TWOP no more

[yendi]

Television Without Pity is going away.

Weirdly, I expected TWOP to outlive LJ, or at least achieve some form of ongoing archive (like the Brunching Shuttlecocks)

The number of holdovers from the early days of the web continues to drop, and I'd be lying if I pretended I'd been to TWOP in years (I really was there more in the Mighty Big TV days). In this day and age, there are six zillion sites doing snarky recaps, and it's hard to compete*. But it was such a part of early web (or mid-internet) TV fandom, and so critical in the early days of getting well-constructed, entertaining, and insightful discourse about pop culture off the ground, that it's hard to imagine a web without it, even as half the entertainment sites online take their cue from it.

Still, I'll miss Omar recapping Smallville and Strega covering Angel. Those were good times. Here's hoping the Wayback Machine will save them.

*See also the AV Club's note that recapping old shows doesn't generate much buzz; there's a lack of interest in "old" stuff that's in stark contrast to the "every niche has its place" assumptions about the 'net. A person with a free space at their school or on Geocities might devote lots of time and space to, say, Dark Angel, but NBC's not as interested.

Comments

[theloriest.livejournal.com]

Oh man! TWOP had the best Game of Thrones recaps on the internet! I was seriously looking forward to this season, too.

[yendi]

I hadn't read them, but hopefully their recapper will find a place somewhere else.

[ron_newman]

Do you remember when NBC bought, and then got bored with and shut down, a Geocities competitor called Xoom.com?

[chaoset.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the Wayback Machine specifically, but the Archive Team is working on backing up TWoP:
https://twitter.com/archiveteam/status/449218499865358336

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Rats!

In its prime, the best TWOP writers produced a heady balance of plot transcription and critique/jokes which has never been matched (even by lesser TWOP writers). I was massive fan of Omar's Smallville recaps, even printing them out to read on my commute.

Then TWOP removed the "print all" option and started splitting articles into too many slow loading pages (sometimes one paragraph per page). I now think this was part of the site's downfall. What might have been gained in pageview revenue was likely lost in readers.

So I never finished Omar's run. Now that there's Instapaper and Pocket, maybe I'll see if I can enjoy the rest.

Alas most modern recaps aren't really recaps. They're usually reviews with not enough details or (less often) dry summations.

[ckd]

Damn. I love their Amazing Race recaps. I may have to put together a quick scraper to grab all the TAR and BSG recaps.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

The archives going away is the main sadness I have on that. I haven't read anything recent there in years. But the arrrrrrrchiiiiives.

(And yeah, Sponsored Web is not into dealing with Olde Time Things. Alas.)

Me too!

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

I've really enjoyed the AR chat. Recently started getting into reddit's amazing race board, but I'm going to miss those long recaps of past shows.

[yendi]

Cool! Good to know.

[yendi]

I remember Xoom, but I didn't remember that NBC was the cooperation that bought and killed it.

[yendi]

Very true about the recaps. I do miss the classic TWOP ones, much as I hated all the clicking. They were at least something an in inspiration for the Days of Horror stuff I wrote here years ago, too.

Another option (while it lasts) to get through Omar's stuff: http://www.givegoodweb.com/tools/twop/

[yendi]

It looks like there are some folks working on stuff to archive these -- see the link chaoset posted above.

[yendi]

Yup. I'll miss those archives, too (until someone resurrects them).

[sparkfrost.livejournal.com]

Oh no! TWoP is almost certainly what got me into fandom. Still remember reading Buffy recaps way back when. Sad.

[enderfem.livejournal.com]

I have been in a ridiculous amount of upset over this since yesterday. TWoP was my very first favorite website. There were times I didn't have tv (like my first year of law school, or when I first left college) and TWoP kept me updated, and more. I love it dearly, and I hadn't participated in new stuff much (though I did read their Bridge recaps last year) I still went back and referenced old Buffy, Gilmore, DW recaps from time to time. Glad to see someone is archiving, I hope.

[yendi]

I'm just happy that at least good things have arisen from it -- Pop Culture Happy Hour and Go Fug Yourself wouldn't be in existence without it, so I see that as a win. I figure the folks who really made the site tick will go on to good stuff, and hopefully the archives will be around somewhere.

[captain18.livejournal.com]

With any luck, some enterprising person will scrape the whole thing and toss it in a torrent so the archives will be available, if only on the Pirate Bay.