50 Places to Find Your Favorite Downloadable TV Shows

I got this tip from Kelly Sonora earlier this week. Thanks, Kelly! It's an article all about the top 50 places to download your favorite TV shows.

I must say, a lot of these are some really good choices. It's really nice to have places online to find things like classic commercials and television shows, and episodes of current favorites if you miss an episode and you want to see it badly enough. I'm the type of person that spends hours online enjoying vintage television since it's not that readily available all the time, especially these days.

There are the obvious benefits of the sites of the major networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. If you miss an episode of your latest favorite show, you can easily access it in a matter of minutes. And with CBS's site, for most series, there's the added bonus of seeing the real credits. And I do love the AOL Television site. It's full of classic sitcoms and dramas, as well as the Procter & Gamble Online Soaps page. How great is it to see episodes of Edge of Night and Another World since SOAPnet these days hardly runs anything classic except the overnight showings of Ryan's Hope and Dallas. And it's great to find a place that has un-neutered episodes of Alice.

The only one I'm really not a fan of is #44, Crackle. I'm really not into the "Minisode" concept. I love Facts of Life and Bewitched to death, but seriously, give me the full complete episodes any day of the week over five minute butcherings. All of a sudden a 22-minute syndicated cut of a series doesn't sound bad at all. Even shows edited badly by ION sound more appealing than that.

I'm actually surprised that YouTube didn't make the list as even with the copyright police on its tail every now and again, there's still lots of things there to watch. Older commercials and promos, clips and full episodes of local newscasts from the 1970's and 80's, classic game shows, soap operas from the days where the writing was good EVERY day, and things of that nature. I have a simple solution to companies like Viacom and Sony who go nuts every time an episode of something they own is posted online: release the show(s) in question on DVD. Get networks to rerun your shows.

But at any rate, it's nice to have options. If your favorite show is not being rerun or if it's not on DVD, most likely it's online.