Response leads to changes in entertainment guide

MOSES LAKE — The Columbia Basin Herald's weekend entertainment guide is evolving a little more.

In late September, the newspaper changed the guide's name to On Entertainment, part of a package from the company which supplies television data information, offering local entertainment listings and expanded pages.

"That part of the entertainment guide has gone very well," Herald Publisher Harlan Beagley said.

In order to make room, the service which sells the paper its blocks of television schedules took space from the listings outlining the daytime television programming schedule.

"We took note of what our readers have to say," Beagley said. "They were heard on the elimination of some of these schedules."

Beagley estimated the newspaper heard, in one way or another, from 1,000 readers.

"Readers get very attached to their newspaper and the way things work for them," he said. "A lot of them shared with us that they used that sports listing to set their VCRs and their DVD players. They plan their day and their evenings around our guide."

Complete listings have returned to the guide. Beagley told the service the space could not be obtained by eliminating them, and said the choice was to expand pages to include the complete listings and the new features, some of which have been tweaked and shaped into what Beagley called an exciting, user-friendly entertainment guide.

"So all the new things stay, and some of the old things that went away come back," he said. "There was no suggestion that we didn't use. There was a lot of very constructive criticism that helped shape what they'll see in their Friday paper today."

Beagley welcomes any help readers can give as to what they would like to see in their paper.