The "Idiot Box" Revisited - During My 30s

Chronicles of an Adult Child of the Media

There's ALWAYS something on TV now!

For most of my career, I've worked the "swing" shift, from either 2 or 4 o'clock to 10:00 p.m. or midnight.... Not the easiest shift to be on if you want to keep up with prime time television programs. However, if there's a VCR, there's a way! As in my twenties, I continued to record what I wanted to watch and caught up with story-lines during the day before I went to work. Again, this prevented me from developing any fondness -- or familiarity -- for any day-time soap operas or talk shows.

By now, however, I was less fascinated by everything on broadcast TV about public safety and I began to branch out to other interests. The couple of years I spent married to my second husband, who was a firefighter, had managed to satisfy any burning (pardon the pun!) desires to watch anything and everything about Johnny Gage, Roy DeSoto and their buddies at Station 51. (He also liked, for some gawd-awful reason, T.J. Hooker!)

But I was a faithful critic of Rescue 9-1-1, for obvious reasons. (Although I wasn't involved in the incident, MY agency and one of my co-workers was featured in one episode!) And, well, I guess I DID continue to watch COPS for local agency episodes. Not to mention other great criminal justice drama programs worthy of my attention....

I also discovered PBS.

After my second divorce, I did a whole lot more channel surfing -- not that simple, rapid-fire "clickety-click" with the remote control, but by searching out interesting mini-series, quality programming, documentaries and (of course!) British humor.

I also watched every single science-fiction show ever produced, I think....

Here's a list of some of the stuff I watched on a regular basis: