• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, July 14, 2016

According to eMarketer, traditional TV, despite a downward trajectory, remains the single largest part of U.S. adults’ media day. In fact, Nielsen says that U.S. consumers ages 65 and older spend an average of 51.5 hours a week watching live and time-shifted TV, while the young'uns 18 to 24 spend less than a third as much time on average (too busy chasing virtual game monsters over the cliff).

While 51.5 hours seems like an amount you might watch if you are in assisted living and parked in front of the TV while the staff grabs a smoke on the portico, it did make me stop and add up my TV hours in a typical week. The total comes to about 28 or so hours (unless of course Netflix has unleashed another round of “House of Cards” or “Peaky Blinders,” in which case I am still in front of a screen, just not linear TV).

It remains to be seen if during the Olympics those hours go up, as NBC hopes. The football season certainly adds a significant number of hours, as does March Madness and nearly every pro sport championship series.

While in a recent column I lamented the fact that we no longer share our thoughts about the previous night's TV viewing around the water cooler, I do like that there has never been more good programming on more networks.

The hard part is discovery. Not that all the networks don't batter us incessantly with promos for upcoming series (to a fault in my mind, but perhaps if you watch less TV, you think "just right.") My primary source of recommended viewing is The New York Times, which not only flags "What is On Tonight,” they preview most series — and to, my mind, generally make spot-on recommendations. If the NYT says try it, I add it to the DVR to record. I also like MediaPost's TV columnists, although I don't always agree with their assessments.

My kids and I tend to recommend shows to each other, but the generational difference is often a problem. Shows they find screamingly funny, I do not. Likewise, they have very little patience with scripted dramas that take a few episodes to catch on (e.g., “The Knick,” “Outlander” or “Penny Dreadful”). They also think I am nuts for watching fringe shows such as “Black Jesus” or “The Americans.” On the other hand, they thought “Nashville" and "Blacklist" were fringe shows.

There are a couple of folks around town who always ask me what I am recording and watching since I have a pretty good track record of picking winners just as they first air (e.g., “Downton Abby,” “Making a Murderer," “Silicon Valley,” “The Killing"). So direct word of mouth is still important in this always-on digital world.

I think the next unicorn company will be the one that builds a simple interface that tracks all of my TV viewing and recommends similar upcoming shows. I can't believe my cable company is sitting by waiting for someone else to do this.

What about you? How do you spot the best shows to add to your must-watch list?