Man, I remember back when they ran some dude's Smackdown reports which were totally plagiarised from me, and I pitched a fit, and they pulled them. What I DIDN'T do was ask them if they still wanted them, probably because I was happy enough being on an all-powerful presence like WRESTLELINE that I didn't even WANT to be on some two-bit TV recap place like mightybigtv.com. To say now that I backed the wrong horse back then... would probably be something of an understatement. ;-)
See, I'm glad somebody else felt that MBTV had a penchant for doing that. I remember back when I was writing MY Iliad, Tough Enough, there being some recap stealing my horribly shitty writing. Looking back now, I can't imagine them doing that seeing as I can't even read anything I wrote five years ago without cringing, but for some reason I remember being pissed at them for something.
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...However they are THE source for Soprano recaps. Bar none.
I haven't been intently following the interworkings of TWoP - I read some recaps, and visit their board once an eon - but I do recall maybe two or three times where it seemed the site nearly blinked out of existence but was saved by some sponsorship deal or other influx of money. (And it seemed like they only revealed the problem after the fact - I remember this happening with Yahoo! TV specifically.)
I wonder if that was the situation again here, or if they just got tired of dealing with those situations, or if they just wanted to get paid. I'm all right with any reason on their side - I'm all for people who write stuff about TV on the internet getting $$$.
It's a bit tougher figuring out Bravo's reason to buy. What do they get out of this?
It has a name, it has an attitude, it has a rhythm to it and it has a following, [Bravo President] said.
Yea, but how does that help YOU? They acquire a larger web audience, but that audience as is wasn't creating a lot for TWoP (or why would they sell it and keep working for it?) Maybe they think they can do better on ad sales? Maybe they think they can turn 'net traffic into more viewers by having TWoP do (even) more Bravo recaps? I'm not quite sure.
(I was going to post about this yesterday, but couldn't figure out which forum it should go in.)
If you know he is de-powered and where he is, why not just round them up and keep them trapped in the Luthor prison. Sometimes Smallville is really good and then they do something so stupid, you want to bang your head against the wall.