The Most Important Day Of The Fall Network Television Season Finally Arrives

Call me old fashioned if you’d like, but back in my day, before all these newfangled DVRs and television blogawhatsits, we made our viewing decisions based on the grids. They weren’t fancy, and they weren’t informative, but they laid it all out for us, gave us a visual guide to the fall television schedule. Yes, I know the actual schedule has been out for months, but it never feels quite real until there’s a grid sitting in front of your face, beckoning you to choose a between two or three shows in competing time slots.

Of course, now there are DVRs, so typically you can choose two or more shows, depending on your set-up. Moreover, most of your viewing options these days will be on FX, AMC, HBO, and Showtime. But shhhhhh! Let’s not ruin this beautiful moment together, OK? Let me have it. In exchange, I will give you the gratuitous Kate Upton photo above.

TVByTheNumbers has created these old-fashioned grids for the old-timers among us who used to read box-scores, manually input fantasy stats lifted from USA Today, and wrestled with which show to watch live and which show to time shift.

They were simpler times. It’s like Spring Training. Everyone has the same record. No show has been canceled. There are no holes in the schedule. It’s pristine.

Play along: Let’s assume you don’t have time-shifting capabilities. Are there any conflicts on the grids that would keep you awake at night? I see only two potential problems: Tuesdays from 9-10 EST and Thursdays from 8-9 EST, assuming that Shawn Ryan’s Last Resort is as good as we’ve come to expect from Shawn Ryan. Throw in FX’s Tuesday and Thursday night schedules, and HBO and Showtime’s Sunday night schedules, however, and it’s a unholy clusterf**k.

(Source: TVByTheNumbers)