theparisreview:

Dan Piepenbring on Tim Brooks’s and Earle Marsh’s The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946–Present.

Like a lot of once-vital reference books, the Complete Directory’s purpose has been lately obviated by the Internet, that completest of directories. In the thoughtful compression of its writing, though, and the scope of its research, it argues for life beyond Wikipedia, which for all its comprehensiveness doesn’t include a lot of the TV shows mentioned in this book — and when it does, its writing on them isn’t nearly as smart. The Complete Directory does what all good reference books do: it gives readers a sense of the immense vastness of its subject, an easy way of accessing information on the specifics of that subject, and the chance to discover — by a happenstance that always feels magical in this sort of text — stuff that we never knew.

Most of the Directory’s bulk is devoted to capsule reviews of … well, every American network-television show of all time. Its back matter includes prime-time schedules for all the major networks spanning several decades, a kind of nostalgists’ TV Guide. What did CBS air at 9:30 P.M. on Mondays in Fall 1952, for instance? I’ll tell you. Hang on… [more]

I used to read this in the bookstore until I finally got a copy of my own. It was my bible. Was always looking for something in between the covers. Mine had a dark blue cover, not sure which edition that was. Loved it.