THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210003
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
``I am wondering,'' wrote a Norfolk reader, ``if there is any hope you will change the present format of the green Television Week supplement back to the previous one?''
The answer is: Yes and no. The daytime-TV format will change, probably within the next two weeks - not exactly to the way it used to be but pretty close.
That should be good news to the many hundreds of readers who have called complaining about the green sheet these past four months, one week and five days.
(If you got many of those calls, you'd count the days, too!)
The problem is the daytime, Monday-to-Friday viewing grid that was introduced on June 10, replacing individual daytime listings. The primary reason for the grid was to save newsprint. I have no complaint with that.
Newsprint has become obscenely expensive. Price hikes have forced newspapers to cut corners, almost literally. Some have pared page size, others have dropped entire sections or (shudder) laid off employees. Some have collapsed.
The new daytime grid, usually on pages 12 and 13 of the green sheet, saved the Pilot eight tabloid-size pages. It also put the daytime viewing week out there at a glance. Or perhaps I should say, at a squint.
That's just one of the complaints: the type is too small, too cramped. Without a ruler and a magnifying glass, it's often hard to figure out which show goes with which channel.
There are other problems:
On some channels that have different shows throughout the week at the same time, the grid merely has ``varied programming'' or ``movie'' without the name.
There's no space for VCR Plus programming numbers in the tight-packed grid. This might not have mattered so much a few years ago but today many more VCRs use those numbers.
The grid doesn't reflect program changes on holidays, when people like to watch special sporting events or holiday shows.
Anyway, all that will be fixed, if not by next weekend, then the Saturday after (Nov. 4). Entertainment editor Roberta Vowell wants the new format to be glitch-free.
That new format is a return to the ``rolling log,'' as a non-grid listing is known in the TV trade. It will still be a single listing for Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., but all the shows and movies will be named and have VCR Plus numbers alongside. (One exception: it won't list paid programming, such as infomercials.)
Some viewers will probably miss the grid. A rolling log is not nearly as handy for an overall, at-a-glance view of what's on TV.
But, as Vowell learned, a complete daytime grid - one with all the channels we're currently listing, and all their programs and five-day VCR Plus numbers - would fill about 10 pages. To accommodate the new listing, four pages will have to be restored to the green sheet.
That added space will allow for a more complete movie listing, too, at the back of the section. The current listing does not show movies that are unrated or have only a one-star rating, and that's prompted numerous complaints from late-night viewers.
I've seen a prototype of the new daytime listing and think it looks pretty good. But what do I know? I seldom watch daytime TV or tape daytime shows.
We could have saved ourselves a lot of problems by inviting reader-viewers to look at proposed changes to the green sheet. They're the real experts.
By now, editor Vowell has become an expert herself. She's gotten a heavy dose of the green-sheet distress calls. And she got a firsthand idea of how frustrating the daytime grid was when a back problem kept her home, and watching television, for several days. Add TV gridlock to her medical problem!
The prognosis for television guides is cloudy. I don't think anyone will dispute that newspaper editors have an unenviable task ahead of them.
``Everybody is wrestling with the cable explosion,'' said John Dodds, director of newspaper sales at TV Data, the company that provides the Pilot's TV listings.
The green sheet already lists 60 channels in its primetime grid and another 10 in a separate pay-per-view listing.
Few other newspaper television guides carry programming for that many channels, said Dodds. And the ``cable explosion'' could bring more channels to Hampton Roads by year's end.
What to do? For a start, Dodds will meet this week with Pilot editors, designers, ad reps and others. They'll be looking into the future of TV listings, as well as figuring out how to shoehorn in other features - the TV crossword puzzle, Nielsen ratings - that now run on a space-available basis.
As you can see, it's a complicated business. And I wish we hadn't complicated it further by introducing a change that made most TV viewers unhappy.
Better luck next time around. . .
MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net
by CNB