First National TV Guide Published 59 Years Ago Today

The very first issue of the national TV Guide magazine was published 59 years ago today on April 3rd, 1953. It may have hit newsstands a few days earlier, however. On the cover was Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV (better known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.), Lucy and Desi’s “$50,000,000 Baby” (born January 19th, 1953). Here’s how publisher Walter H. Annenberg explained the genesis and purpose of the new magazine in a letter printed on the inner front cover:

As We See It

This is your new TV Guide.
It brings a new concept to magazine publichsing just as television has brought a new concept of mass communication to America.
Up to now, many magazines have been distributed throughout the United States, while others, devoted to material of local interest, have been circulated in limited areas only.
Television’s growing importance in our daily lives brought a need for accurate and complete station schedules printed in convenient form. In nearly every city served by television, this need was soon filled by weekly magazines which in essence were theater programs–programs for the millions of home theaters created by television.
Because television signals carry for comparatively few miles, the magazines were purely local affairs that circulated only in the area served by one city’s stations. Thus TV Digest served the viewers of Philadelphia, TV Forecast served CHicago, TV Guide served New York.
Now, under the name TV Guide, these publications will become national as well as local. They will continue and, in fact, expand their local listing pagesa and their news columns. In addition, the new TV Guide offers readers throughout the Nation news, features, and columns by staffs of writers in the tlevision capitals. As a national, as well as local magazine, TV Guide will make use of the most modern printing facilties, bringing readers four-color pages–as a prelude to the day when television itself will be in color.
What can you expect of the new TV Guide? Just this: your magazine is dedicated to serving constructively the television viewers of America. By serving the viewers, and increasing their enjoyment of the medium, we will be serving the entire television industry.

-Walter H. Annenberg

Volume 1, Issue 1 featured complete television listings for the week of April 3-9. Included in the issue were four articles: “Lucy’s $50,000,000 Baby,” “TV’s Last Minute Men (And Women),” “Stars Tell ‘What TV Has Taught Me’,” and “In The Cast: Joan Alexander.” There were also reviews for Robert Montgomery Presents and Time to Smile, a picture story on Walter Winchell, a profile on Herb Shriner and more. The issue cost 15 cents. A three-year subscription cost $11, a two-year subscriptiop $8 and a one-year subscription just $5. On the back cover was an advertisement touting the benefits of subscribing:

It’s so nice to have a GUIDE around the house!

It’s so convenient. A subscription to TV GUIDE means it’s always there when you want it. It means you’ll see allthe best shows beause you’ll know, days in advbance, when and where they’ll be on. When TV GUIDE comes regularly, once a week, it means you get to know the television personalities, how TV works behind the scenes, what new shows are being planned, what new stars are rising. A subscription to TV GUIDE–the most complete, most interesting, most informative TV magazine–means you’ll get the utmost pleasure from your television set, every week and every day of the year.

It isn’t hard to have a GUIDE around the house. It’s really very easy. Use the coupon you’ll find inside to order your subscription, at thel low subscription rates. Send it in today. Your subscription will start immediately.

To really enjoy TV, read TV GUIDE.

How many copies still exist? Who knows. Copies pop up on eBay fairly often and sell for several hundred dollars, depending on condition. Some feature shipping labels, suggesting that subscribers to the magazine’s precursors might have been given the opportunity to subscribe to the new magazine without missing a week’s worth of listings. I don’t know how many issues were published but I do know that during the first six months of 1954 TV Guide was selling 1.6 million copies on the newsstand alone.

I wonder if anyone who subscribed to the very first issue is still receiving TV Guide today.


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