Bravo Sends Television Without Pity To Hell
Posted by Jim Connelly in Actual Mileage, Television on Apr 10, 2008
Bravo, Bravo! You have finally done it! You have taken one of the best websites ever to grace the internet, and in just a little over space of a year, you have turned it into a garishly unusable pile of synergy-laden shit.
Awesome!!
When you took over TWOP last year, I said I wasn’t worried. Well, you showed me. Turns out, I’m a fracking idiot. Who knew that when I professed my love for this site after it had been one of my top destinations for years that it would all end so . . . badly. Well, I guess you did, huh, Bravo?
Of course, this has been long in the process: last night, as I was ranting about this to Roxanne, she said that she’d stopped reading it at around the same time Bravo bought it, implying that I was a fool to expect anything else. And she calls me the cynical one!!
Normally, yes, but for some reason, I held my cynicism — probably because as long as it was obvious that the site was still mostly about the writing that made it originally so attractive, I was going to let my heart override my head. So I ignored all of the apocalypse signs that had been accumulating: the blogs with their Hulu links, the pointless photo galleries, the even more pointless video log which seems to be about someone who has never watched TV shows commenting on them.
No more: the latest redesign has made it plain that Bravo doesn’t give a rats ass about what once made TWOP so great.
I’m not against redesigns, but I am against pointless, craptastic redesigns. And this is extra special craptastic. I offer a bit of a compare and contrast. First, thanks to the magic of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, here’s a screengrab from just a couple of years ago, when it was in its heyday.
This was a website that knew what it wanted to be: a collection of recaps of television shows and a place where people could talk about television shows.
Now, here’s a screengrab from the redesign they put up in just the last week.
You tell me that this is a website that has any understanding of what its mission is supposed to be. Or if it even has a mission anymore.
They retain the “Spare the Snark, Spoil The Networks” tagline and the Tubey mascot, but instead of a simple, reverse chronological list of the most recent recaps (and drop-downs to get you to the individual show pages), and the elegant line drawings that went with them, you’re now assaulted by a blocky unfocused website that wants to be all things to all people — Photos! Blogs! Videos! TV Listings!!
Oh, and that “search thousands of recaps and more”?? Not so much with returning any results. Unless “Buffy” is a term that they don’t have in their database. No doubt that will be fixed eventually, but I’m getting in my cheap shots where I can.
Speaking of Buffy, what about the secret greatest strength of TWOP, its long tail? You know, a decade’s worth of recaps of TV shows, perfect for reading as you’re working your way through those Buffy box sets?
Good luck with that: you used to be able to sort the recap listings by season, but not now. Here’s an actual screen grab from the full recaps page for Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
Where to begin? I mean, forget the fact that the grades are different from what I remember them to be, or that the titles of the episodes aren’t highlighted, or even the fact that — according to the this page — the first season of Buffy was in 1971. Nope, what I am going to concentrate on is the obvious decision to post these not in the order that the episodes actually aired, but rather when the recaps were written.
You see, they didn’t start recapping Buffy until the middle of the show’s run, but knowing that there would be a demand, they went back and recapped all of the early seasons. There are a bunch of shows like this: Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men and The Wire are all shows where the recapping started at some point into the shows run.
But people don’t watch these shows in the order of the recaps, they watch them in the order of the air date. But whomever was in charge of the redo of these pages didn’t know or didn’t care who the actual audience for them would be.
It’s a simple thing, but it reveals volumes about how Bravo thinks about what used to be the bread and butter of this site.
And with that thinking, they’ve reduced Television Without Pity from a site that had a definite, unique point of view about TV — and TV’s place in the pop culture universe — to a site that is just like any other entertainment site.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the very prominent link to Movies Without Pity, created because someone at Bravo was no doubt aghast that this site was slumming with just Television stuff and wanted to class up the joint a bit.
But “Movies Without Pity” is just a page with absolutely no personality whatosever — it’s no different from any of the other zillions of other pages about films out there.
The new slogan: “Suck Up to The Studios, and Maybe We’ll Get Ad Revenue!”
Sigh. Can you tell that I’m a bit pissed? Thank gods that there are a lot of other sites now that do the TV recap thing well: What’s Alan Watching? and The A.V. Club’s TV Club, to name just a couple, because I have a feeling that TWOP has essentially just released their Around The Sun. And as long as Bravo owns them, I doubt that they have an Accelerate in their future.
