Avoid the Radio Times Christmas Special

Fella

We always buy this, but not anymore.

This year's edition weighs in at a hefty 270 pages, of which there are no less than 44 pages of adverts (I don't mean pages with an advert on, I mean full page adverts). In addition to that there is a 20-page holiday brochure & another brochure for some furniture design company.

So that's over 70 pages of adverts in total.

And they've started alternating the pages, i.e. a page of the film reviews will be backed with a page-sized advert. So you can't tear the ad pages out, you're stuck with them.

Paying £2 for the RT special is one thing. Paying for the privilege of several acres of forest being turned into adverts I don't want to read is quite another. They must be laughing all the way to the bank - charging people for the privilege of buying a bunch of adverts they're being paid to feature...

The odd one I don't mind but SEVENTY PAGES? Taking the p***.

Swan_2

try the on-line RADIO TIMES if you register you can customise it to suit your individual preferences

also to find out if a particular programme is on go to TV GENIUS it'll search up to 10 days in advance


happy viewing

nikki_angel

Imagine how much it would cost if all those advertisers wasn't in it! Much more than £2!!

roddydogs

Why not just buy a saturday paper and get TV mag free-best one Daily Mail

oldagetraveller

Or just use the EPG which comes free, saves having to buy the Daily Mail then.:p

trisontana

Don't forget that this edition covers two weeks instead of the usual one week So no increase in actual cost. Have you looked at an "ordinary" week's edition to see if the advert /editorial ratio is any different ?

Fella

Thanks for the replies. I do know of the cheaper alternatives & in fact had stopped buying the RT each week some time ago, although not because of price**

As far as the "usual" amount of ads - I don't know what that is because I no longer buy the mag. I would hope they don't have such a scandalously high amount but you never know....

We bought it this week because the "Christmas Radio Times" was a bit of a tradition lol. Time to change that tradition.

cheers
Fella


**we stopped buying it after the edition a couple of years ago where their review of the final episode of one of the later series of the Sopranos wasn't a review at all - they simply gave away the exact details of the plot including who got killed! I'd already noticed they tended to do that with non-BBC shows but was a bit gobsmacked how blatant it was.

Blacksheep1979

roddydogs wrote: »

Why not just buy a saturday paper and get TV mag free-best one Daily Mail

But the danger of that is you may get seen buying the daily mail...

fudgeukraine

so, you're whinging that the xmas radio times has a few adverts, so what the !!!! do you want us to do then? moan to the publishers, stop buying it, start a protest? it's all fair and good whinging that there's a lot of ads, but as has been pointed out, were you to manufacture this yourself then there'd be a !!!! load of ads or otherwise it's prob cost closer to £10 an issue

Fella

fudgeukraine wrote: »

so, you're whinging that the xmas radio times has a few adverts, so what the !!!! do you want us to do then? moan to the publishers, stop buying it, start a protest? it's all fair and good whinging that there's a lot of ads, but as has been pointed out, were you to manufacture this yourself then there'd be a !!!! load of ads or otherwise it's prob cost closer to £10 an issue

Rubbish.

Firstly, this is the vent board so you should hardly be surprised if people vent here.

Secondly, 70+ pages of adverts is hardly "a few adverts" now is it?

Thirdly, if you check the other TV guides you'll see that they're cheaper AND have far less adverts.

So you couldn't be more wrong.

As for "what I want you to do".....I couldn't care less what you do. But I thought I'd point out, for the benefit of anyone more discerning, that the Xmas Radio Times is now a bloated waste of trees.

Searcher

Fella wrote: »

We always buy this, but not anymore.

This year's edition weighs in at a hefty 270 pages, of which there are no less than 44 pages of adverts (I don't mean pages with an advert on, I mean full page adverts). In addition to that there is a 20-page holiday brochure & another brochure for some furniture design company.

So that's over 70 pages of adverts in total.

And they've started alternating the pages, i.e. a page of the film reviews will be backed with a page-sized advert. So you can't tear the ad pages out, you're stuck with them.

Paying £2 for the RT special is one thing. Paying for the privilege of several acres of forest being turned into adverts I don't want to read is quite another. They must be laughing all the way to the bank - charging people for the privilege of buying a bunch of adverts they're being paid to feature...

The odd one I don't mind but SEVENTY PAGES? Taking the p***.

But in reality it isn't 70 plus pages is it?

You said yourself that there were 2 brochures in there that account for around 30 pages. You could have easily thrown them away without looking at them and they don't have any effect at all on the quality of the main publication.

So that's 44 pages in the main mag which accounts for just over 16% which IMO doesn't sound too over the top