Television

Zap2it brings original perspective to the entertainment industry by covering the latest television news, reviewing new shows, and supplying photography. The "Best Bets" section is similar to the Times' "What's On Tonight?" as it gives an overview of the evening's programming with advice about what to watch. The "Ratings" section has weekly and seasonal Nielsen ratings, commentary, program listings, and more.

TV.com is part of the massive TV show information portal presented by CNET Networks Entertainment. Although the site focuses on program rankings generated by user reviews, each show has a page with links to summaries, cast information, related news stories, episode lists, videos, pictures, and more.

Metacritic.com rates and ranks shows by compiling reviews from other sources in a fashion similar to that of the popular film criticism Web site RottenTomatoes.com. Use the table of contents on the left side of the page to locate shows and reviews.

Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has an "Awards" link at the top of the page that allows you to peruse the Emmy Award's nominees and winners across all categories. The Emmys honor excellence in television, and are the equivalent to Oscars in film. Download a PDF of last season's winners here to find out what's worth watching.

Hollywood Foreign Press Association is the creator and organizer of the Golden Globe Awards, given for television and film. On the left side of this page are categories in which you'll find information on winners and nominees, the history of the awards, video clips, and more. Some fun, interactive portions of the site include photo and video galleries as well as a "Trivia" link, which explains the history of the award show.

Screen Actors Guild Awards is an awards ceremony created by one of the major acting unions, wherein only actors vote. Thus film and TV actors are awarded based on the opinions of their colleagues. The most interesting and useful section of the site is the "Nominations" section, which contains the details of past winners across the different categories

Tuned In is a blog developed by Time magazine's television and media critic. It covers developments from TV and online video blogs with humor, wit, and genuine insight. Discussions include reviews of new shows, previews of upcoming series, commentary on the news, and more. You'll also find hyperlinks to other valuable articles published by reputable media sources.

From Inside the Box is Zap2it's blog. Like all blogs it covers news, rumors, and the Hollywood buzz, and it tends to be snarky in its commentary. While here, you'll also find links to the other blogs hosted by Zap2it: "It Happened Last Night," "TV Gal," "Gossip Girl" and "Blogger Central" are all featured on the top navigation bar and offer different perspectives of TV culture and news.

The New York Times "Screens" blog covers the realm where the Internet and television collide. Use it to stay current on developments related to the booming world of online video.

Blogdig.net aggregates the best TV blog posts from around the Web and hosts them in one place. Not only is this a good place to find an entertaining article, but it is also a great resource for discovering new and entertaining blogs. Visit the "Cool Stuff" section for interactive blogging: you can join a live discussion, watch the news ticker, visit the RSS feed, recommend a great TV blog, or add your own blog to the site.

TV Guide is one of the most well known sources for program listings. Fortunately, it now offers all of its information for free online. Simply enter your location and specify your cable provider, and TV Guide will produce an easy-to-browse list of shows and air-times.

AOL Television has a program schedule powered by the Web site Zap2it. Listings can be gathered by selecting location and service provider, and results can be filtered by show type, date, and time. The schedule appears in a chart with color-coded boxes differentiating family shows, news, sports, and movies.

Internet Movie Database TV offers encyclopedic coverage of any TV series. Although best known for reviewing films, the TV coverage here is just as thorough as the original IMDB film site. Each show's page has an overview, cast details (with comprehensive bios for all actors), and nearly all the facts and figures you'd want, such as release date, user reviews and ratings information. You can contribute your own reviews or write on a message board to keep the information flowing.

TV.com , previously mentioned as part of the CNET Network, is a massive portal of information on TV-covering history as well as reviews and schedules. While the site focuses on program rankings (which are generated by user reviews), you can get lots of background information on each show by visiting its individual page. You'll find links to summaries, cast information, related news stories, episode lists, videos, pictures, and more.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications has an "Encyclopedia of Television" with over 1,000 essays from 250 collaborators. Articles with titles like "Ethics and Television," "Family Viewing Time," and "Westerns" cover actors, shows, networks, issues and events in television history.

Television Without Pity offers full episode recaps for a long list of both active and canceled shows. The recaps are detailed, multi-page summaries that read with an informal tone typical of blogs.

How Stuff Works is the perfect place to go for a layman's introduction to the science and technology that make television sets one of the most influential inventions of the 20th century. This multi-part guide covers the details of cathode ray tubes, TV pixels, phosphors, black and white signals, color TV, satellite TV, digital TV, and much more.

