The new book added daily highlights, specialized listings and retooled logs and grids. The changes saved money and newsprint. It seemed like a big deal at the time. But a new round of cable channel expansion is forcing editors in Syracuse and around the country to go back to the TV-book drawing board. In the spring of 1999, ER tops the Nielsens.
Cable is practically everywhere.
Syracuse s TV-book grid carries 64 channels. And Time-Warner, which now owns all but two of the cable systems in Central New York, plans to add 90 channels by the end of the summer. Every newspaper TV book in America has spent the last decade trying to keep pace with change, and there s no sign of a let-up. The explosion in the number of cable channels presents the biggest challenge. Roller-coaster newsprint prices, flat Sunday readership and the growing popularity of online TV listings only complicate the situation.