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November 8, 2021 9:26 am  #31


Re: Why Does The Star Week's TV Guide Keep Getting This Wrong?

Isn't CITS on RF 14? The top allowable channel in Canada is 35 while in the States it is 36 - where WIVB/WNLO is

 

November 8, 2021 9:55 am  #32


Re: Why Does The Star Week's TV Guide Keep Getting This Wrong?

I just checked and you know what? You're mostly right and the Star Week is still wrong. It turns out they're on Channel 14 both OTA and "virtually," which means they're no longer on their old frequency of 36 in any way. That means the Star Week shouldn't even list that number at all. 

     Thread Starter
 

November 8, 2021 10:14 am  #33


Re: Why Does The Star Week's TV Guide Keep Getting This Wrong?

They shouldn't list the 'actual' channel at all; it's of no use. They'd might as well list the frequency while they're at it.

 

November 8, 2021 10:36 am  #34


Re: Why Does The Star Week's TV Guide Keep Getting This Wrong?

TV Guide in the U.S., while nowhere near as useful as it once was, lists everything by network or affiliation. It's up to subscribers to know where they are in their local cities. This allows them to print just one edition, without having to resort to separate and more expensive magazines for each major market, as they used to do in the old days. 


 

     Thread Starter
 

November 13, 2021 10:02 pm  #35


Re: Why Does The Star Week's TV Guide Keep Getting This Wrong?

As promised by the Starweek manager in an email to my friend, the newspaper unveiled a new look guide in Saturday's edition. And maybe it's the first one, but I have a lot of issues with this issue. 

The channel listings don't make much sense - they've taken out the digital positions for most of the Canadian stations, but left them there for the Buffalo ones, which is odd. (They also show TVA on channel 10, but it's not in the listing pages.)



In addition, the typeface of both text and channel markers are different, and seem slightly smaller to me, and a bit harder to read in the listings section.  

On some pages, the listings are messed up. For reasons that aren't at all clear, all the OTA broadcasters are listed at the top except in a few cases, when WBKW is placed after columns of cable stations. Why? Here's a page for next Thursday that shows the issue.



But my real beef with the changes (and I hope they just had to get this prototype done early and it won't stay this way) is with their "Best Bets," a preview of each day's chosen TV shows. It's now almost useless. In nearly every case, they've either chosen to highlight a rerun (why, when there are still a ton of new shows on every night?) or else taken one of those new shows and simply laid out a generic logline of what the original premise of the program was, which - if you watch it - you already know. 

Here are two perfect examples, on FBI Most Wanted and The Resident. If these happen to be on the list of shows you watch every week, you already know what the basic outline is. But what happens in this week's episode? Nothing here tells you. Same with the two highlighted talk shows. 



There are a few extras that weren't there before. They've taken out the DVD previews and replaced them with streaming highlights for various services. (But since it's from a U.S. service, Crave is prominently missing.) And they've added a few puzzles at the end of the guide for viewers who like to do those. There is also a column listing some of the supposedly best bon mots from late night hosts Colbert, Corden, Fallon, Kimmel and Meyers.

I hope they improve things as the weeks go on. But for now, all in all, this makeover is definitely not an improvement. It's actually far less useful now than it was last week. 

     Thread Starter
 

November 16, 2021 9:05 pm  #36


Re: Why Does The Star Week's TV Guide Keep Getting This Wrong?

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/11/16/new-look-same-great-content-the-toronto-star-gets-a-design-refresh.html
Wondering if this is why they were so keen on making your suggested changes quickly