Press: The Tarting Up of TV Guide

Murdoch brings wrenching changes to an industry watchdog

In some homes, it makes a terrific coaster. In others, it is a well-thumbed compendium of the week's TV programming, whose surrounding color pages are ignored. Yet for 36 years TV Guide has maintained a sturdy, if seldom appreciated, tradition of editorial quality in those pages. Along with celebrity profiles and background stories on upcoming programs, the magazine has done much enterprising reporting on the TV industry. Most notably, in 1982 it ran a 13-page story exposing alleged ethical violations during the making of the CBS documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Viet Nam Deception -- charges that formed the basis for...

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