By Connie Coyne
In a nation of couch potatoes, one might assume it would be fairly easy for a newspaper to put out a weekly television supplement that satisfied subscribers.
That assumption would be wrong.
Readers have complained mightily over the past weeks:
* “The type in the listings and the movies descriptions is too small;”
* “What happened to the overnight listings?”
* “Why would you nitwits list the hour-by-hour programs for a shopping network?”
* “I can’t read the movie titles under those dark gray screens.”
And on and on.
Years ago, at the Fort Lauderdale News, I edited the weekly Showtime supplement — a Friday tabloid section that contained a week’s worth of TV listings, as well as stories and listings for nightclubs and other entertainment. One of the people who worked for me was a woman — one who never watched TV — whose job was to assemble the weekly TV listings. Before computers simplified the system of tracking a week’s worth of TV shows, the listings were assembled in long rolls of paper pasted together and then set by printers in hot lead type. How could this woman have gotten such a crappy job? She displeased the managing editor, who thought she would quit if he put her in charge of TV.
He was wrong, of course, because this woman was a good editor and I often let her edit some stories while I ran through the TV listings and inserted the program descriptions and program changes. Even with this primitive system, nominally in the hands of a woman who never turned on her TV, we managed to get those listings correct almost 100 percent of the time.
The situation is more complicated in 2003, however, especially since the local affiliates of the major TV networks think nothing of reshuffling their programming in the wake of a breaking news event or local viewer interest (or in the case of one affiliate that refuses to carry “Saturday Night Live,” because it apparently believes it has a corrupting influence).
Now, I cannot explain why the Newspaper Agency Corporation (which sells the ads, prints and distributes both The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News) failed to understand the negative impact of changing the size and configuration of the weekly television listings, but I can tell you they now are aware and responding to your complaints.
Change, you see, comes with great angst and pain. The mewing and puking follow. Let me state this again: Almost 99 and 44/100ths percent of all newspaper readers are creatures of habit. They tend to read the paper at the same time every day, usually in the same chair, almost always in the same order. Only rarely do they change their routine and scan the sections at a different hour or in a different room or in a different order. And, if they do change time, location or order, they feel vaguely uncomfortable about it.
Many married people have a long-established method of sharing the paper. Woe to a husband who uses the Basics section for cleaning fresh-caught fish and woe to the wife who uses the Sports page to line the bottom of the parakeet cage.
Earlier this year, in a money-saving effort, the NAC stopped printing the weekly TV supplement at an outside company and pulled it in-house. Then the fun began. One of the problems here is the fact that the presses we have were built after the original Gutenberg press — but not too much later — so they have constraints as to what size things can be printed and how much color can be stuffed inside. This configuration problem accounts for the fact that one lip of the TV supplement is wider than the other — making it look as though it is printed off-center. This will not go away soon, but it should once NAC gets new presses with more color capability and more flexibility in printing sizes.
The most immediate problems are being addressed, however. Travis Bell, who edits TV Week for NAC, knew he had some problems. He has put the overnight TV listings back in the book, because he now knows that there are people in Utah who stay up past 11 p.m. He got the movies listings in the back of the book in alphabetical order. Space for these two important features came at the expense of the “Best Bets” daily listings. Most Tribune readers use TV columnist Vince Horiuchi’s recommendations for this anyway.
The daily TV listings in the weekday editions of The Tribune are more apt to be correct for late changes in prime time programming on the networks, so look there for variations from the usual schedules.
Oh, and Bell will be dropping the QVC shopping channel listings. Those of you who buy stuff off TV at 3 in the morning know where the TV shopping channels are anyway.
The Reader Advocate’s phone number is (801) 257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. E-mail: reader.advocate@sltrib.com.
This week’s stats:
Number of readers sorry The Tribune did away with Salt Substitute 2
Number of readers who wonder how the sports department decides on what to cover 18
Number of readers who hate the newspaper’s weekly TV supplement 47
Number of readers whobelieve they are getting enough world and national news in The Tribune 6
