In the travelogue appearing here this week, you may find reference to a trip to the Carnegie Library to inspect TV Guides from 1975. While it wasn't my quest, it actually got me started on a new one. I had known about Channel 19 in Pittsburgh, excuse me Jeannatte, for a few years, since it had been a Johnstown station, which managed to get its license moved to a location within Pittsburgh's "must carry" radius. I had known that it had started up in the late 80's as an independent, and had been sort of the very low wattage station for that area. What I didn't know was that circa 1975, it had been a CBS affiliate, then sometime between then and the late 80's, it had collapsed. I would have never known this, were it not for Mike's research.

That's why I'm a little disturbed to find this data probably won't be available to researchers in 30 years. In reading this article, I find it simultaneously revealing as to the awareness of TV Guide as to its own fate, admitting to their own failures, and then promising to fix the problem by becoming completely irrelevant. I had earlier been bent out of shape about TV Guide being not much about TV any more, and now it would seem they're not going to be much of a guide to anything either. I feel a tingle... And there it goes.