Readers of a certain age remember when there were three TV stations in a market. Choices were so limited we thrilled at UHF stations coming along and adding options, mostly an endless stream of Gilligan’s Island reruns (I’m not complaining).
We could keep up on what was on with a wonderful magazine, TV Guide, and everyone seemed to subscribe to it.
I was like most kids, TV addicted. I read TV Guide cover to cover each week. The profiles of shows and stars, and the listings themselves. It paid off with a cute moment for me, but more about that later.
Now, there are so many more options. And with it, complications extraordinaire.
I don’t even know how many channels my cable system offers, hundreds at least. And then there are the streaming services : Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount+, Apple, Amazon, Britbox and so many more.
If you want to be deliberate in choosing your content, and careful not to miss any new episodes or seasons of the programs you enjoy, it takes work.
You might enjoy streaming a series on Netflix, for example, and then never know for sure when a new season starts, or even if there is even going to be a new season. And more and more, people are rotating their steaming services in and out. We had six we were paying for a month. We’ve pared that down to three, but plan on dropping one in time, and picking up one of the ones we dropped to catch up on new seasons of shows we enjoyed, and new shows that have come along. I foresee an endless rotation of services.
And TV programs no longer appear weekly. You might go weeks between episodes. It is too easy to miss one.
It is easy to surrender, and just use the recommendations on your streaming service home screen, or endlessly use the up-channel change button in search of something, anything to watch.
TV Guide gave up years ago; it would have to be the size of what a big city phone book would be, each and every week.
There are apps now that replace it. One is even named TV Guide, although for reasons I do not recall, I gave up on it and now use TV Listings and Guide Plus. All I can say, try more than one to find what you like. They are often free.
Search in your phone’s app store for “TV Guide”
Most allow you to specify which channels to list, to keep the hundreds of channels down to the maybe one hundred you actually watch from time to time.
What about Streaming?
There are apps for that too. They let you list the programs you actively view. You can mark off episodes as you see them. It will alert you when new episodes air or are dropped on your streaming service.
If you rotate back to a streaming service after being gone awhile, you can scroll through and find programs you wanted to watch, or caught previous seasons and want to continue watching.
Search in your app store for “TV tracking”
There are many of these as well. All I can say is try them. I use Cineexplorer, but there are others.
Most also let you backup your data to TrakT service so you can exchange data between applications or still have your data when you get a new phone.
JustWatch, an app and a website lets you know what service you can find a given title.
One app stands taller above the rest: The International Movie Database. (IMDB).
IMDB is a giant database of movies and TV programs from the very beginning of film. It lists the actors, directors, writers etc. for each show. See a person in a film that looks awfully familiar? Bring up the movie or show in IMDB and figure out who it is. See a performer that impresses you, look them up to see what else they have been in.
IMDB began on the internet as a Usenet group before there was a World Wide Web. (Wikipedia history)
Ultimately it became its own company, then finally a part of Amazon. Amazon has left it alone pretty well, except for links from a movie to where you can buy or rent it on Amazon.
You might even find someone you know in there. This listing is my cousin’s son. Another cousin’s son is in there as well.
Are you a car buff? There is a database showing cars in movies at IMCDB.org Using it, I found that Giant, The Maltese Falcon, and A Star is Born, all have a 1939 Plymouth as a vehicular star.
There is another for guns in movies. IMFDB.org
These all take some effort, but they help you to curate your streaming and TV watching to programs you want to watch.
And finally, all that TV Guide reading I did? It paid off with me charming an actor when I met him and his family.