Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today thinking about how my TV viewing has changed over the years. As a small child in the 1950s, I remember watching The Howdy Doody Show, and Mary Martin’s Peter Pan, and that my mom was a fan of Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason and the variety shows hosted by Red Skelton and Mel Tormé, among others. Rocky Jones, Space Ranger and Sky King were favorites somewhere toward the end of that period. As I hit the teenage years, I was a big fan of westerns like Bonanza (with a huge crush on Little Joe) and in high school a lot of us tuned in to Soupy Sales when we got home in the afternoon.

Once in college, my viewing habits changed simply because the only televisions were in community settings. We gathered in the dorm or in the student center to watch Star Trek (yes, the original, first-run episodes). After college and marriage, my husband was in the navy and I was in grad school and then teaching at community college and we were both active in community theater. That didn’t leave a lot of time to watch TV. Back in Maine in our mid-twenties, sitcoms made up a lot of our viewing, along with science fiction like Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

We also watched the news, local and national, usually on NBC, although on Sunday mornings, we turned to CBS to watch Sunday Morning, first with Charles Kuralt and then Charles Osgood. That’s still a habit, only Jane Pauley now has the anchor spot. But the nightly news? Not so much. We used to turn on WCSH6 at 5 and watch three editions of local news followed by a half hour of national news from NBC. Now we turn on the TV at 5:30, watch through the local weather report, and then turn it off. My husband gets his news from local newspapers with online subscriptions. I get mine from sources I trust online at Substack and other locations. Both of us want to be informed but feel it’s best just now, for our mental health, to limit exposure to depressing/annoying/infuriating news stories.

I went through a paranormal fangirl period during the years when Buffy, the Vampire Slayer was on, also watching The Dresden Files and Blood Ties with great enthusiasm. I would have watched the adaptation of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels, True Blood, but it was on HBO and I was too cheap to subscribe. There isn’t much that appeals to me in that genre or in science fiction anymore, and what there is tends to be either too violent or too silly. I had hopes for Resident Alien but I gave up after season two.

What I enjoy in the comedy genre has changed over the years. In my humble opinion, good sitcoms, like those featuring Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and Bill Cosby, are in short supply. The “com” part is definitely lacking. This past season I only watched two, Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage (the sequel to Young Sheldon) and the last season of The Conners. In drama, my only picks were Elsbeth and Kathy Bates’s Matlock. Frankly, nothing else appealed.

Mostly, I stream things on my iPad, using headphones while the husband watches NESN (Red Sox games), PBS (Cook’s Country, America’s Test Kitchen, This Old House, Antiques Roadshow, Finding Your Roots), Magnolia Network (Maine Cabin Masters) or the Weather Channel (Highway Through Hell and its clones). Sometimes I watch with him, but I prefer something with a plot.

In addition to streaming movies on Prime or TCM, I’ve been working my way through all ten seasons of Agatha Christie’s Poirot on BritBox. Over on Paramount+ I’m doing the same with the sitcom Hot in Cleveland. Unfortunately, that channel adds a ton of commercials to every episode but I’ve mastered the art of reading a few more pages of whatever physical novel I have on hand during those. Also, in an exception to my habit of picking escapist entertainment, I recently watched season one of BritBox’s Outrageous about the Mitford sisters in the 1930s. It was hard seeing scary similarities to present day politics but I got hooked on the story anyway. I’m hoping there will be a season two.

In other future viewing, I’m looking forward to watching several new things. The Marlow Murder Club‘s second season will debut on PBS later this month. There will probably be new seasons of Father Brown and Death in Paradise on BritBox, but alas, no more of Vera. And since sitting in a crowded movie theater no longer holds any appeal for me, I’m planning to stream three about-to-be-released films, the new Superman, the next Jurassic World, and the final Downton Abbey movie—but only after the rental price drops to a reasonable level.

What about you, dear readers? Have your viewing habits changed over the years? Share, please.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.