Willing to sell out

Television Without Pity is a great site. Its original, complete recaps of reality and serial shows lets you follow shows you don't actually want to watch (cough...24...cough) and geek out by READING over what you just WATCHED (or debate the latest dictates of the Laura Roslin administration). It was announced today that TWoP has been bought by Bravo:

"If Television Without Pity didn't exist, we would have built it," said Bravo exec VP Jason Klarman, who's at the center of Bravo's online strategy. Klarman said the purchase will change the Bravo digital suite services overnight by nearly doubling, to more than 2 million, the number of unique visitors to Bravo-owned online sites.

On one hand, good for TWoP. It's probably a lot of money, or at least to be secure and allow them to grow there site of retold primetime television and gossip about it. One the other, its kind of weird as a frequent visitor to a website that really delivers the promises of the brave new world of niche media be bought by a much larger, and often older, media entity. A similar thing happened about a month ago with the NBA blog Truehoop by sports writers Henry Abbott, another great site, bought by the "ESPN industrial media complex" (trademark pending!)

Its nearly a cliche to talk about the level of media consolidation these days, but when you read this in the Variety article about the TWoP purchase:

Bravo execs said the site will maintain complete editorial independence, despite now being a tiny division of General Electric.

It is hard not to reflect on the uniformity, reach, and pervasiveness of our current system. And how a couple of dorks on Blogger while watch BSG isn't going to change that anytime soon.

That being said, I am making plans to get THIS blog bought by a television network, cable or over the air. Top candidates include Verses, which apparently exists and covers the NHL, and Spike, which has reruns of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and those Japanese game shows with the horrible dubbing. Class all the way.