The Early Television Museum chronicles the progress of early television sets from the mechanical television systems of the 1920s to the first color sets. The TV History section has links to sites with further reading on the history of television.

The Museum of Television offers this Web site, full of flash animation for viewers of all ages. The site is divided into five sections: "Television in Quotes," "Television in the World of Tomorrow," "The Pioneers of Television," "Timeline of Television History," and "3D Interactive Gallery."

ABC.com has a recently upgraded, high-quality video player on which you can watch full-screen clips and episodes from your favorite ABC shows. Episodes from hit shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy, along with reality series like Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor, air online the day after their TV debuts. You can generally watch the five or six most recent episodes of each series, which allows you to get up to speed on shows you didn't catch from the beginning. Click on the "full episodes" tab at the top of the homepage.

NBC.com provides viewers with full-length episodes of the network's prime-time shows, and extras and expanded coverage from other NBC shows. For example, the antics of Late Night host Conan O'Brien are captured via a number of video clips, a message board, blog, and more. New shows are posted at 5 PM ET following their network debut.

CBS.com 's Innertube not only offers complete episodes of top shows like CSI (in all its alterations), NUMB3RS, and Survivor, but it brings you episodes of CBS News, a limited selection of movies, specials (like the Grammys), daytime soaps, and much more. CBS.com has the largest range of online programming of any major network.

CurrentTV is an indie media site cofounded by former U.S. vice president Al Gore. Instead of traditional shows, this site airs "pods," which are short, democratically selected, clip-based programs. At present, 30% of the pods on CurrentTV are user-submitted, in line with Gore's vision to create a channel that gives a voice to individuals. Join the movement and be one of many furthering this new form of broadcasting.

Veoh is another online television distribution site that draws content from all over the entertainment spectrum, covering broadcasting by major networks and independent film makers alike. By downloading the Veoh "Player," users can watch HD-quality Veoh programming on their own time.

Revision3 lets viewers download or stream episodes from any of its programs. Content is extremely accessible, as it's available across a variety of platforms and formats.

BeelineTV.com is a directory of free international television stations. Azerbaijanis craving a taste of home will delight in knowing they can stream Gunaz TV directly to their desktop. Not to feel left out, Slovenian, Serbian, British, and Spanish folks alike will find home-cooked broadcasting only a click away.

WwiTV is a directory of live TV Web casts from around the globe. Enter the site, and on the column on the left you'll see a running list of country names, followed by the number of stations available for viewing. Ignore the centrally placed Google ads and explore 92 British stations and nearly 600 American channels, organized by region. After selecting your desired country, click the station name to open a viewing window and watch away.

Channelchooser is a free TV site that streams stations from around the world. Unlike the previous two directories, channelchooser's stations are arranged by genre, not country. News, entertainment, movies, reality, music, and more are at your disposal, and stations are arranged so that you can easily find the type of programming you seek.

Mashable had a post in June 2007 detailing "33 Ways to Watch Free TV Online." This is your definitive guide to online video on the Web, as it includes video sharing sites, TV stations, and video hosting sites.

American Academy of Pediatrics is one of the foremost authorities on the role of television in child development. This site has an overview of the subject, accompanied by a list of things parents can do to foster good television-watching practices for their children.

KidsHealth provides an overview of how television affects children. The article covers the correlation between childhood obesity and hours spent watching television. It also addresses the effect of watching violence on TV, and includes guidelines for healthy habits you can instill in your child.

University of Michigan Health System published this article, which outlines the effects of television on children. The article is presented in a similar format as the discussion from KidsHealth.org, though it takes more of a medical perspective. The article is filled with statistics and complete citations, offering a cautionary view on the negative effects of too much TV on young viewers.

Cable in the Classroom and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association present this site, designed to teach parents how to control the programming their children see on digital cable. In the "Controls" section there's an introduction to parental controls and the ways in which you can program your cable to restrict certain types of shows. The "Choice" section serves as a guide to family and kid-suitable programming, and the "Education" section helps you to learn more about the issue.

The TV Parental Guidelines provides a detailed breakdown of the television rating system. This site explains what type of content to expect.

FCC (Federal Communications Commission) provides consumer facts about children's educational television. In addition to providing an overview of the Children's Television Act of 1990, the site addresses core programming, commercial time limits, and programming obligations.