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256, A1-A20 pages. Illustrations (some in cover). Cover has wear, tears and soiling. The contents include: Performing Arts, Entertainers, Sitcoms, Drama, Family Shows, Westerns, Cop Shows, Prime-Time Soaps, Variety Shows, Daytime Soaps, Morning Shows, Newsmagazines, Cartoons, Kids' Shows, Game Shows, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Shows. TV Guide is a bi-weekly American magazine that provides television program listings information as well as television-related news, celebrity interviews and gossip, film reviews, crossword puzzles, and, in some issues, horoscopes. The national TV Guide's first issue was released on April 3, 1953, accumulating a total circulation of 1,560,000 copies that were sold in the ten U.S. cities where it was distributed. The inaugural cover featured a photograph of Lucille Ball's newborn son Desi Arnaz, Jr., with a downscaled inset photo of Ball placed in the top corner under the issue's headline: "Lucy's $50,000,000 baby". The magazine was published in digest size, which remained its printed format for 52 years. The formation of TV Guide as a national publication resulted from Triangle Publications' purchase of numerous regional television listing publications such as TV Forecast, TV Digest, and the New York-based Television Guide. Each of the cities that had their own local TV listings magazine folded into TV Guide were among the initial cities where the magazine conducted its national launch. The launch as a national magazine with local listings in April 1953 became an almost instant success. TV GUIDE PRESENTS 40 YEARS 0F THE BEST - With this issue, TV GUIDE celebrates 40 years of publishing what was the first, and is still the only, national television magazine. How to observe that anniversary? We went with the boldest idea, the one that seemed not only challenging, but nearly impossible: to select the best of 40 years of television. And thats what you'll find here: our choices of the best sitcom, the best drama, the best cop show, and so on through 20-plus categories. Did we argue? You bet. Was blood spilled? Well almost. In each category, we've chosen what we editors agreed-sometimes barely!-is the best entry for each decade, followed by our pick of an all-time 'Best.' Was Gunsmoke better than Bonanza? Is Oprah better than Phil? Who's the all-time best comic actor on TV? We don't expect you, our readers, to agree with all of our choices; most of the fun is in the argument. In that cheerfully chaotic process, you get to think back over years of TV entertainment-the shows you loved as a kid. the comic performers who made you laugh, the talk-show host who put a funny spin on the events of the day. About our criteria: the choices of performers speak for themselves; but when it came to shows, we weren't thinking about ratings or popularity. The Love Boat and ALF were popular, but they didn't win any prizes when we looked at four decades of television. We weighed such factors as the influence and impact of the series, both on the medium of television and on American culture; the show's quality; and whether it has held up over the years. Of course, TV is also at its 'best when it reacts to major news and draws the country together in moments of national crisis or triumph-the first moon landing, the assassination of JFK, the Challenger disaster, America's hockey win at the 1980 Olympics-but these aren't included here. We concentrated on shows and stars because they are what television itself created and produced, rather than outside events to which it reacted. Since television is our journalistic reason for existence, we're thrilled to be around, 40 years after the first issue of April 3-9, 1953, to pay tribute to its greatest series and performers. But we wouldn't be here at all if not for our readers, to whom we owe the final gratitude. After all the Bests in this issue, we have to say: Thanks- you're the Best. April 17-23, 1993. This issue looks to be unused, but there was a mailing label on the front cover which.
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