Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media

This 5 volume set comes out yearly and costs approximately $1100 per year.

Volumes 1 and 2 are what I have always used the most. They contain all publications alphabetically by state, and within state, by city (including Canada). Each entry contains contact information, description of content, circulation figures (when known), and price.

Volume 3 is the index volume. I have always used the Master Index the most. This is very helpful in tracking down publications by name when the place of publication is not known, for example The Record, which we all know is a relatively large newspaper in northern New Jersey, but where? There are other indexes here as well, such as 350+ page newspaper and magazine publishers index. There is also an index of daily and and community newspapers, which is good to have, but in checking daily newspapers for New Jersey, both the Star Ledger and Home News are omitted. In fact, they are not included in the New Jersey section and in the master index are listed as "unable to locate." (Yikes!?) Subject indexes to magazines and radio station formats are very incomplete and have little use.

Volume 4 is a Regional Market Index which lists newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations by general area of the country, such as Great Lakes States, Middle Atlantic States, etc. The newspaper and magazine sections of this volume list in descending order the major publications for these areas, and would be very helpful if there weren't so many errors, for example, in the Great Plains States section the St. Louis Post Dispatch is omitted, and the Philadelphia Inquirer is listed with Northeastern States, rather than Mid Atlantic States where all other Pennsylvania publications are. The radio and TV sections are sketchy and totally useless.

Volume 5 is the international volume. It is arranged just like Volumes 1 and 2 (alphabetical by country, then alphabetical by city), and includes the same kind of information. For some countries, such as the UK, the information appears fairly complete. But a quick look at Buenos Aires showed that none of their major newspapers were listed.

What's your opinion? I'd be interested to know if others have found as many errors as I have.

Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook

This compendium of information from ProQuest/Bowker on the broadcast industry comes yearly and costs about $245 per year.

The Industry Overview section consists of statistics, charts and tables of all kinds of information such as top 25 cable/satellite operators and cable networks, top TV programs for the previous year, top TV advertisers and advertising categories, a history of broadcasting and a chronology of electronic media from 1666 (?!) to the present.

The bulk of the volume is devoted to broadcast and cable TV stations, and radio stations. Each section gives information on group ownership of stations, plus a list of stations by state and town giving call letters, contact information, personnel, network affiliation, frequency and programming content.

The TV section also has a Nielsen DMA Market Atlas which shows TV stations for each geographical market, plus counties covered, population served and a small map.

The rest of the volume provides information about programming, technical and professional services for the broadcasting industry.

I have been able to find some of this information on the web but not all. For example, I found in Wikipedia a list of TV stations by call letters. I was also able to find TV advertising information on the website of the TV Bureau of Advertising http://www.tvb.org/. (Curiously, the information given does not always agree with what is given in this volume.) Radio station information can be found at http://www.ontheradio.net/ .

Does anyone know of any other good sites that would have this information? Like Industry Surveys its nice to have this info all in one place and easily findable, but how much of it is unique, and is it worth the price?