This week I thought I would check out the world of Television, as the Summer Olympics are over and the new season is slowly starting, so now seems as good a time as any to look at site for people who like to be well-informed about their television viewing.

TV.Zap2it.com - http://tv.zap2it.com/

tv.zap2it.com has been one of my favorite television related site for a while now. I started reading it for the Alias updates, and the longer I was there, the more comprehensive the site seemed to be. High-quality stories, Nielsen ratings, and the ever effervescent TV Gal column, written by the Boston Herald's Amy Amatangelo, who writes an excellent column on the ups and downs of what's happening on prime time's best and sometimes worst shows. The site is updated throughout the day, and TV Gal's column appears Mondays throughout most of the year, except during sweeps when there are additional columns on Thursdays.

TV Tome - http://www.tvtome.com/ 

Where TV.Zap2it.com is more news oriented, TV Tome becomes a bit more encyclopedic. It has over 2,100 different complete program guides, and individual episodes of the shows featured on the site are rated by users, and eventually a plot summary and other relevant information is added to the site by viewers selected as editors in that section, so there is a real touch of fandom in the site. Though, this leads to some deficiencies, as not every show has devoted fans... and some shows were so short-lived, not enough people saw them to edit entries for them for TV Tome. Which means that sometimes you have to go to another site like....

EpGuides -  http://epguides.com/ 

Epguides is also a nice place to head to when you need to find out about a new or old series. While there is great depth for many of the shows on the site, and all the principle actors are linked to their IMDB profiles, it sometimes takes quite a bit of time for the new summaries of a show to come into the site, so if a show is still currently in production, it sometimes isn't the best place to look first. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly attached the aforementioned TV Tome, so together the two sites represent perhaps the best resource online to read about cancelled series.

Now, let's go a bit off the beaten path.

The '80's TV Theme Supersite  - http://www.80stvthemes.com/ 

Now this site takes me back... man, there were TV theme here that I thought I'd never hear again... and some that I would never want to hear again. I mean, there's commercials and old network news stuff, and promos, some of which are hilarious because they are hyping some of the worst shows ever made, I mean, shows that I don't think would even warrant mentioning on the above two sites. So if you grew up on 80's American television, well, this site will help you recall those halcyon days. WARNING: The files are in RA format, so if you aren't the biggest fan of that, stay away.

cult.tv- http://www.cult.tv  
Cult Telly - http://www.culttelly.co.uk/  

Well, you can't really talk about TV without talking about the cult television, and here are two decent sites exploring this wide field. Though Cult Telly, an British site is a better general resource when you are looking for site about specific shows, cult.tv is a good site with some depth about a variety of individual shows, and it also includes a listing of the top 100 cult TV shows (guess which show is number one.... just think of the ubergeeks, and the answer is clear). They are both worth checking out.

QUICK BIT: The 50 worst shows ever as determined by TV Guide (though not on the TV Guide site) 

Well, I hope these links have given your web life a bit more variety. Come back next week when I will be reviewing a few more sites that are off-the-beaten path.

Past Columns

The Electronic Fringe- August 24-30 - Net Radio  
The Electronic Fringe- August 17-23 -  At the Movies