Mr. Magazine

“I’m sure some people will say these guys are crazy for launching a new title,  but we feel very strongly there is a need for us, for our expert guidance on all things streaming. People today watch shows on various platforms – mobile phones, tablets , computers and tv screens.  They want too know what to stream next. And this is what you get with TV Insider; the best and most comprehensive  guidance to the world of streaming.” TV Insider president, Tony Frost.

“The future for us is TV Guide magazine maintaining its presence as a relevant guide for traditional TV while TV Insider grows over the next three to five years as a relevant guide for everyone who streams. Because streaming is everything these days. If you watch TV streaming is it.” Tony Frost.

Today streaming is one of the most important ways to watch your favorite shows, be they on a specific streaming service or a primetime network. But the need for a guide to what streaming has to offer has become something we may all need. 

Enter Tony Frost and TV Insider. This great new print magazine features streaming in its complete form. And talking to Tony I have found another human being as bullish about print as I am. He believes strongly  in it. In fact, the entire company – NTVB Media –  feels there is a need for this new printed  magazine with a direct link to their successful digital entertainment website, tvinsider.com.

The first steps to creating TV Insider,  a monthly title, came last April after TV Guide Magazine carried out its biggest-ever reader survey. Seventy-four per cent of respondents said they now streamed. Soon after Neilsen reported that viewers were spending more time steaming than watching cable or broadcast programming.

At a business meeting in New York City, Tony presented the idea for a streaming magazine independent of the regular TV Guide Magazine to NTVB owners Andy DeAngelis and Larry Mckenzie. After discussions with subscriptions guru Ed Fones, the project was green-lighted. 

“Ed was very bullish,” says Tony. “He felt it could attract a significant number of subscribers.” 

After several mock covers using the instantly recognizable TV Guide logo  for the “special Streaming Edition” failed  to impress, , fast-forward to September when TV Guide EIC Michael Fell came up with the idea of calling the new title tvinsider magazine.

DeAngelis and Frost loved it and the tvinsider website team gave it their seal of approval.Thus tvinsider monthly was born.

So, I hope that you enjoy this great conversation with a man who really knows his way around a television. Without further ado, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Tony Frost, president, TV Insider magazine. 

But first the soundbites:

On the story behind TV Insider: TV Guide readers have doubled their interests in streaming. And we decided to do something about it. We had various meetings with the owners of the company, Andy DeAngelis and Larry McKenzie who fly in once a month from Michigan for executive meetings, and managed to convince them that there is a marketplace for a streaming magazine. And we talked about how it would look; how it would affect TV Guide magazine, and we tried various iterations of the TV Guide logo, which is one of the most recognizable logos in America and still a very strong brand.

On why they didn’t just change TV Guide instead of launching a new magazine: Michael Fell, the editor in chief of TV Guide magazine, asked why didn’t we call it  TVInsider? We have a very successful website called tvinsider.com that we own and Michael’s idea was let’s spin off the title of our website with all the obvious advantages and synergies. But on the first cover we locked up we used the TV Guide logo close to the UPC stating From The Publishers of….., The TV Insider logo, created by our Creative Director Paul Aarons is very different and distinctive in its own right. 

On whether he feels there’s a need for a printed publication about streaming: You hear many people tell you there’s so much to watch on TV these days, but what do I watch? What’s worth watching? And the slogan of our magazine is “Know what to stream next.” That slogan comes from Barb Oates who runs our custom publishing unit in Milwaukee. She’s overseen our industry-related TV  magazines for a number of years. And she believes the one thing regular streamers want to know to know is what to stream next. So yes, we really do believe that there’s a market for this.

On the shrinking newsstand today: Obviously, the newsstand today has shrunk. Not just for TV Guide magazine but for every title. We’ve been putting out less than a 100,000 copies of TV Guide on newsstands and we’re there will be approximately the same number of copies for TV Insider. They will be at the newsstand side by side and readers will have a choice between the TV Guide magazine or TVInsider. Some hopefully will want  both! Maybe streamers  who buy TV Guide magazine use TVInsider as a companion guide. 

On launching the magazine monthly: It’s a monthly, yes. TV Guide remains biweekly and TV Insider will be monthly. It’s larger than TV Guide with an 80lb cover with pages and pages of advice on all things streaming: articles, interviews, features and more highlighting the newest shows  specials and movies. It’s a very nice-looking book, which Michael Fell and the TV Guide editors have put together, designed by Paul Aarons, who is our creative director, with uncut from Barn Oates in Milwaukee and Marcie Waldrup, NTVB’s marketing director in Troy, Michigan. It’s been real teamwork and we’ve had great support from Samantha Westfall, chief content director at tvinsider.com. You know, Samir, it’s really great when it all comes together!

