Posts Tagged ‘TV Guide Network’

Longtime USA Today entertainment columnist Will Keck makes his move to TV Guide to become the senior editor of the mag’s Hollywood bureau.

Keck’s first assignment for the mag will be to cover the TCAs.

Press release follows:

Congrats, Will!

Read more

MediaPost’s Wayne Friedman suggests the TV Guide Network needs a bigger picture. Macrovision is buying the Gemstar assets, including TV Guide magazine, website and the cable network. The TV channel underperforms:

TV Guide Network is in some 81 million homes. But like some other networks of its type and size–Hallmark Channel, for instance–it grabs on average just 3 cents a subscriber per month from cable operators. Last year TV Guide Network pulled in a modest $130 million in national advertising revenue.

Friedman doesn’t mention that the programming sucks (Lisa Lips Rinna and stale VH1 reality shows don’t cut it). Sorry for the inelegant phrasing. The magazine and website are doing well, with lively writing and personalities, but pulling the plug on the mortibund cable channel would be the best plan.

Bill Hamilton comments that Hallmark Channel provides a quality product, which leads to commercial success. What a novel strategy! But that requires hiring executives and producers with a functioning brain stem, and you know how troubling that can be.

TV Guide Network added Lawrence Zarian aka The Fashion Guy, to co-host The Fashion Team, the weekly one-hour talk series that airs Sundays at 7p, if anyone is actually watching. The Fashion Gay would be a great moniker.

Farmers Almanac TV, the national PBS show based by the nearly 200-year old Farmer’s Almanac brand, chose urban gardening expert, Patti Moreno to host the series. Currently, the show airs on 90% of the nation’s public television stations, but not here. (EIC Judson Hale’s autobiography is fascinating, by the way.)

Sci Fi Channel ordered a new reality project called Run for Money, based on a Japanese show from Fuji Television. Contestants try to stay alive while “hunted”. Japanese TV also features breast milk squirting contests.

IFC offers a new series created by Reebok Entertainment, which is really one long commercial for the brand. Framed lets a Hollywood celebrity hang out with a sports figure, who just happens to endorse Reebok. Series debuts December 14 with the pairing of NBA All-Star Baron Davis and television and actress Emmanuelle Chriqui (Sloan on Entourage), both wearing Reeboks.