frelling_tralk | Television Without Pity might be coming back!

May 2020

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Tribune Media Company Resurrects Television Without Pity, Networks Prepare For New Wave Of Snark!

The devilish little mascot of Television Without Pity, the TV recap site that was the progenitor of so many other recap and review sites, has lain dormant for two years, since owner NBC Universal shuttered it in April 2014. But Tuesday, visitors to televisionwithoutpity.com were greeted with a message from the site’s new owners, Tribune Media Company: "Welcome Back, You Devil."

Given the preponderance of pop-culture publications currently offering recaps and reviews, and given that most of the original writers had long departed, it seemed likely that TWoP would stay dead.

We reached out to Tribune and received the following statement from Josh Cogswell, Tribune Media’s chief product officer:

“Television Without Pity was once one of the best destinations for TV commentary. An overwhelming number of fans — including us — were saddened that it shut down. So we bought it and are now working with some of the industry's favorite talent, influencers and strategic partners on a relaunch. We can’t share anything more at this time, but to all fans past and present: Stay tuned.”

I know that a lot of people had issues with that site and the moderators, but any new discussion forum is a plus for me :D

Current Mood: excited

Tags:

fandom

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That is a wonderful news! I loved that site from the very beginning. It was my go to website. If it's back, that would be great!

Same, I wasted sooo much time in some of the forums, I loved how much discussion you could get going on shows that hasn't aired in years sometimes. Yet you would almost always find several new pages of discussion there each time you returned.

Honestly though, I don't even think the new forums will necessarily be bad if there's a new team. I was never a frequent enough user to know for sure, but it seems to me that the issues really began when they were bought out.

And even then, while I sometimes had issues with how TWOP was run...

A. Like you, I mostly just wanted to love my shows.

B. Most of the forums I've ever been to have had at least minor issues. There's almost always at least one of "those mods", "those members," etc. You get a large group of people in one space, things happen.

Edited Date: 2016-04-13 11:05 pm (UTC)

I think that a lot depended on individual mods, I heard horror stories about some of the forums being over-moderated, but the ones I hung out in were mostly fine? I do remember the Buffy forums being kind of a pain though lol, I never posted on those threads much for that reason

Edited Date: 2016-04-13 11:10 pm (UTC)

I also remember being disheartened that the Firefly ones were so cynical! The mods were fine, it was just... I'd just discovered Firefly and was so pumped to talk about it, only to realize the consensus was basically "everyone sucks except Mal and Joss Whedon's a moron and we don't actually like this show but we're all discussing it." Yay...?

It could definitely go the other way, though. I made a slight comment on another TWOP forum about how I wished a show had more female character interaction... good lord, you'd think I'd said it was the worst show ever!

But honestly, aside from those things I found the forums pretty tolerable. Although yeah, I think I remember the Buffy ones being a little overly strict. Still, I really liked them and was sorry to see them go.

Edited Date: 2016-04-13 11:16 pm (UTC)

the consensus was basically "everyone sucks except Mal and Joss Whedon's a moron and we don't actually like this show but we're all discussing it." Yay...?

Yeah I guess that a lot too depended on the tone of a particular forum, some of the show got soo bitter and negative in later seasons, especially for Buffy.

I tended to gravitate more to threads where posters still had some affection for the show, you could get some good discussion going then

I once got banned (for, like, 24 hours?) for saying something positive about a character that was being bashed! It was George O'Malley. I can't remember my exact comment, but it was pretty damn innocuous! The issue, apparently, was that I dared have an opinion that differed from the mod!

I was pretty disillusioned with it for a while after that and because the Grey's fandom on LJ was so active at the times, I just retreated here for all things discussion-y. I used TWoP for reviews, particularly of shows I couldn't get access to in Australia.

I'd be super keen for it to come back, though, because there was a times used to spend hourrrssss there!! And some of the recaps were GENIUS.

I got a warning once in the Smallville forum for "being snotty" :P It bugged me for years afterwards because that warning showed up to me every time I posted, and there didn't seem to be any way of ever earning enough points to get it removed :pouts:

Could be cool! I got disgruntled and eventually just stopped going there when the uh...reviewers? Whatever they were called, anyway - the ones doing reviews of the shows i really liked basically hated the show. That got *very* old.

Or they hated a character and so would completely skip their scenes. That was lame.

If they don't pull that kind of shite again, it could be very fun.

