TV Guide Magazine Content Returning to TVGuide.com

TVGuideMagazine.com (where you see a lot of soap scoops) and TVGuide.com (where soaps disappeared ages ago) have reunited.

A new partnership between Open Gate Capital and Lionsgate will allow content from TV Guide the magazine return to TVGuide.com, the first time the two will do anything together since Macrovision sold the two sides as separate pieces in 2008. Although both companies will remain separate -- as will the advertising and editorial departments -- but content will be shared, as well as promotional opportunities between the website, the magazine and the TV Guide Network.

Unfortunately for Open Gate Capital, having a separate website from the primary domain name never worked for the magazine publisher. The site, TVGuideMagazine.com pulled in just 103,000 visitors in April compared to 7.8 million who stopped by TVGuide.com, according to Advertising Age. Many readers didn't even know that the magazine and the website were two different entities, and many continued to visit TVGuide.com thinking they were visiting the magazine's website.

"We're doing this so we can do more together than apart, particularly in the area of driving readership, viewership and visitors to the various platforms," said Jack Kliger, a senior adviser to Open Gate Capital, to AdAge.

Open Gate purchased TV Guide for $1 (and assumption of debt) while the website and the cable channel sold for $255 million to Lionsgate. That company, known more for its movie and television production, sold a 49 percent state of the website to One Equity Partners a short time later for $123 million.