Inside TV Guide’s Decision to Makeover Their Cover
THEY READ COVERAWARDS, OF COURSE!
IT’S TIME FOR “DAYS OF TV GUIDE’S LIVES!”
We take you live (sort of) inside Monday’s newsmeeting featuring our favorite last place celebrity weekly on the newwstand.* (Yeah, they have a ton of subscribers, but you pay like two pennies per copy or you get it for free when you sign up for cable.)
EIC aka Ian Birch: I’m sick and tired of reading CoverAwards and having that web site tell me how much our covers SUCK. Did you see the site this morning? They actually did a recap of our covers and made us look like idiots!
Some senior editor: What can we do to change CoverAwards’ opinion of TV Guide? I mean we’re all good people. We’re creative. We can do it!
EIC: What’s big in TV this week? Is there a hot story? Is there something that we can really make explode?
Senior editor 2: American Idol is hot! I think we could do a cover on Simon and Ryan and how the feud is really bad. Or we can make it juicy and hint at some gay scandal!
EIC: WTF? You know we just did American Idol last week!
Janitor: What about Britney Spears?
EIC: Britney Spears? Why Britney?
Janitor: She’s on the that show “How I Met Your Mother ” and she looks hot again! Her Mom visited her on the set and the crew loved working with her. This could be a great comeback cover.
EIC: Hmm. I didn’t know that. But sounds good. Let’s use our “TV Guide” name and get an exclusive photo with interviews from the cast of that show - what’s the name of it again?
Janitor: “How I Met Your Mother”
EIC: OK, full steam ahead! I need someone to come up with some lines for this cover. (EIC looks around the room and can’t spot one person he can trust to pull this off and starts to freak out in his head, but remains cool on the outside.) We also need to change the layout. Make it look like the other weeklies - you know - let’s have insets with photos on the left side.
Bottom line: Big improvement for TV Guide. But the lines ALL FALL FLAT. I think I know who copied wrote them!
*The above account is sorta, kinda fictional. HA!
