In 2009, an opportunity to write for TVOvermind became available and I immediately jumped at the chance to blog about my love for TV and the TV industry. Slowly, but surely, I met some amazing comrades, who shared the same adoration for not only the TV shows we covered, but the minds behind the stories that were telecast weekly on our “idiot boxes.” TVOvermind also introduced me to some of the best bloggers and television journalists in the game, as well as opened doors for opportunities I thought would never have fallen in my lap.
So after five years with the website that pretty much jump started my career as an entertainment blogger, all of that went to hell in one weekend, making it painfully difficult for me to announce early last week that I was cutting ties with TVOvermind.
As of this writing, I’m still trying to comprehend and decipher what the hell happened without calling anyone out of their name. I don’t know what led some members of TVO’s new regime to eradicate almost every original voice of the TVO brand from their roster. I’m not pointing fingers, just trying to figure out what could be the reason for them to just start hacking up something that myself and a slew of others helped build from nothing since 2009. The “official” reasoning was that the members who didn’t write anything for the site since the end of May forfeited any access to the site whatsoever. This also included emails, access to network press sites, and the like. While that explanation might be sound to some, it doesn’t make sense given how TVO operated for the past five years, nor does it make sense to not inform people of their standing with the website.
Originally, my plan was to return after a summer hiatus starting this month and continue blogging about Scandal, American Horror Story, and at least one new show of the fall TV season. This went up in smoke when a chance chat with another former TVO writer informed me of my status as a writer for the site. There was no email, tweet, chat IM, nothing sent my way to ask whether I was still a part of the site or not. Instead I was ‘punished’ for working with “competition” and not with TVO, which is the source for most of my anger and frustration, because I was Never exclusively contracted to TVOvermind, nor was anyone else to my knowledge.
Despite TVO being my base of operations, I was always considered a freelance writer while with the site. At least until recent events. When I started with TVO, my editor (who created the site from scratch) always encouraged us to find other ways to make money with our writing, because at the time, we were not being paid for our services. If there was any other writing job that did pay, we didn’t receive any ill will from TVO’s previous editor to accept those jobs, whether they paid or not. In recent years, I focused my attention solely on TVO, because of the full-time job I have now, which has restricted me from even writing at work. Therefore, daily news pieces and posts had to wait until after work hours and, even then, my articles had dwindled down to only reviews, recaps, and a few other pieces if time permitted. I notified the new person in charge of this, and we agreed that as long as an article was out by the next day then everything would be okay.
At the beginning of this past summer, a promising writing gig with HerDaily.com, a new website operated by a former colleague, came across my desk. The pay was higher per article than what TVOvermind was offering and with personal finances becoming a bit of a bind, I took that job with the thoughts of returning to TVO during the fall when most of the shows I covered there would return to TV. I will be man enough to say that I didn’t notify the new regime at TVO about this new gig, but at this time I didn’t think that I had to report to them if I was still considered a freelance writer.
Meanwhile, I had some inkling of what transpired between the new and previous regimes at TVO, but mostly I’m still in the dark about a lot of stuff that occurred and, in some instances, prefer to stay in that shady corner of ironic ignorance. However, some of the stuff I do know is damning, but out of fear of getting sued, it won’t be repeated here. All I know is that the basis for the change was due to SEO related issues, mostly that the traffic to the site had dwindled drastically. I have my own theories of why those numbers tumbled the way they did, but since I’m still a student of sorts when it comes to SEO related business, I’m not going to say much. But I will say that once the switch happened, there was little to any communication besides the basic reminders of certain writing assignments, which for me was little to none since my shows were on hiatus. This was the second red flag that things was not going to end well.
It was here where my thoughts about writing for TVO started to wane, but not to the point of where I wanted to throw in the towel. I needed a break from the drama and was going to wait till the smoke cleared ( when fall TV close to returning) before I returned to writing for the site. Yes, I probably should’ve informed the new editor of my stance, but again, many writers had disappeared off TVO’s radar before to only return when their scheduled show returned to the airwaves. I didn’t think this time was any different. Plus, I still didn’t have an iron clad contract with TVO.
So imagine my shock, ire, and all around “pissed of-ness” to find out that not only had my TVO privileges been revoked, but that there really wasn’t any plans of notifying me officially of said revocation. I’m sure there could have been a conversation between myself to clarify why I was “absent” from TVO activities, but I asked myself: “Why bother?” Especially since the TVO of today was clearly not the TVO of yesterday, which is not something to twerk over.
After new faces (names) started to pop up on the TVO dashboard, there was a slew of random articles that rubbed some readers, as well as myself, the wrong way. Some of those articles were “top ten articles,” counting down specific moments in TV or featured pics of scantily clad reality show stars, who did Playboy or some other modeling gigs before appearing on Survivor or Big Brother. I will never forget reading some scathing comments about some of TVO’s current content, with some of the criticism declaring the site must have gotten desperate for hits to stoop to such a low-level for content. Yet, despite the glaring negativity coming from all angles of the blogosphere, I remained with TVO with one-raised eyebrow and hope that things would get better. Preferably quickly. Alas, that didn’t happen.
So why did I leave TVOvermind? For starters, technically in more ways than one I didn’t have a choice in the matter. With the way things went to hell with the site, I would be lying if I said an exit on my part wasn’t inevitable, but I would have liked some sort of clean-cut closure as I went on to other ventures, i.e. a “warning” of sorts so that my hard work of five years could be recovered.
Secondly, the site had become an annoying shell of itself, with more glaring ads taking precedence over some great articles, which slowed the load times and sent readers running. Plus when Big Brother contestant Kara’s half-naked photos are gaining more traffic than your latest Teen Wolf/Scandal/Breaking Bad review, then you know there is something funky in the water and you might need to seek a stable piece of landmass quickly.
Next, my media access was revoked without my knowledge due to my emails being canceled. I was also informed about a rumored personalized phone call from someone out of TVO’s new regime to certain networks suggesting/asking for cancellation of our access to their sites due to lack of writing. If the latter is true, then me being “pissed” will be more than the understatement of the century.
When I took all of those incidents into consideration, I didn’t see the point of trying to save face with the current managers of TVOvermind. Apparently my glowing seniority and sacrificial contributions to the site was no longer a factor of consideration when it came to how valuable I was to the site, despite me still being considered a freelancer.
So if none of this made any sense whatsoever, then join the club. Those are the facts as I know them at the moment, and yet I’m still scratching my head about how it came down to this.
If you want to continue following me and reading my take on shows like Scandal, American Horror Story, Big Brother, The Vampire Diaries, and any of the new stuff premiering this fall, please stay tuned to this site as well as HerDaily and ScreenFad. I’m still considered a freelancer, so if anyone knows of any openings for writers or wants to offer me a job, full-time or not, then my schedule has cleared up a bit.
Now, any questions?
Photo Credit: ABC, World of Wonder, KushandWiz, AstroAsB
The Anti-Critic 
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