I just want to watch my tv shows

Mike and I have a roster of television shows we watch on a weekly basis.

Family Guy
The Amazing Race
The Event
Little People/Big World
Law and Order: svu
Criminal Minds
Survivor
CSI: NY
CSI: Las vegas

We used to be on one particular television service provider, let's call it 'Ding Dong'. We were sharing this with friends of ours. we ended up switching because the satellite dish died and it was increasingly difficult to get channels added or removed.

We are now on a new television service provider, let's call it 'Tool'. This provider advertises time shifting so we can catch episodes aired in the Maritime provinces or episodes aired in the western provinces. It also advertises their On Demand feature, so you can catch up on episodes you may have missed.

This Fall, Mike are I are upside down and backwards in terms of television watching. We don't subscribe to the Sunday newspaper or to TV Guide magazine so we don't know the air days of the above shows. Yes, I know, we could have looked on the website, but bear with me on this one. Certain shows are on at the same time as others. In the past, we would utilize the time shifting so we could watch some episodes earlier or later than the EST time slot.

Each day consists of going through the guide trying to locate the show and its airtime and arranging our evening schedule around it. Well, we missed CSI:NY on the last two Fridays. We also missed Law and Order: SVU last week.

Tonight, Law and Order:SVU is on at 10pm, so, since its 7 pm now, we had the bright idea to see if we could watch one of those missed episodes on the On Demand service or online. No dice. On the American sites, it doesn't stream in Canada for some reason. On the Canadian networked site for Law and Order, it doesn't show either. I haven't figured out why, just that it shows clips and not the full episode. We checked the On Demand service, which we have used to watch Family Guy, so we assumed it would have the other episodes too, (that should have been my first clue since I was assuming), it didn't have either show.

As a last resort, we fell upon the time shifting feature. It seems to work for Law and Order:SVU. It doesn't seem to work for the rest of the episodes.

My point is, I'm growing increasingly tired of having only two television companies to choose from. I'm tired of seeing the American commercials on the stations for programs that aren't available in Canada, case in point Shark Week. I'm tired of not having a choice and for being held over a barrel because Ding Dong and Tool know residents of Ontario don't have much of a choice in the matter.

Complaint-O-Meter: On day 55.