My Television Viewing Throughout the Years

 Throughout my life, from the early days to now, television has always had a major role, and has greatly helped shape who I am today. While these past several years have primarily been spent watching network sitcoms from both the past and present, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my viewing habit evolution.

Before I begin, it is important to note that while I have done my best to recall many of the past events a part of my life, these dates and information are relative to how I remember them, and should not be taken as exact points in time.

From the earliest days of my childhood, I was viewing children television shows such as Sesame Street. By the time that I was four, I was already in love with the Nickelodeon preschool show Blue's Clues, mostly favoring the host at that time, Joe (Donovan Patton). [No worries, I liked the previous host, Steve (Steve Burns), too!]

While I was not necessarily watching the shows at the time, some of my earliest memories are of my family watching Punky Brewster on DVDs and the airings of Reba with me.

By the time I was going to school, my family oftentimes taped (yes, with a VHS!) my favorite programming block for me to watch later, that being TLC's "Ready, Set, Learn." This consisted of shows including HI-5, Wilbur, Peep and the Big Wide World, and The Magic School Bus.

When I would get home from school, we would oftentimes watch an iteration of the Scooby-Doo franchise that taped on Cartoon Network earlier in the day. I actually never realized the show was not live until just a couple years ago! I would say that What's New, Scooby-Doo? was my favorite of the franchise, though I practically watched them all!

It wasn't until first grade, 2008, that our family upgraded our television systems to the Verizon FiOS (fiber optic system) service. [While this constitutes as "fiber-to-the-x," I will refer to it simply as cable.] With this subscription, this took my television viewing habits to a completely different level.

Coming across the Noggin channel, I was a regular viewer of shows such as The Upside Down Show, Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends, and the newly debuted Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!. The channel, at the time, was hosted my the animated Moose and Zee, the mascots of the channel that would later be renamed as Nick Jr. On the regular Nickelodeon channel, I started watching the likes of The Fairly OddParents and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

On what was then the PBS Kids Sprout channel, I regularly watched reruns of Play with Me Sesame in the mornings before heading to my later years of elementary school. Furthermore, I frequented the comparable Qubo channel while visiting grandparents, oftentimes watching 3-2-1 Penguins!.

By third grade, when I was starting to use the relatively new cable set-top-boxes on my own, I came across the Discovery Kids channel, recording many of their shows as it held many of my "Ready, Set, Learn" favorites. However, not even months later, the recordings began to stop, and the channel appeared to disappear. I would find out weeks later that Discovery Kids has been replaced by The Hub.

My favorite channel growing up, The Hub was a unique channel in that it was made for a variety of audiences, serving children, teenagers, and their families. While I watched a lot of their programming over the years, I personally tuned in for their family sitcom reruns they showed.

By watching The Hub (later, Hub Network), I was introduced to Family Ties, The Facts of Life, ALF, Who's the Boss?, Step by Step, Blossom, and some more shows as they were introduced to the lineup. However, my instant favorite became Happy Days, idealizing the Fonz (Henry Winkler) as many did decades prior.

Continuing on with classic television, I began watching more television channels that featured these programs, such as Antenna TV for Growing Pains, FamilyNet for Mr. Belvedere, Centric for Amen, and TV One for The Jeffersons, just to name a few.

Before entering middle school, I was also watching more reality television as well, with the likes of Undercover Boss and The Amazing Race on CBS, and The Little Couple on TLC. At some point, I was even obsessed watching The Pyramid hosted by the late Dick Clark on the Game Show Network.

Starting in middle school, around 2014, I was starting to get into new shows as well, beginning to watch Perfect Strangers, Webster, and Charles in Charge on DVDs, then Full House and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper on Nick@Nite. In fact, I was even a part of the niche audience that watched Instant Mom on the short-lived NickMom block before it moved to TVLand for its final season.

Around that same time, I was also starting off watching shows on network television, starting with new series Resurrection and Grandfathered, and later getting into Castle mid-season late within its series run.

In 2015, I first started regularly watching current television programming, starting with Fresh Off the Boat and expanding to include the new version of The Pyramid, The Muppets, To Tell the Truth, and Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, to name a few. While I initially disliked Black-ish as a series, having watched a few episodes, I finally got into it towards the end of its run.

With many of these shows airing on Tuesdays, a day of the week I previously took piano lessons on, it became my go-to day for my favorite television shows.

These television habits primarily continued into high school, while also being introduced to more classic television shows including Alice and The Hogan Family and channels such as Logo, Antenna TV, and the new MeTV station.

In 2018, I was first introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, later causing me to binge watch the series Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel's Agent Carter, the former show having just finished its fifth season while the latter had been previously canceled two years prior.

At the turn of the decade in 2020, I tuned into the primetime Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament, cheering for Ken Jennings, as it started off my time regularly watching Jeopardy!, which continues to this day.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, my current influx of shows consist of those both on linear television and streaming, alongside new and old shows alike. Currently, I watch modern shows to include Call Me Kat, Home Economics, and Jeopardy! in traditional television stations, while also streaming The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers and Big Shot on Disney+.

For my influx of classic shows, I watched the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Blossom just last year on streaming services, and I am still making myself familiar with series I have not seen before.

Like I have said from the beginning, my interest in television has spanned my whole life, and hopefully this reflection of my viewing habit evolution is able to convey my journey, and also the values that I seek within my preferred programming.

I look forward to watching more shows and binging on!