Talk:TV guide

RFD discussion

Sum-of-parts? -- Beobach972 04:33, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Not really; a guide may be any sort of manual. However, this is a partcular meaning that has become a set phrase (at least in the US) as a result of the magazine named TV Guide. --EncycloPetey 05:21, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep. And a question: Does a TV guide always have to be a whole magazine or can it also be only part of a magazine or newspaper etc.? If not what would be the correct term for this, TV listings? Ncik 14:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Um, yes, the television listings in a newspaper are titled "television listings" (because calling it a TV Guide would be a trademark violation) but are called "the newspaper's TV guide." Obviously, any attempt at finding print citations will find the trademark being honored by publishers, with some other term used as an awkward replacement. Here on en.wiktionary, I think it is quite dangerous to keep TV guide with no corresponding entry for the trademark TV Guide. As EncyclopPetey said, the term is ubiquitous only because of the original funny-sized weekly magazine, here in the US. Not mentioning that, or failing to indicate the trademark status of the other, could get us in trouble. --Connel MacKenzie 18:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep with such notice. I believe it could be considered generic by our measure. DAVilla 15:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree -- I'd never heard of TV Guide, which apparently started in the US in 1953, yet TV guide is indeed widely used generically in UK. I haven't yet found any published usage clearly pre-dating TV Guide, so usage may at least have been influenced by the US/Canada titles. ('pedia says there's now a UK one too, but that post-dates widespread UK usage of the phrase.) If you want a laugh look at the [pre-53 b.g.c cites] (I particularly like the 1852 one). A quick look through the top 200 post-'52 b.g.c. cites shows about 3 independent generic TV guide cites; so as suggested above, publishers appear to be making efforts to respect copyright -- the generic phrase is much more common than that verbally. Since there was a regular TV service in London from 1936, it might be worth checking whether newspapers (other than the Radio Times) carried listings (and if so, what they called them) before 1953. --Enginear 00:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow, of those "pre-1953" hits, are any of them really from prior to 1953? I'm not seeing any that aren't obvious miss-datings. (e.g. Newsweek article about the 1970s dated as 1933.) The 1852 one was a scan-o (mis-scanning/mis-OCRing) of "a guide" not "tv guide" (check the image!) Publishers are respecting trademark not copyright. Anyway, if we don't have an entry for TV Guide, it is foolhardy not to delete TV guide. --Connel MacKenzie 05:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That's what amused me -- ALL 63 were either miss-scans or miss-datings, and nearly all obvious as such from the summary. (Many of the "miss-datings" were due to Google's policy of dating most/all periodicals by the date of the first issue, but they are none-the-less wrong.) Some while back I suggested that if a word got 100 b.g.c. hits it should be reasonable to assume that at least 3 would be valid uses. Now I realise I was wrong! --Enginear 20:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why a note in the etymology wouldn't be enough. Nonetheless the specific publication in the U.S. would be understood out of context, so in agreement I've added an entry for TV Guide. Now it wouldn't be foolhardy not to delete TV guide, right? DAVilla 08:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Since out guidelines have refined themselves a bit since January, it is fair to say that TV guide should be sent to RFV (pointing to 'pedia instead, in the meantime) and TV Guide should be deleted. --Connel MacKenzie 04:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I just want to make it clear, as an intellectual property attorney, that we can never, ever get into trouble for failing to mention the trademark status of any word. No law imposes on a third party the duty of indicating such a status. The only parties for whom indication of such status is at all important are the owner (which does not have a duty to indicate the status, but does not get all the benefits provided by law if they do not indicate the status) and a competitor who is using the mark to sell a competing product. bd2412 T 04:12, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for addressing that one minor point, from above. That doesn't seem to be important to the central question though. It seems like TV guide should be sent to WT:RFV and changed to link to Wikipedia. Meanwhile, TV Guide should be deleted with prejudice.

• See also, #TV Guide below. --Connel MacKenzie 23:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep TV guide; TV Guide needs more pondering (I see no problem keeping it solely as an alternative spelling of TV guide, but I don't think it needs to be kept). Cheers! bd2412 T 23:32, 12 September 2007 (UTC)