Editing TV Guide (section)

====Addition of cable listings====
{{Unreferenced section|date=August 2018}}
The advent of cable television would pose challenges to ''TV Guide''. Cable channels began to be listed in the magazine in 1980 or 1981, depending on the edition; the channels listed also differed with the corresponding edition. Regional and national [[superstation]]s available on cable systems in the designated market of many editions were the only cable channels listed initially as well as, in certain markets, over-the-air subscription services transmitted over local [[Independent station (North America)|independent stations]] (such as [[ONTV (pay TV)|ONTV]]); local subscription television services were often listed as "STV Programming" or "Subscription Television" for the channel carrying the service, with the service listed separately or, in some editions, not at all. Cable-originated channels – such as [[HBO]], [[CNN]] (both of which the magazine originally promoted mainly in full-page advertisements), the CBN Cable Network (now [[Freeform (TV channel)|Freeform]]), the [[Alpha Repertory Television Service]] (ARTS, later succeeded by [[A&E (TV channel)|A&E]] through its 1984 merger with The Entertainment Channel) and [[Nickelodeon]] – were added gradually between the winter of late 1981 and the first half of 1982, depending on the edition.

To save page space, ''TV Guide'' incorporated a grid (a rowed display of listings for programs scheduled to air during the evening hours each night, primarily organized by channel) into the listings between 1979 and 1981, which was slotted at a random page within each day's afternoon listings. The grid originated as a single-page feature that provided a summary of programs airing during prime time (from 7:00 to 10:00&nbsp;p.m. or 8:00 to 11:00&nbsp;p.m. depending on the start of prime time within a given [[time zone]]) on the stations mentioned in the corresponding edition; by 1983, it was expanded to a two-page section – which began to take up roughly three-quarters of the two adjoining pages on which it was placed – that included programs airing during the [[dayparting|early access and late fringe]] periods (from 5:00 to 11:00&nbsp;p.m. or 6:00&nbsp;p.m. to 12:00&nbsp;a.m. local time), with the beginning and end of the magazine-defined prime time daypart (between 7:30 and 11:00&nbsp;p.m. or between 6:30 and 10:00&nbsp;p.m. local time on Monday through Saturdays, and between 7:00 and 11:00&nbsp;p.m. or between 6:00 and 10:00&nbsp;p.m. local time on Sundays) delineated by a thicker border. Channels listed in the grid were organized by broadcast stations, basic cable channels, and premium channels.

In 1983, depending on the edition, a new feature was added, the "Pay-TV Movie Guide" (renamed the "Premium Channels Movie Guide" in 1997), initially preceded the listings before being moved to the pages immediately following the Friday listings in January 1989, resulting in the national section – which had been cordoned into two sections, both preceding and following the local section – being consolidated into the first half of the pages comprising each issue. Preceding this addition, some editions carried The "Movie Guide", which also preceded the listings, 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). As the years went on, more cable channels were added into the listings of each edition. To help offset this, the May 11–17, 1985, issue introduced a smaller Helvetica font for the log, along with some other cosmetic changes; in particular, a show's length began to be listed after the show's title instead of at the end of its synopsis. That issue also saw advertising for local stations featured in the corresponding edition be restricted to certain special events, with most program promotions being restricted to those for national broadcast and cable networks.