From memory (and I’m going back a fair while here) the Chronicle did have a proper entertainment section with a full TV guide. It was in the middle of the newspaper, and printed on green paper.
2 Likes
who is old enough to remember picking up a free TV magazine from their local milk bar/petrol station/grocers!
4 Likes
So Watsonia is a real suburb? - appropriate for a TV mag - Wats - on - ia 
I don’t remember anything like these - what’s the date?
2 Likes
Watsonia definitely is real. The Watsonia shops were my grandparents’ regular shopping strip. That’s where I got the 1984 magazine (the yellow one).
The older ones, from 1972, I got cheap at an antiques shop a few years ago. I think it might have been in Daylesford.
The print quality inside these mags is nothing to rave about. Very rough and any non-program listing pages are mostly just program highlights, a horoscope and some recipes!
When I get a few spare minutes I’ll scan some of the inside pages.
2 Likes
I vaguely remember a booklet with TV listings a little neighbourhood butcher shop used to have on the counter in the 1970s. It wasn’t very comprehensive and I don’t recall taking one too often.
I always looked forward to the afternoon newspapers, The Sun and The Daily Mirror, my Grandmother would have at her house on Fridays when we’d visit after school because they’d have the weekly listings and the TV gossip columns. I’m sure those newspapers motivated me to learn to read more than those stupid “Digger the Dog” and “Sparky the Space Chimp” readers they used to send us home from school with.
4 Likes
Some general free magazines are still around with a TV guide, such as this one in the Hills district in Sydney. The guide is terrible.
4 Likes
We had something like that in Sydney too but not sure it was called TV News. I seem to remember it was available in corner shops that were part of a chain.
3 Likes
I think i was the same, reading TV Week etc which did a lot more to teach me to read than school books
2 Likes
That 1984 “TV News” cover looks like something that mightn’t have been totally out of place in 1974 (or even 1964)! 
Even for a freebie, that layout (particularly for how the channels are labelled) is terrible!
Here’s a sample of pages from TV News, 19-25 May 1984, in no particular order
- It is unclear why Channel 9 gets so many “highlights”. Is it paid advertising? Does the editor just like or have shares Channel 9? Who knows?
- There are regional listings for BTV6 Ballarat and the TV8 network. Not sure if the magazine was circulated in those areas or if it was just to cater for fortuitous coverage that these networks might have had into Melbourne.
4 Likes
TV Soap will cease publication after December. Another victim of coronavirus. The full story is in Emerald City, the gossip section of The Sydney Morning Herald.
End of an era for daytime soap magazines
Australia’s last-standing magazine devoted to daytime soap operas will cease publication come December. After 36 years of publication, Next Media has decided to close TV Soap after what has been a tough year for the industry.
2 Likes
Another one bites the dust. Would never thoughf that TV Soap will ever disappear from our shelves. But with the year we had, it has fallen victim.
1 Like
I bought a copy of TV Soap once around the time it first started. Never read it again since. Surprised it lasted this long. I guess as the article states it will probably see more soap content now in TV Week.
1 Like
Hopefully TV Week are smart enough to provide those stories so they can pick up those readers. Unfortunately in the past, whenever a new soap magazine started, TV Week had an expanded soap section but then after a few months they seemed to give up.
1 Like
The last ever issue of TV Soap is on sale now. On the cover, it has “collector’s edition: final issue” on the top of the mag, with several Bold and the Beautiful stars on tbe cover.
Some past covers have made 2 pages as a collage , with the editor’s piece saying her farewell. She has been the editor since 2000, which is one mighty good effort. The rest of the mag seems like a normal issue.
2 Likes
2 Likes
Cameron Daddo & Kerrie Friend on the cover of Scene On TV (The Sunday Mail) on this day in 1987, plus a preview of a new series coming soon: Home And Away
4 Likes
Just carrying on the conversation from the “On This Day” thread. It got me thinking about the Foxtel magazine. I haven’t had Foxtel for years so didn’t realise it was still going.
It used to be free with your Foxtel subscription but I believe you need to subscribe to the magazine separately these days. This is the latest issue August 2021:
4 Likes
I remember as a Foxtel subscriber I got the monthly magazine posted as part of my subscription, I always looked forward to it each month and plan my viewing. But by the early 2000s most of the pages were mobile phone ringtone/picture text ads!
2 Likes