On today’s magazine ownership being people with really no interest in magazines at all: That’s a very good point. The fact is that Andy and Larry, who own the company, and myself the president of it; we all have  a huge and sustained interest run print and magazines and love magazines. We’re not going to walk away from print when there is still great opportunity like this. 

On whether their belief in print is their age or their convictions that it’s still necessary: We think print is viable to so many people. TV didn’t kill the radio, did it? Radio adapted and so will we. We have one million TV Guide magazine subscribers. TV Insider can be successful with 100,000 subscribers. You talk about venture capitalists and hedge finders owning media, well they would want to see a million dollar return in the first couple of months. We don’t expect that. We are realists and know it is going to take time to build the audience and to make  consumers aware of this excellent product. And that’s what we’re doing now.. 

On the magazine Stream + and any other competition: That’s encouraging in itself, the fact that a360 believes there’s a market for this type of magazine. Stream + is a nice magazine, but it’s not a guide, it’s an entertainment magazine. We’re a guide. We’re the experts and we provide the expert knowledge and utility. From my standpoint, it would be great to think that a360’s title and TV Insider could co-exist at the newsstand. Nothing would please me more. 

On his biggest fear with the launch of this new magazine: I don’t think fear plays into it. We want to remain relevant in 2023 and in going forward. TV Guide has been relevant for 70 years. Let’s hope tour new title heralds the start of another 70 year cycle.

On the future of magazines in print: The future for us is TV Guide magazine and maintaining its presence as a relevant guide for traditional broadcast TV. And TV Insider growing over the next three to five years and becoming a relevant guide for everyone who streams. Because streaming is everything these days. Practically everything on regular TV ends up on a streaming service eventually.Streaming is it.And we feel that this guide is both vital and  relevant in this day of the streaming revolution. People can read it leave in their coffee tables, pick it up again several times during the month and keep finding something fresh to watch.

On TV Insider having no grids or listings: The grids and listings still appear in TV Guide. There are still a lot of people who love the grids and listings. They’ll continue to get those. The audience for TV Insider are those people who perhaps rely less on grids today, but are frustrated because they can’t find anything to watch. And they channel surf for two hours without finding anything worthwhile. With TV Insider magazine they will be getting plenty of options 

On what keeps him up at night: I go to bed at 10pm most nights but if Arsenal  – my favorite English Premier League football team – lose it takes me a while to get to sleep. I get up at 5:30 most mornings and my staff see a lot of early morning emails from me.  I read the pages – headlines, full text and photo captions – of all the magazines we produce. I’m invested in making sure TV Guide, our SIPs, Puzzler magazine and now TV Insider are the best they can be.That’s why I sleep so well.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Tony Frost, president TV Insider. 

Samir Husni: It’s one month away from 70 years and the launch of TV Guide. So tell me the story behind TV Insider.

Tony Frost: The story is that last April 2022, TV Guide magazine carried out its largest reader survey ever. And we had thousands of replies, both online and by mail. And most of them were loads of interesting information. One of the most fascinating discoveries was that at that time, a year ago, 74 percent of TV Guide readers were now streaming. And that compares to our previous TV Guide survey in 2018, where 35 percent were streaming.

So in that four years, TV Guide readers have doubled their interests in streaming. And we decided to do something about it. We had various meetings with the owners of the company, Andy DeAngelis and Larry McKenzie who fly in once a month from Michigan for executive meetings, and managed to convince them that there is a marketplace for a streaming magazine. And we talked about how it would look; how it would affect TV Guide magazine, and we tried various iterations of the TV Guide logo, which is very important still. It’s one of the most recognizable logos in America and it’s still a very strong brand.

We have one million TV Guide magazine subscribers still and as you correctly said we’re about to celebrate our 70^th birthday and we decided that this would be an opportune time to launch the new title. It will launch very soon. 

Samir Husni: Why didn’t you just change TV Guide instead of launching a new magazine?

Tony Frost: TV Guide will continue to exist just as it is right now. What we did was try the TV Guide logo and TV Guide streaming, etc., but we needed to work on that. And we felt that, especially at newsstand, it would be hard to differentiate between TV Guide magazine, regular issue and the streaming issue if we used the logo in the same way. 

