-known digital channels for genres including country, hard rock, and Latin music. "If TV Guide hopes to become one-stop shopping, then that's good for us," Mr. Broce says.
TV Guide's new cable channel will reformat the top half of the Prevue screen to focus more on celebrity coverage and sound bites. Listings of shows and times will continue to scroll on the bottom.
Over the long term, though, interactive TV may offer the most intriguing possibilities. Right now, the Prevue channel offers interactive service in about 1.5 million homes. Renamed TV Guide Interactive, it costs between $4.95 and $10 per month and soups up a viewer's existing cable offerings by tapping into digital-TV broadcasts with a high-tech set-top box.
Interactive users get more channels, extended pay-per-view options, and even music transmissions in categories from jazz to rock. At the same time, they also get interactive extensions of the on-screen guide. The service, for example, can send a viewer a pop-up reminder about a favorite program and also allows parents to block out specific channels. TV Guide executives are aiming to build the subscriber base to 4.5 million by year end.
"It totally changes the way I watch TV," says Jamison Plavec, a Boulder, Colo., stockbroker. "I can set the TV to remind me what business programs are played during the week, keep my kids from seeing anything but the Discovery Channel and Barney, and watch movies anytime without having to drive in the snow to Blockbuster."
TV Guide faces formidable competition. Microsoft Corp. is supplying software to TCI for future digital set-top boxes that could rival TV Guide's. Microsoft also offers its own electronic programming guide via its WebTV Networks unit.
But TV Guide is banking on its well-known brand name to win favor among consumers and cable companies. After all, some viewers are "still scared of the electronics and the complexity that comes with the choice of digital technology," says Dave Robinson, general manager of digital-network systems for General Instrument Corp., which makes the boxes that house TV Guide's software. "Maybe if they see the friendly TV Guide name, that will get them over the hump."
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