TribTV: The Web site of the Chicago Tribune provides readers with a localized TV grid whose 'view' can be saved for use later; the listings are provided by Tribune Media Services.

Newspaper TV grids gird for challenges from magazine, cable

That quiet corner of your newsroom, where feature editors have cajoled and coddled into book form grid after grid of television listings, is valuable property in a behind-the-scenes Monopoly game of buying and selling and trading and partnerships and mergers and acquisitions. Only the winnings are paid in real money.

Program listings have been newspapers' province for years, with the weekly magazine TV Guide the only true rival. (We won't talk about Time Inc.'s attempt at creating a TV Guide competitor.) Recent claimants, such as cable TV's rolling listings and on-line sortable schedules, haven't displaced your daily pages and Sunday log book in the La-Z-Boy recliner pocket.

From television's infancy, readers saw the listings as a service, publishers saw them as an excellent advertising possibility and features editors saw them as an endless stream of grief.

The grief was lessened, however, with the convergence of several factors: exploding telecommunications capabilities, innovative thinking and use of outsourcing, which created TV listings services. Newsroom drones finally found themselves rescued from the agony of producing listings in-house.

Well, as we all know, the story never stops there. New niche products popped up that not only directed your TV viewing, but freed you from the boundaries of time and space through the wonders of video cassette recorders and later freed you from the complications of programming your VCR.

And that may be just the beginning.

Listings honcho Art Bassin described the state of the industry last week as he reacted to news that Gemstar Development Corp. of Pasadena, Calif., (provider of Vcrplus+ service) was buying TV Guide.

"Over the last year," he recited, "TV Guide has bought up United Video [parent of the Prevue Scrolling Guide] and a couple of cable book publishers [Tvsm, TV Host], and Gemstar has bought up all the on-screen guide companies [StarSight, VGI, ETV Host]. And Tribune Media Services has bought Jdtv [a cable book company like TV Host and Tvsm]."

This rapid consolidation of the TV information industry, said Bassin, has left only three sources -- TV Guide, Tribune Media Services (TMS) and his own company, TV Data. But it is only one aspect in the broad economic landscape of TV listings that will affect the cozy reality of your viewer-reader franchise.

Newspapers own the franchise
Barbara Needleman, vice president of entertainment products at Tribune Media Services, a division of Tribune Co. of Chicago, believes that newspapers own the franchise for television listings information in their markets: "[Newspapers'] TV books and daily listings pages are important circulation drivers which, in turn, attract advertising revenue."

Bassin is downright encouraging. "Remember that newspapers 'own' the TV information industry in the United States," he said. The chief executive officer and president of TV Data Technologies of Glens Falls, N.Y., believes that newspapers -- which publish more than 60 million weekly TV books and an equivalent number of daily pages -- have done a such a good job of meeting the TV information needs of their readers that TV Guide has seen a circulation drop of 10 million during the last 10 to 15 years.

"I can't think of one market where TV Guide has a higher penetration than the local newspapers," said Needleman. "I think that newspaper TV listings are a challenge to TV Guide and have been for the last 10 years. Our research studies show that newspaper TV books are consumers' primary source for finding out what's on TV."

And, she said, "TV Guide's main strategy [has been] to extend their brand and to stem their circulation losses in their print guide."

But don't get too comfortable yet. That's only the print market.

"It is increasingly difficult and costly for newspapers to respond to satellite, digital cable and other layers of expanding channel numbers," said Steven Doyle, deputy managing editor for newsfeatures at Florida's Orlando Sentinel. "It's just plain hard to carry all the information consumers want."

Doyle cautions that, "It's those increasingly sophisticated on-screen guides that are the competitors. They are everything a TV book isn't, and their popularity is growing."

The editor in charge of the 222,000-circulation Orlando paper's TV listings says that even in their "least-sophisticated form" -- the boring, scrolling showtime list that occupies a channel or two -- programming guides nearly have caught Sunday TV books as "the most popular choice for TV programming information. And, in my estimation, newspapers -- depending on the market size -- have no more than a year to react."

But Needleman believes that "newspapers can continue to be the primary source for finding out what's on TV by extending their products and reach into electronic media ... on-line and on-screen."

On-line listings revenues
So far, said Bassin, on-line TV listings have not been really important to the economic health of traditional newspaper suppliers.

TV Data breaks even on its on-line services; only about five percent of its newspaper customers actually are using on-line services and on-line represents about two percent of revenues.

Newspapers which are already listings clients can get ClickTV at no additional cost, he said. However, customizing the product does cost. For example, using a private label versus co-branding and the percentage of ad inventory the newspaper wants to control are two factors that can add a few dollars to the price.

Bassin said that his product is purely a TV listings product: "We have found that consumers are not happy with too many bells and whistles. We try to keep our site focused on TV information and on making it accurate (our same-day updating makes our listings the most accurate on the Web), and easy to navigate," he said. "We do not try to compete with AOL and TV Guide because we think their on-line offering is way too cumbersome and difficult to navigate. Plus," he added, "they are mostly wrong on the late breaking updates like sports."

