There are several Australian Apps for mobile devices that challenge sales of TV guide related titles from TV Week to the weekly listings in newspapers – apps that list TV programs and provide even more details beyond the listing.
The various TV guide apps I have played with are easy to use and accessible anywhere thanks to our connected world.
While the example I have used is not as rich as some in newspapers or TV Week, it’s good and well serves the need to know what’s on.
If you’re someone who visits a newsagency to buy TV Week or a newspaper on the day the seven-day TV guide is published, the App could encourage you to not make that trip.
While our businesses do not live or die by the traffic generated by selling a TV guide, losing a single customer may hurt as they could then ignore us for the cards they buy through the year and other items.
We can’t stop the growth of use of TV guide Apps. But we can develop a business plan that takes into account the take up of this and other Apps.
Most council libraries let people download magazines from home for free so people don’t even have to subscribe anymore.
You can do a lot of this directly our you tv’s these days. I never look at a guide and feel that the value in them is in other information such as tech stuff in the green guide and gossip in the TV Week, not that I read either of them.
Stacey, I would have thought that this be against copyright laws and that libraries would be the last to break these. Do they have some legal arrangement that allows them to do this?
I didn’t know that (but I do now!) Thanks Stacey!
http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/explore/libraries/elibrary/emagazines
Will have a flick through the 150 on offer at City of Sydney
Cannot think of any show on TV that I would plan my week around?? I turn on the TV, channel surf and look for something to watch for an hour before bed. Don’t even bother recording any TV, really most of its crap, no imagination with any network ATM, same old tired format of scripted reality TV.
TV Week is pathetic. Here in Newcastle and Northern NSW, our local channel Nine (NBN) is relegated to the tiniest little print under the WIN Television listings (we don’t get WIN, so we shouldn’t have to be subjected to their program guide, which differs greatly to NBN).
GEM is wrong – they list the WIN GEM with A Current Affair at 7.30pm – NBN’s GEM runs the network schedule, not ACA on WIN GEM, so the post 7.30pm schedule is all wrong.
If you buy the TV Week from the service stations or in Coles or Woolies, you get the Sydney printed version… which at least is better because you get ABC News 24 listings, the regional versions doesn’t list it.
I could go on…..
TV Week needs to look at the UK’s “TV Satellite Week” to see how it should be done – I subscribe to that on my iPad and it’s fantastic.