Let me preface this by saying I’ve known a lot of people who leave their TV on 27/7 or who manage their schedules and obligations around their favorite shows. (There weren’t always DVRs, you know!) And I’m not one of them. I don’t like the noise, or the fact that it is yet one more distraction that my “bramaged dain” has to work around as it tries to get through the input it struggles to prioritize.
HOWEVER, there are a couple of times and some reasons I turn on the TV, as I articulated in this morning’s update . Today, since I’ve been sick most of the week and therefore spent more time than usual on my laptop and am bored with it, I turned on the TV. We have had a Roku for years as our programming choice, and I decided to look through the program guide for the Roku Live channel guide for something to watch. However, since the last time I searched it – it’s been months – they have added a lot of channels! And slogging through them all was making me crazy! So that was my project for the next couple of hours: to clean that puppy up!
As I went through and hid all the channels that don’t interest either of us (probably 80%), leaving behind some that may have potential, and favorited the ones that we like, I gave a lot of thought to TV programming.
It’s getting to be the season for our sappy and predictable Christmas movies, but last year we hardly watched any. Both Hallmark and Lifetime were introducing plot lines that we didn’t like, sometimes never even used the word “Christmas” (!) and just were such a disappointment! But I had just read an article about Candace Cameron Bure, which led to reading about Great American Family and their plans for Christmas movies, so I thought that’s where we’d go for our fill of the seasonal same-story/different-town/different-character plot lines that we love at this time of year, and we started tonight.
We also like the movies – Christmas and otherwise, on RedeemTV – as well as the documentaries (I’m a big fan!) and some of the series shows. EncourageTV is good, and we subscribe to FrndlyTV, so there’s no shortage of programming to watch! But in the process of finding the Great American Family channel (it’s in our FrndlyTV subscription) I discovered there are a BUNCH of Great American channels! I located Great American Adventures streaming on Roku, and they had 2 shows that I LOVED today: Simply Southern, and Moving Country. I have watched, in the past, Great American Living which has some programming that’s right up my alley, and there are lots more I can’t wait to watch!
Great American Media has another channel in which I’m interested as well. Great American Community looks excellent, and as I locate them I will look at their other channels. (I say that as if I will have time watch them!)
Some things I can multitask. When I’m watching TV I can moderate, for example – depending on what is on the TV, if it doesn’t require my full attention – or scan social media sites for memes to steal IF there is nothing else going on around me. 5 minutes later I won’t remember what saw or did on either the TV or the laptop, so that’s a drawback…but I can do it.
Other than anything having to do with home or family or cooking or hunting for houses, I like a good intense crime drama series (Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, and such), most things veterinary- or animal-related (but no channels that play those distressing HUSA commercials), and, of course, sappy movies once in a while (or every day at this time of year) and biographies and documentaries, depending on the subject. There are probably a few miscellaneous things that might catch my eye that’s out of the ordinary, but anyway…
…That’s my take on TV, answering the questions that nobody asked, just because it was in my thoughts this Thursday.
So on those Great American ______, is a subscription required, or are they free to watch on the internet?
Is there anything one can watch for free on the internet? I watch documentaries from time to time, but what about shows? Idk but would like to know.
Yes, look at Pluto.TV [https://www.pluto.tv] which is very similar to the Roku Live TV. There are others such as Xumo [https://www.xumo.tv] RedeemTV (similar to others with clean family-friendly – and Christian – content; free but you’ll need to create login) [https://redeemtv.com], and there are many MANY others that are very similar. But if we’re not watching RokuLive, we’re watching Pluto – I think it’s the best of its ilk out there. (I think the Great American channels are mostly free but you’ll have to look around for them; I really wish I could get them all in one place! IF you have a Roku (I think you do? Don’t recall for sure) you can also watch the RokuLive channels on your laptop using the same login info you use on the TV. But each of these have many hundreds of channels, and you can watch on your laptop or on the TV with a Roku or similar…and I often see things that I think, “I bet Gwen would like this!” 🙂
I believe they are free to watch via Roku. I think she found Galaxy Quest on there. Though I also thought when she was hiding things we would not watch…she accidently hid the Great American SciFi and don’t know how to unhid it. (I enjoy some Science Fiction).
It wasn’t a Great American channel, just a scifi one – but last night I discovered that I didn’t hide it after all, so that’s great news! It is somewhere near the MST2K channel in the guide :). And YES, excited to watch Galaxy Quest again with you :). (To others: we’ve seen it a million times and can quote much of it by heart…in fact these quotes often pepper our normal conversations LOL)
Amen and amen and amen. Jesus is coming quickly and we need to fill our minds with good things. Answers in Genesis has a Roku channel and so does Pureflix. Both require subscriptions though.
We’ve had Pureflix and liked it a lot! Didn’t know about Answers in Genesis, love almost everything they put out (everywhere) so may have to look into that one! I’ve been thinking about you lately and hoping all is well, miss seeing your stuff on Rumble too!