Is there a service which will provide me with email alerts (plus a few
sentence description ideally) to new TV series starting on particular
channels in the UK?

Because I have a TiVo, I no longer buy a "TV guide" or read TV
listings since most of my viewing is of series recorded via season
passes and wishlists.  I can't even rely on seeing ads about upcoming
shows since I usually fast forward through - or if I do see an ad, it
can be 1-2 weeks after the programme's original screening by which
point I've missed the first episodes. I don't want a service that will
alert me to new series on every channel, since it will just be
unmanageable, but I would like to be emailed for those few channels
such as Channel 4 and E4 which pick up a lot of the high quality US
dramas.

For example I would like a service which would email me a few days in
advance of when the series "Six Feet Under" starts.  I saw an article
in the paper that said it had been bought by Channel 4 but there was
no mention of when it would be screened, and a search on Channel 4's
website didn't yield any mention.

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Clarification of Question by lynetter-ga on 25 Apr 2002 06:57 PDT

With regards to the first comment below - I presume by Ceefax you mean
on teletext?  I tried looking for ceefax.co.uk and ceefax.com but
nothing came up.  If you do mean teletext then that isn't suitable.

Looking at it on Teletext would involve the same effort as looking at
the electronic programme guide that I get with Sky Digital.  Yes
programme schedules are listed in it, but it still requires me to
regularly flip through it.  At the moment I have to force myself to
spend 30 mins on a Sat morning going through all the EPG listings on
my favourite channels. Most weeks it's a waste of time because I don't
find anything new that TiVo isn't already planning to record.  The
bulk of what I do find are new series - which is why a service that
alerted me to them without requiring me to manually look through EPG
listings would be good, because it would save me 30 mins per week.

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Clarification of Question by lynetter-ga on 25 Apr 2002 07:00 PDT

With regards to the first comment below - I presume by Ceefax you mean
on teletext?  I tried looking for ceefax.co.uk and ceefax.com but
nothing came up.  If you do mean teletext then that isn't suitable.

Looking at it on Teletext would involve the same effort as looking at
the electronic programme guide that I get with Sky Digital.  Yes
programme schedules are listed in it, but it still requires me to
regularly flip through it.  At the moment I have to force myself to
spend 30 mins on a Sat morning going through all the EPG listings on
my favourite channels. Most weeks it's a waste of time because I don't
find anything new that TiVo isn't already planning to record.  The
bulk of what I do find are new series - which is why a service that
alerted me to them without requiring me to manually look through EPG
listings would be good, because it would save me 30 mins per week.

Look at Ceefax!  How lazy can one be?

There's a program called Digiguide which you can download from
http://www.digiguide.com/. It downloads schedules for all UK channels
to your PC. You can set it up to remind you any time a particular
programme is on TV. I think it would require a bit of work to set up
all the reminders, but once they're set up it would be a fairly
automated system.

You may wish to look at http://www.bleb.org/cgi-bin/tv/all.cgi?desc=1
(and more generally at http://www.bleb.org/tv). This site lists (in a
parseable format) all the major channels.

You could create a Python (or whatever your scripting language
preference is) to scan it and pickout new programs.

I could even be convinced to code such a thing if you really can't do
it yourself.

Aggle

Following on from the last comment, try using http://www.spyonit.com/
in conjunction with an online listings site (http://www.bleb.org/
looks good for this purpose).  Create a spy to watch, for example, the
Ch4 listings page of 3 days from now
(http://www.bleb.org/cgi-bin/tv/channel.cgi?channel=ch4&day=3) for the
phrase "Six Feet Under" to be added.  The spy will then email you if
the phrase appears.

This will obviously only be of use if you know the name of the series,
unless you can find a site which highlights a new series in some way.

Try this one:

http://www.onthebox.com/partner/otb/

I personally use http://www.cableguide.co.uk/listings/index.epml