So Michael Fell, the editor in chief of TV Guide magazine, suggested and asked us why didn’t we call it IV Insider? We have a very successful website called tvinsider.com that we own and Michael’s idea was let’s spin off the title of our website with all the obvious advantages and synergies. So we locked up a cover and as you can see, that’s the traditional TV Guide logo, so the TV Insider logo, we decided to make different.

But on the cover you will still see the TV Guide logo on TV Insider magazine. It’s telling people that it’s from the publishers of TV Guide magazine; it’s from the editors of TV Guide magazine. They are getting expert guidance on streaming from TV experts.

Samir Husni: As you launch this new magazine, do you still feel there’s a need for a printed publication to tell people what to stream and what to watch on TV?

Tony Frost: We’ve promoted this magazine in our publications; in TV Guide already and other publications that the company owns and we already had several thousand subscribers before it’s even launched. So the answer is, yes we do feel there’s a need for a printed magazine. 

You hear many people tell you there’s so much to watch on TV these days, so what do I watch? What’s worth watching? And the slogan of our magazine is “Know what to stream next.” That slogan comes from Barb Oates who runs our custom publishing unit in Milwaukee. She’s been responsible for our industry magazines for a number of years. And she agreed that people want to know what to stream next. So yes, we really do believe that there’s a market for this. The tears were there to put out a magazine that is different from TV Guide and doesn’t confuse TV Guide readers, and one that maybe TV Guide readers will want to buy and subscribe to as a companion to TV Guide magazine. 

Samir Husni: The days that TV Guide used to sell 12 million copies on the newsstand are gone.

Tony Frost: Obviously, the newsstand today has shrunk. Not just for TV Guide magazine but for every title. We’ve put out less than a 100,000 copies of TV Guide on newsstands right now and we’re putting out approximately 100,000 TV Insider, so they’ll be at the newsstands side by side and readers will have a choice between the TV Guide magazine or the average streamers who buy TV Guide magazine; will they switch to TV Insider or buy it as a companion guide. 

It’s interesting that we’re launching this magazine as TV Guide’s 70^th birthday approaches, but it’s even more interesting that it’s at this time when many magazines are closing and going to digital, we’re going from digital back to a magazine.

Samir Husni: Are you crazy, or is there something behind the craziness?

Tony Frost: I’m sure some people will say these guys are crazy for launching a new magazine, but we feel very strongly that there is a need for us, for guidance; for all things streaming. And this is what you get with TV Insider; all things streaming.

Samir Husni: And you’re launching it as a monthly magazine instead of a weekly.

Tony Frost: It’s a monthly, yes. TV Guide remains biweekly and TV Insider will be monthly. It’s larger than TV Guide and has 40 lb. stock for the inside pages. It’s a very nice-looking book, which Michael Fell and the TV Guide editors put together. It’s been designed by Paul Aarons, who is our creative director and he’s done a great job. We’ve worked very closely together.

We have another traditional TV magazine called TV Weekly, which is produced in Troy, Michigan. And the team at TV Weekly came up with ideas for the streaming magazine. In fact, the index look on the right side of the cover with the titles of the major streaming services, that was given to us by Marci Waldrup, who is marketing director for TV Weekly. Barb Oates, our custom publisher in Milwaukee came up with a slogo: What to stream next. Michael Fell, the TV Guide editor in chief, came up with the idea of calling the magazine TV Insider, which leads you directly to our website.

Samir Husni: You’ve sort of done some reverse engineering by taking the digital to print.

Tony Frost: You can call it reverse engineering; you can call it crazy; you can call it what you want, but the good thing about our company is we have no debt. We have Andy and Larry who own the company and they don’t have investors, they don’t have banks breathing down their necks; they don’t have to go to quarterly meetings with BS projections. When we do something, we do it slowly and steadily and we will grow this publication in a slow and steady way. 

Samir Husni: Back a century ago, when magazines like TV Guide, Time and Reader’s Digest all came onto the scene, there were individual entrepreneurs behind them. Nowadays it’s more of a venture capitalist endeavor. The two largest magazine companies, Meredith and A360 Media, are both technically owned by digital capitalist folks who have no interest in magazines. 

Tony Frost: That’s a very good point. The fact is that Andy and Larry, who own the company, and I’m the president of it; we all have huge interests in magazines and love magazines. We’re not going to walk away from print when there is still great opportunity like this. And this is an extension of what we do. This is something that became a natural progression for us as we worked on it. And we realized just how much knowledge the team has. And how quickly this crazy idea became a reality. And a very good one. 

