I used to be a hockey fan, but at some point someone decided to air most of my local hockey games on a network called Versus, nestled somewhere in the mid 100’s between The Ocho and NatGeo Fish. Unable to ever find the channel when a game was on, I gave up on the sport.
Had Alexa existed all those years ago, and had the TV Schedule feature been enabled, I would have been able to simply ask Alexa what channel to tune to and she would have told me.
The Alexa TV Schedules feature is a native setting in the Alexa app, and not a skill that needs to be installed. Once set, it will work for every Echo device connected to your Alexa app. Once enabled, you will be able to ask Alexa questions like “Alexa, what’s on TV?” or “Alexa, what channel is the Versus network?”
Here’s how to set up Alexa TV Schedules
- Open the Alexa app
- Tap or click the hamburger icon on the top left of the screen
- Tap or click Settings
- Scroll down to the Alexa Preferences
- Tap or click TV Schedules
- Although it may look like everything is greyed out (the universal sign for “you cant click this”) you can tap or click where it says TV Provider
- Scroll through the list of cable providers and select your provider. If you don’t see your cable provider you’ll have to wait and try again another time. Important note: Once you’ve selected a provider, you can never unselect a provider! You can change providers, but you will never be able to select “none” or uncheck your choice.
- Tap or click OK when the confirmation dialogue pops up
- Tap or click the back button to return to the TV Provider settings overview. You should see your selected provider in annoyingly light grey writing beneath where it says TV Provider.
Once this is set up, you will be able to ask Alexa all about the TV Schedule in your area. I suspect this will partner with the new Fire TV Recast, which is a DVR that allows you to record any over the air or antenna television and play it back to any Fire TV device (and probably Fire Tablets as well as the Echo Show) on your network.