I'm sure this should be obvious

[dreamshark]

But so far it isn't.  Suppose you were alone in a hotel room with a big TV and lots of free channels and you wanted to know what was on. Not so terribly long ago nice hotels would leave a copy of the weekly tv guide that newspapers used to publish with their Sunday paper. But I'm not sure that newspapers even do that any more.  Anyway, there's no tv guide here. Surely there must be an Internet site with a nice grid listing what's showing on the major networks and cable stations?  But where?  How do people find out TV schedules these days?

Comments

[guppiecat]

Most hotels I've been to have a "what's on in the next hour" schedule on the first channel when you turn on the TV. That's the best I've seen.

The last few years though, I've never turned the TV on. I usually read.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yes, some hotels have such a system. This one doesn't. That's why I am looking for online TV listings.

[carbonel]

I'd go to zap2it.com and see what I could figure out.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

http://tv.yahoo.com/listings

Set the city to the city or suburb that you're in, the listings should work out.

Bingo!

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

This is what i was looking for. Thanks.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Too many hotels have their own channel selections. There's often a channel guide, though not a listing for the day's tv. If nothing else, call the front desk.

I usually just flip through the channels. Not terribly time effective, but bette than nothing. At least I can identify CNN or the Cartoon Network or a useful channel.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

What Dave said about the line up. Most hotels have their own strange line up that doesn't seem to correspond to any other place.

Sometimes you can find a listing in a information folder or book. Many places have hotel information printed and collated in a drawer of a desk or night stand.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

There is a channel guide in the hotel info book. What I was looking for was a schedule for what was showing on each channel. Usually I just flip through the channels, but this particular TV system is kind of substandard and takes maybe 5 seconds to switch channels. This isn't much if you know where you are going, but if you are scanning 40 channels one at a time that's a long slog.

[thorintatge.livejournal.com]

The Strib has a daily TV listing in the Variety section. Maybe other papers do too.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Most do, but I don't have a newspaper.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we were in that situation last week. I liked it when they had a program grid as one of the channels, so it actually corresponded to the channels being received. The TV Yahoo link above helps a little.

Huh, there are multiple TV guide apps for the iPhone. Guess I could check them out too.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I use the TV Listings under the "What's on TV" tab atTVGuide.com. You can either check the national listings, or set it for your location and cable provider.

As others have mentioned, hotels often have inexplicably weird channel line-ups that don't match any of the local cable providers. But if you know there's a show you want to watch on a given network, you can usually find the network thanks to the little channel identifies that show up on the TV screen for a few seconds after you flip to the channel.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I just flip through to see what's on, and then, having looked at all the channels, turn it off because there's nothing that caught my attention.

K.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I usually enjoy flipping through the channels, but this TV system takes such a long time to switch channels that it's like using a 300-baud modem. Also, there at least 6 sports channels in a row (*snore*). I finally realized that when I hit the first sports channel I need to push 22 to skip past them to CNN Headline News and continue from there.

The other problem with channel surfing is that if you arrive at a channel during a commercial break you either have to watch all the commercials to see what's playing or come back later.

[fuzzygabby.livejournal.com]

I like television.aol.com, because it's not graphic-intensive like other sites I've used. (I'm still dial-up, so this is important to me.)

[vanaabegra.livejournal.com]

Most hotels have USA Today, and M-F it has a TV schedule listed. It is usually in Eastern time, so you made need to adjust to where you are staying.