Televisionwithoutpity.com
Television Without Pity's logo, including its mascot "Tubeelzebub"
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Type of site
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Online collection of television series recaps and related discussion forums |
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| 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) was a website that provided detailed recaps of select television dramas, situation comedies and reality TV shows along with discussion forums. These recaps were written with sarcastic criticism and opinion alongside a retelling of an episode's events, which the site referred to as "". Their official motto is "Spare the snark, spoil the networks," a takeoff on "spare the rod, spoil the child" and its mascot is Tubeelzebub (a portmanteau of tube and Beelzebub – "Tubey" for short), a devilish television set with horns and a pointed tail.
Initially established in 1998 to recap the show Dawson's Creek, the site expanded to other shows and adopted the Television Without Pity name by 2002. The site was bought by the Bravo network within NBCUniversal in 2007, which continued to operate it until it was shuttered in April 2014. Sometime after this point, the site and branding was acquired by Tribune Media, who had announced plans in 2016 for a relaunch, but this was scrapped among other cost-cutting measures at Tribune in April 2017. The site's recap and forum archives remain available.
Television Without Pity is credited with popularizing the format of television episode recaps intermixed running commentary. The site was also known to be used by television show producers, directors, and writers to gain more immediate feedback for their works and take in the constructive criticism for their future works.
The site began in last 1998 by Sarah D. Bunting and Tara Ariano, with technical support from David T. Cole, as a online forum-driven for the discussion of the show Dawson's Creek, then named DawsonsWrap. Their commentary specifically focused on the show's central character Dawson Leery, and Bunting said that this had caught there attention because "insidious, sexist, lazy writing had us apoplectic, not least because we're supposed to identify with a character who, on his best day, is an obnoxious, self-absorbed twit." Their activities included writing recaps of each episode intermixed with their criticism, establishing the use of sarcastic criticism or "" within these recaps. Though they did not believe they had a direct impact on Dawson's Creek itself, they felt that by the end of the show's run, they had a seen a change in the show's writing that seemed to take their critics to heart.
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