Once upon a time, you kept the television on like the radio while you went about your day and forgot about it, until you remembered that it was that day of the week and that time of the day again. You turned it up and it made you laugh, cry, or swoon, and repeated the process—all the way until all ten seasons of Friends or Cheers were done and you found yourself another show to wait for and to live for. Decades later, there’s really nothing to remember or forget: television is still television, and you can still watch everything you saw as a child. Except now you have to pay your way through and work your way through the immense volume of content that’s out there. Today’s TV churns together the old and the new, the garbage and the gold, the small-screen fare and the big-screen extravaganzas, so that..
