Monday, February 02, 2009

Believe it or not, TFP deteriorates further

Sunday circulation of most papers rises because readers want the TV magazine (sad to say, too often mis-called "the TV guide").
Readers get the Sunday ads, the coupons, and the color funnies (the best part of any paper) for their money, so apparently see the Sunday paper as a better deal than the actual TV Guide magazine, whose sole purpose is to outline the coming week's programming.
Compared to other such TV magazines in the area, the TFP's was rather well laid out, although its movie listings and descriptions usually omitted the very movies I wanted to know about (possibly not on purpose ... but who knows?).
As of 1 February, though, the magazine has deteriorated even further. Rather than a full day's listing, it now tries to consolidate the daytime listings, apparently under the delusion that daytime programming is the same Monday through Friday.
So the premiere issue of the new magazine has page 14 labeled "Weekday Mornings, Monday Feb. 2 - Friday Feb. 6" and there is, sure enough, the listings for Monday, including TCM and AMC movies ... but nary a word, anywhere in the rag, as to what will be playing the rest of the week.
Obviously, quality control is an unknown concept at the TFP.
Here's another example of the lack of attention by the "editors" and other people who really ought to be paying attention to what goes into the TFP pages: Each week, on the last page of the listings, right above the Saturday Late Night schedule, is a box labeled (though in my opinion mis-labeled) "late nite laughs."
For this Feb. 7 page, here is one of the supposed laughs, from a routine by Jay Leno: "Now the real pressure is on. He only has three days left to respond to Hurricane Katrina."
This is WEEKS after the coronation, and the TFP is still printing would-be jokes about President Bush.
Whoever chooses this stuff is terribly humor-challenged anyway, but surely someone could train the person to pay a little attention to a calendar.
Perhaps, though, calendars have just bypassed the TFP completely, and it will soon go the way of the dodo, which its editors rather resemble.

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