TV Guide

[copied from dland]

**In 33 days I will be 50 years old**

And another milestone reached in life. It has finally happened.

I didn’t renew my subscription to TV Guide.

I have never lived anywhere where there wasn’t a subscription to TV Guide. My parents were charter subscribers, and the magazine made its first appearance the week after I was born, so it was there when I came home from the hospital. From the time I could read, I would read each issue cover to cover every week. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to. I mean, it was a magazine, right? Isn’t that what you do with magazines, read them?

It was a magazine about TV; could there be anything better than that? I read TV Guide while I watched TV, while I watched in amazement as Jim Anderson came home in a jacket and tie, kissed Princess and Kitten and mussed Bud’s hair, and changed into a sweater with patches on the sleeves. That was so cool. My dad just went to work in a sport shirt. He didn’t even wear a hat like all the other men on TV did.

All summer long I would wait for the Fall Premiere issue, the one that had that neat grid in it that said when all the new shows would be on, and it had pictures from the new shows, too. I couldn’t wait to see Lost in Space and Gilligan’s Island, what great shows they sounded like. Okay, even I caught on right away when I saw them, but I still watched.

I never saw Dynasty, not once, or Knot’s Landing, but I always knew what was going on in their plotlines. I read it in TV Guide. I had a subscription in my name when I lived in the dorm away at college. Sometimes there was overlap, like I would get the holiday issue at school even though I was home for the holiday break, but that was okay. As long as there was TV Guide someplace, I was okay.

I always knew what was on, always. When I was a kid, nobody else in my house even looked at TV Guide. They just asked me what was on.

But after 50 years (almost), I’m thinking: maybe it’s enough already.

Too many articles about movies and music. Too many articles about how wonderful TV Guide is. And the cable people just keep adding channels, and poor old TV Guide just can’t keep up.

Time to go, TV Guide. Time for me to move on.


ENTRY #25