The draw of episode reviews
// April 20th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // General, Ranting
When I started up CliqueClack TV, there were a few key elements I really wanted the site to have. Firstly, I didn’t want to regurgitate news items. “News regurgitation” means simply scouring website RSS feeds of places like CNN News, Yahoo! News, or any other number of TV-related websites and blogs, and then generating a post that repeats that news, though in one’s own words. It’s not very original and it’s a cheap way to get pageviews.
The other thing I didn’t want to do was repeat anything that was happening on TV Squad, the place I left. We initially started up CliqueClack TV to have a place for people to read episode reviews of shows that were no longer covered on TV Squad, so it wasn’t repeating anything being done over there.
I understand there are a lot of websites that simply can’t afford to not re-post news items, because it’s what the bulk of their readership expect. They’ve already dug that hole, so simply stopping that practice would only serve to hurt traffic, at least in the short-to-medium term. And hey, it’s an easy buck for the writers because they don’t need to come up with anything original — the material is right there, so put a personal wrapper around it and it’s $25 in the bank.
I have a confession to make: I never liked episode reviews. We are not experts in the field of television here. Fans of TV — and, in some cases, die-hard ones — yes. But experts tootled in the art of television and journalism? Not at most places, at least. So why are episode reviews so popular? Shouldn’t a post about something specific in the episode itself fare better?
There are often times I will watch an episode of a show I love and, dammit, I have nothing to say. But because readers expect to see a review for every episode of the show we’re covering, I’ve got to man up and figure out something to say. Is that a good thing? Isn’t it OK that an episode isn’t remarkable and we can just skip it without having to say it’s unremarkable?
I’m not sure how many CliqueClack readers read this site, because I don’t update it often as it is. But would it really be a bad thing if traditional episode reviews went away and were replaced by something discussing specific aspects of the show, if we really have something to say about it?
By the way, we will most likely never provide recaps of episodes, which are, by definition, a retelling of what happened on the show, not simply one’s own thoughts.
