In this case, though, the nation as a whole was feeling the troubles brought about by the economic and industrial mismanagement of Ted Heath's ill-fated government.  A power crisis, leading to the famous pictures of people shopping by candle light (and invariably captioned 'Winter 1978' by ignorant researchers) was crippling the country, and the TVTimes had no choice but to drop colour printing and reduce the number of pages in order to keep up a supply of listings to the country.

In a move that is unlikely to happen now, however, they cut the price from 5p to 3p in an attempt to make up for the losses.  These days, publishers are just as likely to continue at the higher price and say nothing about the parlous state of the magazine.  But these days, with north sea oil and gas cushioning the country from miner's strikes and OPEC rises and the unions a pale shadow of what once was, the magazines are now less likely to get into this state in the first place.  We hope.