Comments (1)

• I was a reporter for Electronic Media twenty years ago. Even then, the weekly occupied a strange niche, primarily serving station programming executives. It was certainly the most informative publication out there when it came to syndication news (I was the first to break the news about Paramount reviving “Star Trek” in first-run with a whole new cast, an item that was picked up by newspapers around the country). In the mid-to-late eighties, first-run and off-network syndication was still very big-business and there was plenty of glossy, full-page, full-color ads to justify the magazine’s existence and support its editorial offices in LA, Chicago, NY and DC. EM, later TV Week, could never successfully compete with Daily Variety or the Hollywood Reporter when it came to “breaking news,” so what they offered was more indepth business reporting…offering the story behind the news. And, for the most part, they did it very well…and got very little credit for it, though their stories were often poached by the other trades and newspapers. I didn’t read TV Week much over the last few years, but whenever I did stumble on a copy, I was impressed with the detail and depth of their coverage…even if they were clearly stumbling for relevancy in a TV landscape that has changed massively since the magazine’s inception.

  Lee

  Comment by Lee Goldberg — Monday March 23, 2009 @ 1:06pm PST  Reply to this post