“Powered by Bravo,” it says, between the banner ad at the top of the page, but below the actual name of the website. Overpowered by Bravo is more like it.
And sent straight into a hell dimension, where all personality is stripped bare.
I once wrote that if I could have any job on the internet, it would be writer for Television Without Pity. I take that back.
He actually used the word “squozen” as the past perfect form of “to squeeze”!!!!! Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ!
Jacob is a blowhard if ever there was one.
Watch out if you are a newbie. I joined a forum a few days ago and some of the senior members have made some of the most condescending comments to my posts and turned on me like a pack of wild dogs when I made some obvious tongue in cheek statements. I must have hit close to home and touched some nerves because I was stating the obvious in a lot of my posts. Senior members posted very similar comments to mine, no better or worse, and no one mouthed off to them. I told the forum off and said I am never posting there again since I feel that I have to censor my comments or be attacked by the TWOP mob.
I’ve been hanging around TWOP for about 5 years, and while the moderation has always been harsh, lately it seems to have gotten a lot worse. A whole lot worse. I’ve gotten more “notes” and “warns” in the last 2 weeks than I have in the previous 5 years. After the Warn, I wrote an email to TWOP Nikita saying that the incident that led to my warn had come after a fair amount of crap from other posters (I had taken a contrarian position from many about a reality show contestant) and asked if they had been warned as well. Well this led to an e-mail exchange where I was told I had an unacceptable attitude, that I was lucky I wasn’t suspended, and that I was at fault for not tattling to the mods about the other posters. (Which led me to look at the “tattle forums” for the first time. Oh my god, how sad. These people coming and ratting on “boards on boards” and “off topic”. I just kept hearing Gomer Pyle yelling “Citzens Arrest!”in my head while reading it. Who really cares about that stuff enough to report it?)
Anyway…Thae whole thing left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It also led me to realize that TWOP doesn’t want “discussion” on their boards at all. They don’t want people exchanging ideas and defending their views. On the thread I got “warned” in, the mod posted something to the affect of “You can’t win an internet argument, so don’t try. Just post your opinion and move on”. That’s exactly what they want, a bunch of stand alone posts that don’t reference each other, or respond to differing ideas. I don’t think I’m interested in that vision of a “discussion board”.
I just miss the ace writing so much. A few of the classic writers are still there, but almost every writer that had wit and talent is gone. When I think back on djb’s and Miss Allie’s recaps, I realize how much I hate the new TWOP.
I had been a member of “TWOP” or “Mighty Big TV” for years-I mean YEARS before these new controllers took over. I, too, was banned. I committed one of the worse crimes ever on any forum and have been severely punished: I did NOT put a ‘carriage return’ between two paragraphs!! OMG in heaven! I was banned back in Jan. 2009 and they will not even allow me to register under my husband’s email/name! I do not know how they know, but I have tried and was denied. All of this over a frickin’ space between two paragraphs!
“Account Status: Banned”
I was ‘informed’ by someone named ‘STREGA’ that I was either unwilling or unable to abide by the sites rules and therefore, BANNED!
I guess this is ‘BANNED’ for life; they will never reconsider me as I did not add a space between two paragraphs!
I miss the old writing too. A month or so ago I went back and read a couple of the old “Seventh Heaven” recaps. That was one of the worst shows since, well basically ever, but those recaps were just great stuff. Viciously funny, sarcastic, witty, angry. There’s nothing like that around TWOP anymore. It’s all so bland now.
With one exception, and it’s not a good exception, Jacob. If you ever want to read anything truly incomprehensible, try one of his American Idol recaps. Even when I’ve seen the show, I don’t have a clue what happened when I read his stuff. When he really gets me is when he tries to make AI out as some deep statement on society. I mean really, this is AI, the most vacant, commercial show on TV, and he’s treating it like Joyce’s Ulysses.
[quote]Muwarr90 wrote on August 10th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’ve been hanging around TWOP for about 5 years, and while the moderation has always been harsh, lately it seems to have gotten a lot worse. A whole lot worse. I’ve gotten more “notes” and “warns” in the last 2 weeks than I have in the previous 5 years.[/quote]
WTF – the same thing happened to me. I had been a member of TWoP since 2000 without a single warning and in the last 2 weeks I got a warning (I rolled my eyes but was like, whatever – and that was because I posted in a reality show thread at *LITERALLY* 10:59 and the show wasn’t over till 11) and then banned by Strega – can anyone explain what my big crime was??? Not only that but she’s doesn’t even know what shes talking about, I didn’t get a warning for board on board discussion I got one for posting before the episode was over.
