TV Times

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TV Times is a British weekly television listings and interest magazine, launched in 1955.

It is the second-oldest British publication of this speciality behind the Radio Times, to which it initially served as a direct counterpart rather than a competitor; in contrast to Radio Times' then-exclusive BBC listings, TV Times was originally dedicated to listing programs for ITV and, from 1982, Channel 4. It wasn't until the deregulation of television listings began in 1991 that the publication finally began including BBC listings (with Radio Times incorporating those of ITV and Channel 4 at the same time).

Naturally, the magazine would not have contained coverage of any Doctor Who-related media during its original run; Doctor Who was first covered prominently in the magazine in 1996 with the broadcast of the TV movie.

Compared to its elder publication, or its more contemporary competitor, TV & Satellite Week, Doctor Who and its family of televised media has been covered within TV Times on a much less frequent basis since its return in 2005, with just a handful of instances in which the series is advertised on the cover, let alone instances when the series is the focal point of the cover.

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Issue numbers[[edit] | [edit source]]

The publication's issue numbering followed a specific format up to mid-2018. Individual issues reset their numbering on a yearly basis, with around 51 issues released yearly, with the Christmas double issues at the end of the year being numbered twice in order to account for the fact that they cover two weeks worth of content rather than the usual one. These end-of-year numbers would be either Number 51/52 or Number 52/1, dependant on which side of the New Year the cover date ended on.

Complicating things further was the fact that every few issue numbers were further divided into "volumes", resulting in such full issue numbers as "Volume 224, Number 35". The publication ceased numbering their issues altogether after Volume 241, Number 19 (the issue cover-dated 5 - 11 May 2018).

A number of factors presented by this format make calculating exact issue numbers difficult, primarily, the fact that the magazine appeared to lack a strict rule as to when, specifically, volume numbers would switch over.

Due to this difficulty, this site has opted to take on its own numbering system when titling pages for each issue. An issue's "official" numbering shall still be noted in each page's notes section if available.