how tv guide was once relevant

There's a great article on Slate today about TV Guide and its once and future relevance. Despite a recently announced overhaul on the horizon, TV Guide still seems to be headed ever closer to oblivion. With a Tivo and its season passes, I rarely have a need for TV listings, and as a kid we never subscribed to TV Guide (despite my begging) because there was a guide that came for free with the newspaper. I scan it every week now, since we subscribe at my (soon-to-be-former) job, and I do like Mike Ausiello's column online, but I don't really respect TV Guide, and neither does Slate.

But it wasn't always that way, according to the article. In TV Guide's golden era, it published contributions from Margaret Mead, John Updike, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others. It was more than a listings guide, more than a place for puff pieces. It was a haven for TV scholarship, the kind of writing that I still feel like I don't see enough of, and the kind of writing that motivated me to start this blog. I feel like there's so much great, snarky, hysterical writing about tv out there, but very little scholarship.