Hey, anybody want to buy an American institution known, read and loved for over fifty years that makes TV watching fast, easy and plannable for up to a week while also providing comedic side bits and puzzles?

Yours for a buck!

No, seriously.  Apparently TV Guide recently was sold off by former owner Macrovision, maker of shoddy VHS copy protection and surely doing something else by now though for the life of me I can’t tell what that would be.

Macrovision was so desperate to get out from under the debt burden and continuing losses that it inherited with its purchase of TV Guide that it sold the magazine to a private equity group for just one dollar, Advertising Age reported on its website Wednesday, citing Macrovision’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In an interview with AdAge.com, Andrew Nikou, managing partner of OpenGate, which bought the magazine, said, “The reason we acquired this business is simple. … It needed additional investment. We’re investing in this company to take it to the next stage.”

I had no idea TV Guide was doing so badly.  Well, I guess when you’ve got on-screen program guides going three days ahead of schedule with the press of a button on your remote and TiVos and DVRs that will record an entire season of any program you like automatically AND store it for you indefinitely, having a tiny magazine on your coffee table doesn’t seem to make that much sense.  It’s sort of sad, given that TV Guide has been around and guiding our TV viewing since the days when reality TV meant TV that looked realistic.

Indeed, TV Guide probably does require some revamping, and hopefully new owner OpenGate can provide said revamping.  Because it’d be downright sad to miss this American classic, in any form.

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