[quote]Warned on Aug 18, 2009 @ 1:01 am
Added to warn level
I think its fine for people to not like her but I think some of the complaints are kinda ridiculous – “oh everyone has an olive bar” “Couscous is soooo overdone” Hopefully the people who made them now realize, no not every grocery store has an olive bar [...]
Believe it or not there are people in this world who have never used cumin, or fresh ginger and I think its a bit much to mock her for using/presenting them as something out of the ordinary just because you (general) are very familiar with them.
(10 Dollar Dinners)
Boards on boards. Since you have a previous warning about this, you either haven’t read the FAQ or you are deliberately ignoring our rules about manners. Banned.[/quote]
“Boards-on-boards” is the dumbest phrase I’ve ever heard. It makes my ears want to throw up.
I was SO happy to find this and see that I’m not alone! I cannot stand Jacob’s pretentious recaps and his paragraph-long run-on sentences. For some reason a while back he was recapping practically every show I was watching (Doctor Who, American Idol, Ugly Betty, even Gossip Girl, which I didn’t watch but still wanted to read the recaps of) and it was beyond frustrating. At least he finally threw a gigantic hissy fit about the poor quality of Ugly Betty and now someone else recaps it – of course by now I don’t watch it anymore, so it didn’t matter, but still. And I was shocked when I went to the Doctor Who forums and the posters were wanking all over his recaps like they were getting paid for it. And speaking of pretentious recappers, Demian, who recaps Supernatural, used to write good recaps but is rapidly turning into Jacob-lite. Every time he condescendingly says “Oh, clever, clever SHOW”, I want to reach through the screen and punch him.
That screenshot of the old site makes me weep. Oh, the good old days, when the site didn’t make my eyes bleed, I could actually find what I was looking for, and the recaps made me laugh.
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I was just warned for the second time by TWOP Nikita. I sent an PM back and told her she must have a corncob stuck up her ass or some kind of God complex. They make you feel like you’re about 2 years old and broke Mom’s china for just trying to be part of the conversation. Wonder if I’ll get banned. I have belonged to many BBs and have never been banned for making simple, part of the conversation comments on them.
I was there nearly at the beginning. I preferred it to most sites of its ilk, as it required proper punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. There were no page long sig lines, flashing emoticons, and giant photos to slog through. The recaps were well written, well thought out and, sometimes, even more entertaining as the show. I dealt with the redesign and leaving of the old guard. “Bravo knew what it was buying and would respect the ideology they purchased”, I lied to myself.
The last straw, after one too many recap by someone who missed several very basic pop-culture references, and even commented they hadn’t understood why Character X did Action Y, was the underlined words which spawn a b*ng.c*m search window. I accidentally rolled onto something ridiculous like “body” and had to close the damn window. I could understand a roll over pop-up for 50 cent words TWoP’s new demographic might not grok. Like “gentrification”, or “detrimental”.
Like many others TWOP is a diversion for me. Life can be difficult. Talking about television should not be. I don’t want a power-tripping moderator slapping my hand like I’m a three-year old with nonsensical rules that force me to write as if I’m walking on egg shells. I’m up to three warnings now out of about 1100 posts over 6 years. Only one of them made even a speck of sense.
TWoP lost a lot of it’s luster with me when Miss Alli left. Her recaps of The Amazing Race and Survivor were, and still are, some of my all-time favorite writing. I still go back and read them from time to time when things are slow at work. This redesign only made it worse and is so typical of the slam-cut mentality and the general dumbing down of everything in the entertainment industry. Very depressing.
What a pity that moron Strega hasn’t been booted yet. She seems to ban people whos opinion she doesn’t like (or perhaps says something against her friends – assuming she has any)
Hopefully they’ll fire her one day, then here would be a reason to say Bravo!
TWOP Nikita is the worst of them. I got a warning for her for putting a link to a chatroom during the Oscar telecast. See, you’re not supposed to “live chat” on boards until the program is over. So I tried doing a nice thing and set up a room for people. But apparently, I was “pimping” a site. I’ve been a member since 2002 but God, this bitch makes me want to never go back.