Unless you tell it not to, a TiVo digital video recorder will record TV shows that it thinks you may want to watch. It does this on its own but the picks are ostensibly based on your tastes. You can mark certain shows "thumbs up" or "thumbs down," depending on whether you like or dislike them. TiVo continually builds a database of these votes, factors in your past recording picks and then figures out a list of shows you might like and records them when there's empty space. Or, at least, that's the way they say it's supposed to work.
I'm starting to think one of the TiVo programmers has a thing for Raymond Burr. I can't recall requesting or thumbing-up a single cop show, Raymond Burr appearance or even anything about a guy in a wheelchair but TiVo won't let an episode of Ironside go unrecorded. It also really loves Lucy, grabbing every possible installment of I Love Lucy, which can mean six a day with all the cable channels I receive, and just as many episodes of M*A*S*H…though never the ones with McLean Stevenson. It also thinks I'm dying to watch any show featuring actual footage of high-speed police chases. (I don't. I can just look out my window…)
But it gets some things right. It's been recording a lot of biography-type shows for me, including pert near anything on The Biography Channel. The other day, it picked up an episode of Box Office Bio, detailing the life of Peter Falk. Watching it, I just heard this line of narration…
Peter became the highest-paid television actor in the business, earning as much as $500,000 an episode — a huge sum in the 1970's.
Ah, remember those ancient, pre-inflationary days when a measly half a million dollars was considered "a huge sum?" These days, everyone makes that kind of money.