Samir Husni: Forgive my question, but is the love of print by Andy, Larry and yourself, is it your age or is it because you still feel print is necessary in this day and age?

Tony Frost: We think print is viable to so many people. TV didn’t kill the radio, did it? Radio adapted and so will we. We have one million TV Guide magazine subscribers. TV Insider can be successful with 100,000 subscribers. You talk about venture capitalists, venture capitalists will see a million dollar return in the first couple of months. We don’t. We know this is going to take time to build the audience and to make the consumer aware of this excellent product. And that’s what we’re doing.

Our internet marketing director is starting a marketing campaign very soon. It’ll be pretty extensive and we feel that with TV Guide and our other in-house titles and with tvinsider.com and our marketing and promotion plan, we can get word out pretty widely that this is an excellent product for everyone who loves streaming. And that’s practically everything now, everything is streaming. Even the traditional broadcast shows end up on streaming. 

Samir Husni: Other than Stream +, which is published by a360 Media, is there any competition out there for your magazine?

Tony Frost: That’s encouraging in itself, the fact that a360 believes there’s a market for this type of magazine. Stream + is a nice magazine, but it’s not a guide, it’s an entertainment magazine. We’re a guide. We’re the experts and we provide the expert knowledge. From my standpoint, it would be great to think that a360’s title and TV Insider could exist close to each other on the newsstand. Nothing would please me more. 

Samir Husni: As you launch this new magazine, what is your biggest fear?

Tony Frost: I don’t think fear plays into it. We want to remain relevant in 2023 and in going forward. TV Guide has been relevant for 70 years. Let’s hope this is the start of another 70 year cycle with a new title. 

Samir Husni: I noticed that you’re giving away free streaming for up to 10 years. 

Tony Frost: It’s a promotion, which we feel we have to offer. And we’re doing a sweepstakes. It’s just an add-on; an added value to our readers.

Samir Husni: You have been with TV Guide for years and you’ve seen the changes in the marketplace, in the industry and with the wholesalers and distributors. What do you believe is the future of magazines in print?

Tony Frost: I think it wouldn’t hurt if there were more people like Andy DeAngelis and Larry McKenzie, myself and Michael Fell, who are commissioned to the future of magazines. We believe in them and can’t imagine a world without them. 

The future for us is TV Guide magazine and maintaining its presence as a relevant guide for traditional TV. And TV Insider growing over the next three to five years and being a relevant guide for everyone who streams. Because streaming is everything these days. If you watch TV streaming is it. 

And we feel that this guide is relevant in this day and age and is needed by people to read from the coffee table, pick up again and see what they can watch tonight, and pick it up next week to see what’s on. It gives people options and you can’t spend your whole life glaring at a screen, whether it’s your workplace computer, mobile phone or tablet or your TV. You have to have something to read in print. And this as a guide for giving you the best advice on how to spend two hours watching something that appeals to you. There’s nothing better than TV Insider. 

Samir Husni: You opted with TV Insider not to have any grids.

Tony Frost: The grids and listings still appear in TV Guide. There are still a lot of people who love the grids and listings. They’ll continue to get those. The audience for TV Insider are those people who perhaps rely less on grids today, but are frustrated because they can’t find anything to watch. And they channel surf for two hours without finding anything to watch. With TV Insider magazine hopefully they can find something to watch. 

Samir Husni: Anything I failed to ask you?

Tony Frost: The interesting thing is that on the cover of TV Guide is Kiefer Sutherland who’s star of the new espionage drama on Paramount Plus. He’s the cover and we have an exclusive interview with him. He has graced 19 TV Guide magazines. But the timing was right to choose him. TV Guide magazine is one of the most important brands in the entertainment world today 70 years after it was launched. 

Samir Husni: Anyone ever ask you to be on the front page of a digital product?

Tony Frost: We have a very robust website, tvinsider.com. It has 8 to 9 million users per month. And we think we can transport material from TV Insider print to tninsider.com. And readers may like the magazine and may well become subscribers. 

Samir Husni; My typical last question, what keeps you up at night?

Tony Frost: I get up at 5:30 most mornings. My staff sees a lot of emails from me at 5:30 in the morning. I look at the pages, make suggestions, because we’re all invested in making TV Insider the best product possible. I run Central Park twice a week, which means that noting keeps me up at night. (Laughs) 

Samir Husni: Thank you.