About 6 months ago, I decided to subscribe to the Sunday paper. Part of my reason for doing this was to get the weekly TV schedule. Now that we don't have Tivo or any kind of digital cable, it's nice to know what shows are coming on when. I realize that I could get this same information online, thereby avoiding inky fingers, but I don't usually need to know what's on TV until I sit down to watch something. By that time I'm sitting down, I don't want to get back up and consult the internet prior to picking a show. My only other option is to flip around channels aimlessly or sit though the painfully slow scrolling on-air guide. After all, if I'm going to waste time watching TV, I want to actually be watching the TV instead of watching channels to try to determine what I should be watching.
The TV schedule that comes in the Sunday paper has remained largely un-changed for years. I know this because my parent's have gotten the Sunday paper for most of my life. I can remember using this weekly TV schedule almost 15 years ago. Apart from a change years ago when they flipped the hours/channels axis, nothing much has changed. It's not as compact as an actual TV Guide magazine, but it's stapled together and can survive a week's worth of handling.
Two weeks ago, everything changed. I was going though my Sunday paper pulling out the important parts (glossy ads, TV schedule, Parade magazine, and funny papers) only to find my TV schedule morphed into something entirely undesirable. Instead of being about the size of a piece of notebook paper folded in half, it's as big as the Parade! To add insult to injury...IT ISN'T EVEN STAPLED TOGETHER!! The lack of staples is the worst of it because I'm used to keeping the schedule turned to the current day. With this new format, if I try to do that, the pages go everywhere! I tried stapling it myself the first week, but it's just not the same.
There are bigger problems in the world than whether or not my TV schedule is formatted to my liking, but since it's one of the main reasons for me subscribing to the paper, it's disappointing. Daniel thinks it's funny that I use the TV schedule at all, referring to it as my "old lady paper". I do actually feel like a crotchety old lady complaining about something so mundane, but apparently I'm not the only one who's annoyed by it. The week after they changed the format, Daniel happened to be looking at the editorial page and showed me two letters with similar complaints. I felt a little validated after that.
Now that my tv schedule is all messed up, and knowing that I can get everything else I want from the paper on the internet, this might be enough to warrant canceling my subscription. The only thing standing in my way is that you can't cancel your subscription online. Anything that can't be done online always takes me twice as long to accomplish because it involves things like writing checks or finding stamps or making phone calls on my lunch hour. If it were a little more convenient to either get my TV schedule or cancel my newspaper subscription, I just would done that instead of writing this blog entry.
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