Television Without Pity
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Type of site
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Online collection of television series recaps and related discussion forums |
|---|---|
| Owner | Tribune Media |
| Created by | David T. Cole, Tara Ariano, Sarah D. Bunting, various contributors |
| Website | www |
| Alexa rank |
 20,517 (April 2014[update]) |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
Television Without Pity (often abbreviated TWoP) is a website that provided detailed of select television dramas, situation comedies and reality TV shows, originally by mocking them. In 2007 the site was purchased by the Bravo unit of NBCUniversal. The site began by recapping the television show Dawson's Creek and was originally called Dawson's Wrap; later it broadened its scope and changed names to Mighty Big TV before settling on the current moniker. The site is notable for its wide usage of the word "" to describe its typical style of sarcastic review. Their official motto is "Spare the snark, spoil the networks," a takeoff on "spare the rod, spoil the child."
On March 27, 2014, it was announced that operations would cease on April 4, 2014, with forums remaining open until May 31, 2014. It was later confirmed, however, that the site's already published content would remain available as an archive. The forums closed as scheduled. However, only the first pages of recaps was eventually available, with other pages no longer redirecting properly.
The full archive of recaps was transferred to http://www.brilliantbutcancelled.com/shows/. As of December 2016, visiting any page within the televisionwithoutpity.com domain results in receiving a message featuring the site's mascot Tubeelzebub, stating "Welcome back, you devil," an apparent reference to the site's upcoming return in 2017.
In 2016, the site was updated by new owner, Tribune Media. As of October, 2016, a teaser with the tagline "Something wicked this way comes... returning in 2017" appeared on Tribune's site Screener (formerly Zap2it). The site's "About" page claimed "And, in 2017, Screener will proudly welcome the revival of Television Without Pity, with an unexpected twist."
The site's mascot is Tubeelzebub (a portmanteau of tube and Beelzebub – "Tubey" for short), a devilish television set with horns and a pointed tail.
Recaps differ in styles: some of the recappers write shorter, more concise recaps while others write more comically, inserting references to their personal life, for example. Naturally, each style attracts different readers, with some preferring to use the site as information for episodes that they have missed, and others preferring the more humorous ones, which can be equally (or more) enjoyable to those who also watched the episode. Beginning in 2007, TWoP introduced "weecaps" – initially presented as single-page television series reviews written in real time. The abbreviated recap style – first used for coverage of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge and Dancing with the Stars during the spring – was later employed for a larger slate of summer replacement series, with eventual reconfiguring into multi-page entries. Shows with weecaps also gain dedicated forums with topic areas as with regularly recapped shows. The American version of Survivor used weecap coverage for the start of its China season but full recaps returned with that edition's 7th episode and have remained in place since then.
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