An Open Letter to the TV Guide Channel

Dear TV Guide Channel,

I would just like to point out something that you may not have noticed in your many years of programming. It’s hard to believe that I have to tell you this, but someone has to do it. TV Guide Channel – you are not an actual channel. GASP! I know, I know. It’s hard to take. Here you’ve been bumbling along for years, operating under the assumption that you are a real network, when in fact you are not. Don’t fret, TV Guide Channel, I mean, I still find your information useful. It’s good to know what’s coming onto my television screen on every channel in the next hour, hour and a half and to have this information provided to me in a handy scrolling format, in case I missed it the first time. It’s very helpful for those of us who don’t want to buy your magazine. I mean, it was always slightly disappointing to purchase something that was one-eighth glossy, colorful magazine and seven-eights boring, yucky, tissue-thin newspapery-paper. But at least you had the unique book size going for you! Then you went and revamped yourself, after opening up Inside TV in what was, in retrospect, a clear experiment to see if the new format would work for TV Guide. Shameful, especially to the editors you lured away from other magazines, only to fire them months later.

But sadly, you have become less useful to me, because I discovered the same information can be found online. In a fraction of the time it takes me to sit on my couch and watch the entire scrolldown menu, I can get television listings for the entire day! Yes! I can even see what’s on the next night, if I want! And, can you believe it, TV Guide Channel? I can even know what episodes of particular shows are on! Like, all you do, TVGC, is tell me that E! True Hollywood Story is on, but not whom it is about. TV Guide.com tells me whether it is the Saved by the Bell episode, which I would totally watch, or the Evening Shade episode, which I would totally not watch. I know! Amazing, right?! And I don’t have to suffer through any Joan or Melissa Rivers commentaries.

Which brings me to another point … TV Guide Channel, what is the deal with having “shows?” Yes, even Wikipedia uses the quote marks, so you know they are shows in only the most ostensible sense. I mean, Look-a-Like has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. A makeover show where you pick the recipients based on how much they resemble a celebrity? I mean, any celebrity? You’re not even casting for a particular one at any given time? I know that I personally would rather have a makeover where at the end I looked like a better version of myself, and not a half-assed version of Lisa Marie Presley or whoever. And TV Candy is exactly the same show, only with 100% more Melissa Rivers, so therefore it is the same only worse.

It makes me sad to watch you, and see what has become of John Henson in recent years. He was so funny on Talk Soup … and let’s not even get into forcing me to see Kimberly Caldwell and her tragically crispy hairdo.

I know you must be shocked to hear this news, but seriously … go back to just being a menu of TV options, and maybe, maybe, Joan Rivers will go into seclusion …