Starweek stays

There are times when TSF is delighted to be wrong and wrong we were in saying the Toronto Star's Starweek TV guide is being dropped from Saturday store sales.

The wording in Saturday's Starweek made it sound like only home subscribers would have access to the guide as of March 13.

The Sunday Sun went that route last year and we haven't seen a Sun TV guide since last February. But for Starweek, not so and that is good news.

If we had read all of the online story as well, we would have seen the comment from publisher John Cruickshank, who said Starweek "will still be included in all single copies sold in stores and newspaper boxes."

Starweek, the only TV guide being printed by the Toronto dailies, is the work of Gord Stimmell, the Toronto Sun's former TV guide editor, a tireless newsman who knows and loves the business.

We reach for our Starweek daily because Bell's on-screen satellite grid is hopelessly outdated in synopsis detail and is not always reliable. Like Diane Sawyer is no longer an anchor on Good Morning America, people.

A printed guide is our preference and we appreciate Stimmell's dedication to providing television listings for countless newspaper readers - for much of his 25 years at the Sunday Sun and all of his 11 years at the Star.

His new and improved Starweek is now a healthy 56 pages, up from 36, and we're lovin' it.

Stimmell and Star execs appear to be the only print media people aware that the hordes of baby boomers now dominating the Canadian landscape were raised in front of TVs, eating TV dinners and relying on weekly TV guides.

Old habits die hard with folks long settled in their ways and a printed TV guide remains a habit.

So on behalf of readers who buy their newspapers at stores and newspaper boxes across the province, thank you Gord Stimmell and long live Starweek.