Gawker: television without pity

Bush Will Take Over Your TV One Last Time

Pareene — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:10:30 EST

After two years already spent fading away, George W. Bush is back! This Thursday he'll take over the networks for a goodbye speech.

On Thursday the White House will interrupt your TV (in less enlightened nations leaders have to own their own television networks for this kinda exposure) for 10 to 15 minutes, during which Bette Middler will sing to him and then his helicopter will take off and he'll see that B.J. spelled out a goodbye in the White House lawn and then he'll play poker with Data and oddly only Ted Baxter will keep his White House job and then the whole thing will end right in the middle of a Journey song.

Or else he'll just lie for 10 minutes like usual.

Commenters Comment on Commenting, Actually Get Somewhere

Richard Lawson — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:02:10 EDT

Last week Chairman Denton wrote about Television Without Pity, the "unfettered" TV review site that just lost its three founding members, a lonely one year after Bravo acquired it. Fittingly, our commenters (many revealing themselves to be multiple-site commenting addicts) had many well formed opinions about the heavily commenter-focused TWoP, opining at length about why the three favorites left and what happened, in a general sense, to the once mighty site. Essentially the same conclusion was reached by all, that TWoP fell to that oldest of internet stories: small, cult-ish site ("beautifully self-contained", commenter Colonel Mustard mused) gets noticed and keeps getting bigger until it collapses under its own weight, especially when it goes corporate. There are too many recaps now! Who cares about Samantha Who?? (No one, I hope.) There are soo many damned commenting rules, you keened.

Many of your prognoses were grim, based on the chief talent leaving, but commenter Crunchbird thoughtfully, if a bit cynically, suggested that the site was purchased for a more forward-thinking, pinko commie reason:

As far as whether Bravo was buying the "content" (i.e., the recaps) or the "talent," I'd say they were buying neither. They were buying the community, and the reliable and frequent page views that community would provide. They needed the talent to create the community in the first place, and keep them reassured through the transition, but they probably think it can chug along just fine without the founders now that it's got sufficient mass of its own.

Hmm. Interesting. The inmates running the asylum? Why would anyone ever let anyone do that?

And This Is Why Corporations Don't Buy Blogs

Nick Denton — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:51:25 EST

So how did NBC's Bravo lose not one but all three founders of the unfettered TV review site, Television Without Pity, it bought a year ago? The cable network disclosed this week, in a blog post, that Sars (Sarah D. Bunting), Wing Chun (Tara Ariano), and Glark (David T. Cole) were all leaving the 10-year-old site "to pursue dreams and ambitions that will take them beyond TWoP."

To be sure, the timing of the move suggests that the founders' payday was in part conditional on them remaining for a year after NBC's acquisition; they've all left now the lock-in has expired. Nevertheless, one has to assume that the suits made some effort to retain at least one of the founders, in a consultative role at least, to maintain some continuity. That the team has left so abruptly suggests a fallout. When TWoP was taken over, readers doubted the buyers' promise that the site would still be allowed to criticize NBC shows. But I'm guessing the reason for the breakup is more prosaic: that the founders didn't like Bravo's pressure to broaden the site. Backstory, anybody?

Related: Soon after Bravo bought Television Without Pity, the founders had to deal with a writer revolt. [Radar]

NBC coopts its critics

destiny — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:59:57 EDT

NBC's Bravo division swallowed independent TV criticism site Television Without Pity, proving the networks are just like everybody else: fascinated by strangers' comments about them on web pages. The Peacock Channel had already returned the web site's snarky attention with a shout-out in an episode of NBC's My Name is Earl, and in a story in NBC's West Wing. Now they can keep the mutual backscratching, and backstabbing, where it ought to be: within the same cosy corporate family.

To-Do List

Gawker — Tue, 08 Apr 2003 15:38:57 EDT

1. Hear architect Raphael Vinoly at NYU.
2. Panelists from Time, Entertainment Weekly, the Times, and Television Without Pity discuss television criticism at the Museum of Television and Radio.
3. Catch Cat Power at Warsaw.