Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for March 13, 2021

The good old days of “appointment TV”

Ya can’t tell the players without a program.

At one time, TV Guide was the most popular weekly magazine in the country, with dozens of local and regional editions.

What is this thing made out of wood pulp you call, “TV Guide?”. Lol ; )

And there was the Sunday paper insert. But they were running out of trees to cover all the cable channels.

Been there. Brief time we tried making a small list (yes, another one) where the programs are that we would continue to watch or resume but that didn’t last long.

Our personal record for searching is the time that we went to the streaming services and then after zilch we remembered that it was the premium On Demand service of our cable provider. Yep, it was the last one remaining of those names that we searched.

Hey, here, we had 3 networks, 3 independents, plus PBS, not to mention any UHF stations that came and went.

But we weren’t posh enough for TVGuide; we made due with the TV insert in the Sunday paper.

Yes, it was more like seven or eight channels in the big cities. But then that was the perfect amount of options to give most new programs their just due.

I loved TV guide and miss it. I never know what is on TV now. And it was great for even having a synopsis of the movies that were aired. I could plan my week around the shows and movies I was interested in. Now? It’s hit or miss. I spend more time flipping channels on mainstream TV and then scrolling endlessly through Netflix, Prime, Apple TV…. looking for something interesting. I think we’ve already exhausted all the interesting stuff during the pandemic.

We started watching a show and couldnt remember which streaming service had it. Never did find it again

Is Arlo talking about TV Guide????

Funny, and I’m old enough to remember using TV Guide but, you know, there is a search function. On Roku I can put in a show or movie and it will list the service(s) it’s on.

Walter Annenberg and his wife owned The Philadelphia Inquirer, T.V. Guide, Saturday Evening Post, Seventeen, and American Bandstand with Dick Clark. They moved from Phily to Palm Springs Ca, and had a beautiful home on 220 acres, called Sunnylands. You can tour it. They had many Presidents, and officials from other countries out to their place, very much involved with both Dems and Republicans. Highly recommend you see it if your plans take you out there.

Seems like TV Guide was never right. They printed it too far ahead of time. You had to look in the newspaper.

Run a search …

At least when there were only three channels, you could find something worth watching. Now, not so much.

Wasn’t the magazine’s secret name “TV God”?

Ah, TV guide

Read a book.

If the wife and I change rooms mid-show, I have to remember what network/app we’ve been watching otherwise we’ll never find the show again.

I have the same problem. It’s not easy-to-use but there’s an app call justwatch that helps.

about 6 months ago my daily newspaper started printing a daily TV schedule. Takes an entire page of the paper and yet still ignores about half of the available channels.

Does anyone still make the weekly TV guide magazine?

Anyone else not able to logon with their GoComics Account? I just get “Please try again.” Had to use my Google Account. I’ve noticed that I haven’t received any notifications of likes or replies since the problem began, and my user name is referred to as “ChessPirate1”, rather than “ChessPirate”.

All Arlo has to do is figure out which streaming service has the highest monthly fee. That will be the one he’s looking for.

https://www.tvguide.com/

If TV Guide published a weekly edition detailing all shows, how long would the Amazon Rain Forest last? And mail delivery folks would be indistinguishable from NFL linemen in muscle tone.

In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that we old timers got by with three channels and a 20" black & white TV back then. In that and many other ways it was a far simpler… and perhaps, dare I say, better…. life.

now we have Google

Hmmm, some sort of “Guide” possibly

Bruce Springsteen still can’t find anything to watch.

It’s kind of interesting how, from a practical point of view, too many options reduces choice.

What’s lacking, and what TV Guide & the papers provided, was a kind of aggregator service. They gave you a chance to spot something you weren’t aware of but that might be worth watching.

But now, the sheer amount of stuff available to choose from seems to make choosing much more difficult, in part because of the volume, but also because of the fragmentation of providers.

The main problem is that unless you know what you are looking for, and where to look, it’s hard to find anything worth watching, and if you do, about half the time it involves signing up for another service, at least on a trial basis. I do have a couple of apps that let me find online movies I can get, assuming I have or want to get access to the provider stream, or can just rent it.

But a secondary problem – or maybe it’s another main problem – is that you pretty much have to go through the choosing process each time you want to watch something. Paradoxically, the rise of on demand viewing, which made it no longer necessary to watch a show at a designated time, seems to have aggravated the situation.

These days, we pretty much depend on an occasional look at the PBS lineup, or recommendations from the kids. Aside from that, it’s just serendipity – an article in the paper or magazines points us to something we can put on our calendar.

And I keep an eye out for DVD sets – we’ve been watching the Granada Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett (best Holmes ever) once a week, but are almost through with it.

I can just hear my teen nieces and nephews saying, “A magazine for TV programming? What’s a magazine?”

I now just receive streaming channels from my cable provider. When I turn it on, it shows me a list of things I’ve either just watched or have watched recently. I’d never find anything without that feature. I don’t pay that much attention to the the particular streaming channel. I’ve noticed I do watch more Netflix though.

Tubi? Pluto? Syfi? Roku?………………

This plethora of streaming channels can’t last.

Thankfully, my wife has a small binder in which she records all of that stuff so we can find a series again when we want it.

That little pocket magazine kept you informed week to week, but, now, even TV GUIDE doesn’t have listings for all the channels anymore, sigh, I grew up with WCBS 2, WNBC 4, WNEW 5, WABC 7, WOR 9, WPIX 11 and WNJN 13 and THAT was TOO MUCH TV but they were all listed with synopsis of every program on the air.

TV Guide is still around.

Nice to see capitalism filling the void. Between the Public’s ears.

You should be able to search for it.

My memory of TV guide is from early 70’s. After school and after ball practice I would walk to my Dad’s work and ride home with him. Every Friday we would stop at TK Chism’s jewelry store in Tompkinsville, KY to buy a TV Guide for 16 cents. It was 15 cents plus 1 penny tax. The first thing we did was look to see who was playing baseball on TV on Saturday afternoon. That was the only MLB game on TV all week back then.

Four. They covered PBS, as well! :-D

Back in the early 90s I had a consulting job installing new Mac desktops at TV Guide. Considering their national stature, I was expecting nicer digs…

If it was interesting, you streamed it.

I have a subscription to TV Guide. It still has a purpose.

tv guide is still out there in magazine form

I remember looking so forward to the Fall Shows edition of TV Guide. Now I have to watch the hype, over and over.

We’re more convinced than ever that there is a camera somewhere in our house recording the interactions of my wife and I.

We don’t get streaming channels – too much to pay in addition to cable, and when we looked to get rid of cable – it would cost more for the channels we watch on same to get them separately than from cable.

Husband has his regular shows he likes to watch. When he goes upstairs at about 11:20 pm (after weather report on local TV channel) I watch TV alone in the kitchen. I basically use the “whatever annoys me the least” method of picking what to watch as nothing really interests me any more on TV.

Husband likes to watch food channels during the day – anyone cooking or competing seems to work for him. Everything they cook or eat makes me ill to think about the foods (I am a rather picky eater). On Saturdays he watches a RV buying show – there are about 6 seasons of 6 episodes each – they are half an hour each – the same 36 episodes are watched repeatedly and most are shown each Saturday and 90% of the people buying them are soooo annoying. I liked it better when he watched Star Trek TNG two days a week, Star Trek Deep Space Nine two days a week, cooking shows 2 days a week and the RV show one day a week.