Starweek, the newspaper supplement that was once the most coveted thing about the Saturday Star for some, is now moving to home delivery distribution that requires opting-in via the internet — this will cost an extra 50 cents for subscribers who explicitly ask for it, while it will continue to be packaged in stores and boxes as part of a $2.50 package. The move allows the Star to bulk up the listing features that were perniciously shrinking for lack of revenue: a decade ago, based on figures published in trade publication Masthead, it was the ninth most successful publication in Canada by revenue, taking in $13.6 million of advertising in 2002. The print edition of TV Guide sold nearly as much print space, $11.1 million, but that was combined with $13.6 million in circulation revenue — while a multi-market newspaper supplement, the Southam-turned-Canwest-owned TVTimes, was making $9 million. Both of those vanished by 2008, when Starweek was down to taking in $4.4 million, far and away the fastest-falling Canadian periodical. The legacy of Starweek was such that when its longtime Hollywood-based freelancer Eirik Knutzen died in 2008 — his claim to fame was the ability to succinctly answer “TV Talkback” questions in the pre-interweb age — the Star tossed off an obituary that spelled his name wrong.

So, what is Starweek offering to those readers who still crave English Canada’s last surviving television magazine? Not much advertising, obviously, but more detailed listings than what was offered in recent years. A trivia quiz comes from listings website Zap2It along with a Q&A column for the IMDb-impaired. (“Can you please tell me where Paul Hogan is living and if he is still married to Linda Kozlowski?”) A DVD column is beamed in from Tribune Media Services. This weekend featured an original cover story about post-Super Bowl premiere Undercover Boss, written by Bill Brioux, showing what those press tours in Pasadena are for — not that anyone ever looked for snark in a TV supplement. However, most of the relatively scintillating show business journalism these days has something to do with a screen, at a time when people are questioning the print prospects of Wired. Yet, the Star’s publisher John Cruickshank sounds confident that an extra 50 cents for Starweek is more sustainable than expecting those last remaining advertisers to stick around. And really, where else are readers going to find a crossword puzzle with clues like “Poison ___; 1992 Drew Barrymore film”?