This post was originally posted on 08-27-26
I recently started a little project called Born Into TV. Basically, I had decided it would be fun to try to watch all the TV I could find that was on the day that I was born (using that day's TV Guide). And it has been fun so far! But I made the page because some folks expressed interest in the idea and it was easier to make a page explaining it than telling each person indivdiually. After making the page, I started thinking it would be nice to add resources for identifying things in media or learning more about TV, which I did and was happy with. Then I thought it'd be nice to write a broader guide on identifying and locating media for those who don't know a lot about finding old TV outside of DVDs or streaming services. I've got that in progress. Then I was having several people asking me if I knew where to find their birthdate's TV Guide online, so they could avoid having to purchase one, and I realized that the TV Guide collections on the Internet Archive, while very robust, were an absolute nightmare to navigate.
The more all these little additions piled on, the more I started to think that this was an opportunity for a larger project. I love TV history. I think TV is one of the best reflections of at least American culture over the decades since TV came into existence, between live news or talk show broadcasts giving immediate records of reactions and the wide variety of scripted or unscripted content coming out on much shorter timescales than, say, films or books. If something happened in our culture, we would see it reflected in TV almost immediately. As American populations moved out of the country into cities and suburbs, so too did the "rural purge" of late 60s-early 70s television swap Petticoat Junctions for Mary Tyler Moores.
Beyond that, it heavily shaped our culture. The "Cousin Liz" episode of All in the Family, which centered around a lesbian teacher, was reaired shortly before Californians were to vote on the Briggs Initiative, a ballot measure that would have banned gay people from teaching positions and has been credited this with influencing at least some viewers outside of the LGBT community into voting against the measure. The 2017 documentary Hotel Dallas was a strange and magical yet sincere look at how Dallas made a huge impact on Romanian society in the 80s. And The Simpsons? Have you ever seen a meme online before? You're familiar with its impact. Did you know that even the phrase "saying the quiet part out loud" comes from The Simpsons?
Unfortunately, a lot of television has a more...ephemeral quality than a lot of film and books. Films and books generally survived in physical media. However, especially before the DVD era where it became a lot easier to release a season of TV in one smaller box, TV largely existed as live broadcasts. Many TV shows now only exist in the form of blurry VHS tape rips and purely from us being lucky enough that someone not only caught it, but still has the tape to this day. The more obscure a show, the more likely that it's just completely impossible to find now (unless someone happens to uncover a long lost tape). Sometimes even the creators of said programs don't even have the masters anymore. And so far I've been saying "show", but it becomes even more nightmarish if you're looking for a 40 year old interview or news program. Add the word "local" to that and...ouch.
There's a lot of things coming together at once here. I want to find ways to share what I learn from the classic TV I watch. I want to compile resources that make researching (or simply enjoying!) classic TV easier. I want to scour the internet for more old websites about TV shows that are lost in our current search engine collapse era. I want to start cataloguing old TV Guides, so people can find what volumes discuss certain shows or topics, right down to the reader letters. I basically want a space that's part library, part playground.
So, I want to make Born Into TV more than just a funny little idea to watch TV from your birthday. I want to build a full fledged project for my TV history exploration, in a way that then serves others on their TV exploration. I've registered borninto.tv for this, though depending on when you view this it may or may not have much on there yet. I already sorted through the massive amount of TV Guides I could find on the Internet Archive (though there's probably more that aren't in the correct collections), and have those listed by date so you can easily find a specific volume. My idea is to later add pages for each issue (or more realistically, whichever issues I have time to pour through) and detail what is in them, eventually making a searchable database of topics, shows, people, etc. I've copied my media resource page from my blog over as well and want to elaborate on that. I also intend to create a zine, and would love to have others do them as well. The idea would be to have little easily printed zines covering a single topic, show, person, whatever in TV, with a consistent format to tie them together. I'd also like to start an occasional zine similar to a library or media shop's "employee recommendations" section, where people interested can submit shows/episodes they want to recommend and essentially build out a little paper playlist for folks who want to spin the media roulette wheel. I just want a space to play with ideas right now, and want to keep it as low tech as possible to give it more longevity and make it as accessible as I can.
As some of the previous suggested, I see this as a project that long term isn't just me. But I more or less want to do some early work solo for two reasons: to give some structure to what I want the idea to look like, and to make sure I'm invested before I ask anyone else to be. I don't see this as a project that is going to become a full on side gig for me, I see it as something that can be added to when I (and later others) are in the mood to do so. So I don't want to get a bunch of other people riled up into the idea then lose that ADHD drive and realize I am not actually that invested in it. However, the #1 goal is to be a knowledge repository/database/what have you for TV history information, and that information is largely going to be static. Because of that, if the project ever becomes too much for me to keep adding to? No reason I can't stop and just leave the information that is there indefinitely. Some information is always better than no information.
As for my original Born Into TV concept, nothing really changed there! I'm planning on copying some of that stuff over to the new site, but it's basically just that I liked the name and figured I'd just use it for this new project as well. I'm still promoting people watching the TV on the day they were born, and am still doing so myself (boy have I seen some both good and bad TV! And that's just Mr. Belvedere!). It's doing this that really led me down a rabbit hole of wanting to do more. If you're not doing that, go do it!
So, that's where we're at. I hope I have more to report in the future, and I hope whatever it ends up being you check it out and get some use out of it!