For some shows it definitely got a bit too negative as the years went by, posters and recappers generally seemed very positive for the first season or so, and then the feeling would change so fast that the show could no longer do anything right by the third or fourth season *g*

I loved the XF forums & recaps, and I used to spend SO MUCH TIME there in 2002. But I eventually got banned for being associated with some hijinks on a separate message board, heh. Long story. But if it hadn't been for me whining over the closing of the mental illness thread (back when they had off-topic boards), I never would've ended up here at LJ or met my best friend. So I'll forever be grateful to the site for that reason alone.

I found LJ through TWoP too actually! I remember that in the SV forums there would always be links to LJ in the fan fic thread, and so I decided to set up my own account once you no longer needed an invite to join

Great news!

Gabrielle

TWoP was my gateway to slash fandom. Not immediately, I'd link-hopped there for some Trading Spaces discussion/disection, and a bit later, some dorky-hot 23 year old high school freshman farmboy had a bursf of "adrenaline", allowing him to miraculously rescue a slinky-hot bald guy, and have imaginary sex in our heads. And " Yo, hey, HoYay." When it was good, it was an amazingly fun place to hang out, and I started friendships there that are still standing.

I just hope it's a good reboot.

The first slash slip I used to read a lot for was Spangel I think, but I definitely got majorly into Clex thanks to TWoP, I used to find so many great links there in the fan fic thread

I don't know. There are so many other sites now and the climate is very different. I can't see it capturing the old magic of when it first started up.

I stopped going there toward the end of Buffy when it seemed like they completely lost their affection for the show.

I am wondering if it's going to get close to its former activity since everyone has scattered, I believe that a lot of posters are at Previously Tv now and talk about liking that site more now, so TWoP probably ever won't be as busy as it was sadly. But it's nice to think that there's going to be some kind of well-known site like that as an option for discussion, and a lot of people have talked about missing it, so there's potentially going to be a lot of traffic still

I'm so disillusioned with how traditional message boards seem to be dying out since tumblr came along :( I mean there are places to chat like av club, but none that really replicate TWoP exactly. Previously Tv seems pretty dead to me whenever I have a browse

Edited Date: 2016-04-14 10:46 am (UTC)

TWoP was pretty much my gateway to fandom so this sounds like good news to me! Now that Tumblr is fandom central and LJ is so quiet there's maybe a space for fannish discussion that TWoP forums could fill again. I used to hang out mostly on the Smallville boards - back in the day the boards and the recaps were hilarious! I miss it. I only used to visit other forums occasionally and some seemed good and others awful. I think it depended on how well you fitted in with the general of feeling of the majority of other members towards the show - if you loved something and most people were negative about it (or vice versa) then it wasn't a lot of fun, but if you were on the same wavelength as most people then it was great! I (mostly) appreciated the fairly strict rules and modding too - actual discussion required and not just pages of 'squee' or 'meh' with little actual content.

Heh SV was my main board too, but yeah a lot did depend on how your opinions fit with the majority, otherwise it did get old if it meant you were constantly arguing against the popular view of a character. I never spend much time in the Buffy threads for that reason. I definitely miss the lengthy posts you get there though, the only big message board I post on these days is Fan Forum, but that's not really the same in terms od discussion

Never even heard of that site but it definitely sounds interesting :)

It definitely hosted some interested discussion over the years :)

Wow, nostalgia! I visited the Smallville boards every day for many years.

I do miss episode discussion threads, where you don't need to worry about spoiling anyone.

Same, the SV forum was where most of my posts were *g* And yeah I do miss the organisation of knowing that you could find really detailed discussion of an episode whenever you wanted, everything is so over the place these days when you try and track the tags on tumblr after an episode has aired, and you need to make sure to get around to it before it gets buried under newer stuff

Wow! Wonderful news!

I'm definitely panning on checking it out :)

OMG, I hope it comes back. he AV Club has been my replacement site, since the comment section is pretty chill, but it can get kind of riffy and off-topic, which I don't mind when I'm in the mood, but sometimes I just really want to see some good discussion and commentary.

Oooh! I hope they put all the classic recaps up again. I've been so sad doing an X-files rewatch without Jessica and her Mulder and Scully action figures to comment on it.

Yeah I do find myself reading AV club quite often these days, but the format isn't really the same, it can get annoying to have to keep clicking through all of the off-topic chat

And I think that the original recaps should still be online somewhere still actually?

Some of the old recaps can be found on the way-back. But some, you can only get page 1. And there is some hilarious material there, darn it. I hate to think it lost forever. :(

Aww I didn't realise that, I thought they'd all been saved, what a shame :(

TWoP is how I found LJ! (I don't know how I found TWoP, though.) This is great news!

Wonder if Jacob is still on there. ;-)

A lot of people were mentioning Jacob at the ontd post on TWOP as well, he certainly seems to have left an impression!

And same :)

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