Thursday, March 27, 2014
TSATHOGGUA WILL NOW BE UNLEASHED ON THE WORLD: The formerly much-beloved Television Without Pity will be shut down by its current owners at NBCUniversalComcastKabletown, with recaps ending in the immediate future and forums closing at the end of May. Of course, most of "classic" TWOP left in connection with the NBCU/Bravo acquisition in 2007, but it's still sad to see something that was so formative to my life on the Internet (and which gave us so many great writers that have moved on to other exciting things) go dark.
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I never go there anymore, and haven't really since the original group left, but this still makes me sad. I think the biggest loss is that all the archived writing there, the recaps from when it was such a great site, won't be accessible to the public. To not be able to go occasionally read old Pamie Gilmore Girls recaps, or Linda Holmes TAR recaps, is really terrible.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually a bit surprised that they didn't try and sell the IP back to Tara and Dave (and it wouldn't shock me if that winds up happening in the end--indeed, Dave has already expressed interest on Twitter).
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Unless they really are trying to sell that old content, I cannot begin to imagine why you wouldn't make the archive available.
ReplyDeleteI just went and re-read Linda's recap of the TAR "My Ox is Broken" episode and if these archives don't become available somewhere I cn access them I will just cry.
ReplyDelete"In Stage VI (Human-Animal Miscommunication Troubles Us All) Colin shrieks, "Where's he going?"
But Friendster and Myspace are still alive and kicking, right?
ReplyDeleteI'm actively bummed, because the Pretty Little Liars recaps by Jacob Lifton are freaking amazing. (That's 100% sincere, BTW.)
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I just spent about an hour re-reading Drunken Bee's Friday Night Lights recaps. Holy moly they were good. I do miss that show and her writing about it and will be sad that I won't be able to access it when I'm feeling nostalgic.
ReplyDeleteI just re-read it too, and aside from the utter glee and enjoyment of the read, had two thoughts: (a) remember when a LOT used to happen on a given TAR episode? and (b) that episode was nearly 10 years ago.
ReplyDeleteLinda Holmes' TAR and Survivor recaps probably win my award for "things that made me laugh the most on the internet" (yes, even more than that lady getting a watermelon to the face). I agree with Devin about Jacob Lifton - he's great. Also, I own a My Ox Is Broken t-shirt.
ReplyDeleteIt would take someone with only slightly more programming skill than I have to scrape the site and save all of the recaps offline.
ReplyDeleteIt would then be illegal to create a .zip file and offer it as a bittorrent.
I can't remember the last time I visited Zombie TWoP. But the quality of the writing and the crazy depth and detail of each recap on OG TWoP was phenometastic.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to get a scraped archive of the recaps (without having to click through each link.)
man curl
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Once they had a Project Runway recapper who didn't know what a bias cut was, I was gone, but man, I used to spend days deep in the forums debating Veronica Mars, and it was great for catching up on missed shows or shows you started late or when you wanted to read a dissertation on a "Battlestar Galactica" episode. So, yes, not surprised, but sad.
ReplyDeleteI just created KabletownWithoutPity.blogspot.com just in case I feel like using it someday. Happy to share author rights.
ReplyDeleteThere's actually some fascinating IP stuff here--I'm assuming that when Universal bought it, they got all the copyrights, but particularly from the Dawson's Wrap/MBTV Days, I do wonder if there were WFH agreements in place--there could be complications with individual authors having claims in their writing.
ReplyDeleteHave you bought Pamie's new book yet? It is HORRIFYING and awesome.
ReplyDelete"Tara" and "Dave"...? Surely, you mean Wing Chun and Glark, right?
ReplyDeleteWhich book is this????
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Notes-Boys-Things-Shouldnt-Public-ebook/dp/B00ID50BLC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396016182&sr=8-1&keywords=notes+to+boys
ReplyDeleteThis makes me deeply sad. I'm not going to say that I'm archiving this site to the best of my ability, and I'm also not going to tell people they can ask me for segments of this archive and I'll see what I can do, because I won't, because I would never say I was doing that kind of thing, not on this forum.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!!!
ReplyDeleteOne good thing that's come out of this is that it's given a huge boost to the Previously.TV forums, and hopefully getting Previously.TV some new readers.
ReplyDelete