Meanwhile, Needleman counts 400 print clients and 250 on-line TMS clients. Like TV Data, TMS prices the 60-plus customized newspaper sites according to client needs and the extent of customization.

TMS also has signed 185 newspapers for TV Quest, a co-branded, national web site that features local listings information. Although not customizable, TV Quest is available to all print and on-line clients, along with complimentary web sites promoting their local brands. TMS on-line products provide chats, comprehensive editorial information, personalization features and search functionality.

The similarities between TMS and TV Data end right about here. TMS has competed with TV Guide for national "tune-in" advertising for the past 10 years, explained Needleman, and TMS's client newspapers now receive display and in-column ads from more than 40 tune-in advertisers. Before TMS began representing newspapers to networks and cable channels, the majority of the revenue from those ads went to TV Guide.

Both TMS and TV Guide now partner with AOL. But TMS has provided television listings information to AOL for the last three years -- longer if you count the contributions of TVQuest, which TMS recently purchased.

New partnerships between TV Guide with AOL, CompuServe and Netscape will give members access not only to on-line listings, but to chats and interactive, personalized calendars that can track appointments, events and dates -- but also may challenge newspapers to take advantage of that TV information franchise.

"TV Guide [was] owned by News Corp. [Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. Ltd. of Sydney, Australia] and Liberty Media [John Malone and AT&T Corp. of New York]. These two guys are probably the most astute media-deal guys of our times. If they like TV information, it has to be for good economic reasons. Murdoch and Malone think TV information is a good business, and have invested heavily in it," said Bassin.

"TV Guide is a $1 billion revenue business. If you add up the advertising revenues and 'implied' subscription value of the 60 million weekly TV books distributed by the [3000 newspapers] that distribute TV information, we are talking about another $1 billion ... of revenue."

Threat to newspapers?
Bassin does not expect the TV Guide-AOL alliance to have much impact in TV Data's relationships with its customers -- nor to be an impediment to newspapers' ability to move their TV information to the on-line world. The impediment most likely to stump newspapers, at least some of them, is their failure to answer while opportunity is knocking.

"Some could argue this TV Guide-Gemstar deal threatens the newspapers' TV information service. I think, rather than threaten it, it exposes the huge TV information opportunity newspapers are sitting on that they do not even realize they have," said Bassin.

Nonetheless, Orlando Sentinel Newsfeatures Editor Doyle does feel the warm breath of TV Guide on his neck. "Imagine if your local cable company carried the TV Guide/Gemstar on-screen service, and as a subscriber, you were offered TV Guide free every week. Would you need another printed guide in your newspaper? Probably not. Or maybe you bought a new TV set with the proprietary Gemstar guide included and you got a free subscription to TV Guide along with it?"

Doyle asks how local newspapers can combat the threat. "For one, TV books must be improved and broadened. Quickly. Newspapers can be more flexible and local than TV Guide. Editors need to consider what their markets need and respond, keeping an eye on the day when all electronic media are converged. High-speed modems soon will allow even the currently inaccessible but highly programmable Internet guides to be more relevant, too. At least most newspapers have on-line versions to face that challenge."

TV Data's Bassin believes that newspapers should look at their TV listings and books "as a profit center, not just a cost center." He says that newspapers should be actively migrating their printed TV book customers to the Web, with the intent of keeping the TV information franchise when it does eventually migrate from print to on-line, and then to on-screen as the Web and TV converge.

"This is a pretty big business opportunity, especially since very few newspapers are working on making TV information profitable or treating it as a 'real' business," Bassin said.

While on-line TV listings may be getting off to a slow start, Bassin predicts that their importance will increase "very fast," and will be "very important down the road a couple of years." Needleman exhorts newspapers to extend their brand for both on-line and on-screen TV listings -- "We feel it's important," she said.

Needleman said electronic program guides are growing in popularity and described an evolutionary path in which they will also provide local news, weather and sports information.

"Newspapers need to work with their local cable operators to provide local information for these guides and to co-brand with the cable operator," she said. The print, on-line and on-screen guides should "complement each other in providing robust information to the newspaper's audience," so that the consumer can make an informed television viewing decision.

"For example," Needleman said, "an on-screen guide may provide the full line-up of channels, but with limited description due to the space constraints of the screen. The print guide, however, would provide readers with critical reviews and recommendations on what to watch rather than a grid-like guide of channels with little description. This landscape is changing with the technology, and the products newspapers provide will evolve to match their consumers' needs."

"[The] threat to the newspapers' TV information business is every bit as severe and serious as the threat to its classified ad business," she continued. "It's just that no one has yet sounded the alarm."

Consider it sounded.

-- L. Carol Christopher

Tribune Media Services,
(312) 222-4444,
e-mail: tms@tribune.com;
TV Data Technologies,
(518) 792-9914,
e-mail: info@tvdata.com.

From THE COLE PAPERS, November 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.