Seasons are changing in more ways than just one

Once upon a time we had seasons of all sorts. These days things sorta just run together like melted Neapolitan ice cream dropped on a summer sidewalk.

This past week as I set out to the store I asked the wife if she needed anything and she replied she really wanted a TV Guide magazine. I pointed out that she was actually holding a guide in her hand and if she pushed the left button a menu would appear on the screen.

I guess she was feeling nostalgic for the days when the TV Guide was on the coffee table because it was four steps across the room to switch channels and four steps back to the easy chair.

My wife used to read all the fall TV magazines religiously and could tell you what was going to happen on every show’s new season long before the season got there. She looked forward to the new television season.

Back in the day, I could ask my wife any question about prime time TV and she could answer. She’s going to come up empty this season because I couldn’t find that TV Guide.

I’m not sure we’ve quite wrapped our heads around the fact that TV seasons now occur at all times of the year and there are no longer just three networks. We’ve even had some of our shows release two seasons in one year. The “Fall Television Season” has been marginalized.

We had cliffhangers like “Who Shot J.R.” back when the television season was well defined. We had been on a diet of reruns all summer and we were hungry to find out what was new, who was out and who was in, what was canceled and what was renewed.

Now we binge watch our shows a season at a sitting and move on to the next program on digital media the following week.

They did the same thing to “New Car Season.” Once we all anxiously watched to see what would be unveiled in the fall line of Detroit steel. Some dealerships did actual unveilings for the hottest new model. It was an event with hot dogs and soda pop for all when the new car models arrived.

Nowadays they release new models almost year-round. Sometimes folks are uncertain what model year they’re even getting. Cleverly marketed events once attracted us all like moths to a flame, but not anymore.

Sports seasons have gotten pretty haywire over the years, too. Football has remained fairly constant, but basketball and hockey go on forever. Six months of basketball is too much basketball for even me to get interested.

Prep and youth soccer often have fall and spring seasons, just like turkey and bear hunting used to be in New Mexico.

It’s a good thing I didn’t bring up hunting seasons until this column was almost done or it would have been a rant about the way hunting seasons have changed.

We used to have a “deer season.” Now we have “deer draws” and everyone is going at different times in very specific areas and the country boy in me feels the fun has all gone out of that pursuit if everyone’s not taking off work headed to the hills on opening day every year.

As I say farewell to seasons of all kinds I’ll steal a few lines from Canadian songwriter Terry Jacks’ song “Seasons in the Sun:”

“We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time. The wine and the song, like the seasons, have all gone.”

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]