Two Ways To Never Miss A Television Episode

So, How I Met Your Mother hasn’t been on for the last two weeks. I’m going through withdrawal.

I’m also getting increasingly annoyed, because I sit down to watch TV at the designated time and there’s no show on. Or, maybe even worse, a repeat. Why can’t there be a way to know, quickly and easily, which shows are on, which are new, and which are going AWOL for the week?

Actually, there are two. Using the two tools I’m going to mention, I’ve begun to avoid the “wanting to throw things at my TV because the Office isn’t new this week” syndrome, and to be able to see quickly and easily which shows of mine are going to be new this week, and which ones I’m just going to have to live without.

RerunCheck

RerunCheck is a brand new website from one of MakeUseOf’s own authors, Jorge Sierra. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that it’s probably the fastest way I’ve ever seen to figure out whether or not your show is new this week. There’s not a lot more to it than that, but it does its job well.

When you get to the site, you can do a couple of things. First, you can search for your show to see if it’s going to be new this week. Once you find your show, RerunCheck gives you a simple “Yes” or “No” answer to the question, “is my show new this week?” You can create a free account and save your favorite shows, to check them all at once.

RerunCheck (once you create a free account) can also send you emails when your show is going to be new, or provide you with RSS feeds of new episodes of your favorite shows. Thanks to RerunCheck, there’s no excuse for watching a rerun ever again (thank TiVo for the same, but I digress).

Crap, I Missed It!

Crap, I Missed It!, which I’m going to call CIMI, is an awesome application that’s essentially a way to make sure you never say the sentence, “Crap, I Missed It!” ever again. To do this, it’s created an email reminder system for everything from concerts to TV shows, to fluctuating currency exchange rates.

To do any of these, you simply select the appropriate service from the homepage (like “Concerts”) and then enter the relevant information (for concerts, its the band name and your zip code). For TV, it’s the name of the show, as well as whether or not you want to be notified of every new episode, or only when the season begins.

Then, you enter your email, and CIMI sends you reminders at the appropriate times. No matter how many reminders you set up, CIMI promises to only send you up to one email per day (they combine reminders if there are multiples). It’s unobtrusive, and lasts forever: no re-setting your reminders, as CIMI will always remember for you.

Either of these services are great for finding out what’s new on TV, and making that discovery process a whole lot easier. If all you want to know about is TV, stick with RerunCheck; if you want reminders about much more, give CIMI a shot.

Where do you get your TV info? How do you avoid rerun syndrome?

Photo Credit: José Ramón de Lothlórien