TV Guide is an American biweekly 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.

Five years later, he sold the editions to Walter Annenberg, who folded it into his publishing and broadcasting company Triangle Publications, but remained as a consultant for the magazine until 1963.

[7] 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.

Under Triangle, TV Guide continued to grow not only in circulation, but in recognition as the authority on television programming with articles – the majority of which typically appear in the color section – from both staff and contributing writers.

The new facility, complete with a large lighted TV Guide logo at the building's entrance, based its management, editors, production personnel and subscription processors as well as a vast computer system holding data on every television show and movie available for listing in the popular weekly publication.

Printing of the national color section of TV Guide – which incorporated television-related stories, and select feature columns such as program reviews – took place at Triangle's Gravure Division plant – which was known for performing some of the highest quality printing in the industry, with almost always perfect registration – located adjacent to the company's landmark Inquirer Building on North Broad Street in Philadelphia.

(It was under Triangle's ownership of WFIL-TV that American Bandstand came to popularity, which, in turn, led to host Dick Clark ascending to become a major television personality.)

Triangle Publications sold its Philadelphia newspapers to Knight Newspapers in 1969, its radio and television stations during the early 1970s to Capital Cities Communications (the television stations that are now known as KFSN-TV and WPVI-TV were subsequently acquired by ABC through its 1986 merger with Capital Cities) and various other interests, retaining only TV Guide, Seventeen and The Daily Racing Form.

In most editions, stations serving a particular edition's immediate local coverage area were denoted with a white numeral for its channel number set inside a black TV-shaped bullet; stations serving neighboring communities outside the immediate area, but which could also be viewed in the primary local area, were denoted with a black numeral inside a white TV-shaped bullet outlined in black (for example, in the San Francisco edition, stations based in San Francisco or Oakland had their channel numbers listed as white-on-black TV-shaped bullets, while stations serving neighboring Sacramento or Salinas/Monterey (but could still be viewed in parts of San Francisco or Oakland, including their suburbs, as fringe reception) had their channel numbers listed as black-on-white icons).

Over time, other regular and recurring features (most of them television-related) were included alongside the listings including "Insider" (a television news and interview section in the lead pages of the color section); "Cheers and Jeers" (a critique page about various aspects of television programming); "Hits and Misses" (featuring brief reviews of select programs in the coming week, rated on a score from 0 to 10); "Guidelines" (a half-page daily section featuring highlights of five or six programs of interest); horoscopes; recaps of the previous week's storylines on network daytime soap operas; a page reviewing new home video (and later, DVD) releases; dedicated pages that respectively listed select sporting events, children's programs and "four-star" movies being broadcast during that week; and crossword puzzles.

The "Movie Guide", which encompassed the final pages of each edition, provided summaries of films scheduled to air over the next one to two weeks on the cable channels included in both the log and grid listings (excluding those featured exclusively in the grids) as well as a first-page summary of the films scheduled to premiere that week (arranged by channel and sub-categorized by title).

The November 3–9, 1990, issue saw the addition of VCR Plus+ codes in some of the magazine's regional editions, in order for users with devices incorporating the technology – which was developed by eventual TV Guide parent Gemstar International Group Ltd. – to input into their VCRs to automatically record television programs.

On March 7, 1996, TV Guide launched the iGuide, originally developed by the News Corporation-MCI joint venture Delphi Internet Service Corp. as a web portal, which featured more comprehensive television listings data than those offered by the magazine (with information running two weeks in advance of the present date), as well as news content, TV Guide editorial content and a search feature called CineBooks, which allowed users to access detailed information on about 30,000 film titles.

In addition, infomercials (which had been designated under the boilerplate title "COMMERCIAL PROGRAM[S]" until 1994, and "INFORMERCIAL[S]" thereafter) ceased being listed in the magazine during time periods in which stations aired them.

In July 2004, the overnight listings were removed entirely, replaced by a grid that ran from 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. that included only the broadcast stations in each edition's home market and a handful of cable channels.

The new version of TV Guide went on sale on October 17, 2005, and featured Extreme Makeover: Home Edition host Ty Pennington on the cover.

In September 2006, TV Guide launched a redesigned website, with expanded original editorial and user-generated content not included in the print magazine.

The podcast was headlined by TV Guide reporter/personality Michael Ausiello, and was co-hosted by his colleagues at the magazine, Matt Webb Mitovich,[32] Angel Cohn, Daniel Manu and Maitland McDonagh.

Each episode featured commentary from TV Guide staff on the week's entertainment news stories, television programs, and film releases, as well as occasional interviews with actors, producers, and executives.

[45][46][47] On October 8, 2015, OpenGate Capital sold the magazine and co-owned website TVInsider.com to Troy, Michigan-based publishing company NTVB Media for an undisclosed amount, marking TV Guide's third ownership transaction in eight years (OpenGate managing partner Andrew Nikou stated that the purchase price was for "more than $1 and less than $3 billion," while estimates from other industry sources stated that the magazine sold for a price within the range of $12 million).

[4][48] The acquisition made NTVB Media the largest owner of consumer television publications in the United States, with a combined reach of more than 20 million readers.

As such, it is undetermined whether NTVB will reach deals to distribute TV Guide to newspapers on a separate basis or extend the name to its existing television publications.

[49][50][51] From the magazine's inception until the October 2005 conversion to national listings based on time zone, TV Guide maintained a local-national hybrid format with local editions tailored to a specific region or individual market.

Filled black bullets with a white number overlaid on them indicated local broadcast stations located in one of the primary market areas served by a specific edition; white bullets with a black screen outline indicated stations in outlying secondary markets covered by the corresponding edition.

Upon the incorporation of those channels into the listings section in 1979–80, out-of-market superstations were first identified alphanumerically, indicating them by a combination of their over-the-air channel number and a letter representing their originating market city (as examples, WKBD-TV in Detroit – which effectively served as the Fox affiliate for most of Michigan until December 1994 via cable – was listed as "50D", and KTVT in Dallas–Fort Worth – which operated as a regional superstation in areas of Texas outside of its home market, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana until the station's July 1995 conversion into a CBS affiliate – was listed as "11F", with the "F" meaning its city of license, Fort Worth).

By 1984, the three major national superstations at the time, TBS, WGN and WOR (which were respectively identified as "17A", "9C" and "9N"), were given conventional abbreviated letter designations used by other cable channels.

Two pay cable networks, Cinemax and Showtime eventually rebranded in 1997 so that their respective TV Guide abbreviations – "MAX" and "SHO" – became the focal point of their logos.

Some of the channels that were added to the prime time grids beginning with the September 12–18, 1998, issue were identified by four letter abbreviations (such as "BBCA" for BBC America and "HBOS" for HBO Signature).

(Starz and Encore were listed in select markets where either network was available prior to being expanded to all local and regional editions with the 1998 "Fall Preview" issue.)

Until cable-originated channels were added to the magazine, the directory exclusively listed broadcast television stations serving the individual markets serviced by the corresponding edition.