Keith J. Kelly

Keith J. Kelly

Media

Changes in store for TV Guide

TV Guide is shrinking its size slightly and dumping 14 pages of TV grid listings to make way for new features and photos as part of a big redesign.

The company had recently booted Debra Birnbaum as its editor in chief and replaced her with Doug Brod, who was an executive editor.

Birnbaum recently landed as the TV editor of Variety.

The current editorial staff has 13 editors and writers and another 10 in the design production and photo areaa and has been through incessant cost-cutting and downsizing in recent years.

“We’re down a few people, but we are thinking of adding some staff,” said Brod.

David Fishman, who recently replaced interim CEO Jack Kliger said that the company has been profitable since shortly after Open Gate Capital took over the magazine for only $1 in 2009.

Fishman said that the TV Guide revamp “is a huge investment.”

The money is coming from a reduction in the magazine’s size that he said will save “several hundred thousand dollars.”

It will now be 7 inches by 10 inches. In its most recent format, it was 7 ³/₈ by 10 ¹/₂ inches.

Throughout most of its existence, it was a pocket-sized digest but that was changed in 2005 by former owners who inflated it into a standard-sized magazine.

The new redesign hits on Aug. 11. Although it has been experiencing a 10.5 percent decline in ad pages through the June 23 issue, Fishman said “Our main revenue stream is still the consumer”—and he said they renew at an unually high rate, close to a 70 percent rate.

“It’s not a listings magazine anymore,” Fishman said. “Come Aug. 11 it will be primarily a features magazine.”

While it was once one of the best-selling magaines in America, today Fishman sees it as “a niche magazine for TV enthusiasts” with a circulation of 2,023,373. Two months ago it boosted its cover price 25 percent to $4.99.

And for the first time, he said, after ther redesign, the now 29 times-a-year magazine will begin to be distributed inside airport newsstands, using Hudson News, TNG and Ingram as its wholesalers.