The Business of TV Guide
The Business of TV Guide
The weekly periodical TV Guide needs to both create and market two new products, TV Guide On Screen, and TV Guide Online. These two new forms of the periodical should be worked on and made available to the consumer as soon as possible, as there are several companies working to undermine TV Guide’s dominance in the industry and are threatening to beat them to the new and informative mediums. Perhaps the most logical way to have the new products gain recognition is to heavily advertise through various forms, ranging from print, radio, and even on television. To help fund and launch advertising campaign, it would be advisable for the publishers of TV Guide to collaborate with the many other companies that News Corporation owns which could, conceivably, reduce the costs of starting the programs. If TV Guide is able to strike a deal with the New York Post, Boston Globe, or one of the many television stations affiliated with News Corporation, there would be a great number of consumers exposed to the new services offered, therefore helping boost the new TV Guide products.
In this document, I will explain how TV Guide can develop new means of communication in the television programming schedules. The new developments carry a huge responsibility because they will decide the fate of TV Guide; if they succeed, TV Guide will remain a high quality, informative product for TV viewers everywhere, if they don’t succeed, TV Guide will surely be phased out by its competitors.
Background & History
TV Guide, founded by a Walter Annenburg in 1953, is a weekly magazine that informs its readers of television program schedules, cover stories about television shows as well as interviews with television celebrities. TV Guide, over time, became the third largest US magazine, as measured by revenue, and in 1994 was the most circulated weekly periodical. At that time, 14 million copies were in circulation each week, which is considerably fewer than the 1979 peak of 19 million.
In 1988, TV Guide was sold to News Corporation (“News Corp.”), a worldwide firm in control of newspapers, publishing companies, television stations and satellite companies, periodicals and the like. TV Guide was reportedly sold for a sum of 2.8 billion dollars. News Corp. wanted more than to merely own TV Guide, they were interested in expanding it, and moving it into new and progressive technologies to increase...