Stats 17 April 2008

Rank       : Joanie Loves Chachi
Level      : 82
Percentage : 13.66% (+2.71)  Forum Posts : 2,860 (+8)



Submissions                  Reviews
Accepted   : 52847 (+61)     Shows       :     1
Pending    :     3 (-16)     Episodes    :     2
Denied     :   155           People      :     0
Total      : 53005           Total       :     3


Edited Guides                Trusted User
219 Shows                    1 Show

A while ago I noticed that we had duplicate guides for Five Days. This is a BBC-HBO co-production. The original guide had been renamed Five Days (UK) while a guide to the same show had been created with details of the U.S. airdates. Staff had approved the new guide, and added one of those "If you like Five Days, you may also like these shows:" links pointing to the original guide. The duplicate guide had cast pictures attached too. Obviously, I thought, someone on staff thought that these were similar shows rather than the same show. I submitted requests for the deletion of the duplicate show guide, and for the deletion of the duplicate person guide that someone on staff had created to go with it.

Last week, when the search engine was broken, I stumbled across a brand new guide to The Sarah Jane Adventures. This duplicated the original guide, now renamed The Sarah Jane Adventures (UK), but with U.S. broadcast dates. The only contributor to the duplicate guide was a staff member. Everything in the duplicate guide had been copied and pasted from the original guide by a staff member, who is apparently unfamilair with TV.com guidelines on the formatting of quotes. Again, this new guide had shiny new official pictures attached.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this was all about CNET chasing the money. What had seemed, with Five Days, an innocent mistake, now seemed to be about TV.com principles being sacrificed so that HBO, or the Sci-Fi network, could have a shiny new guide labelled as a brand new show with U.S airdates for a U.S. audience.

And it has happened again. Secret Diary of a Call Girl has been created for the U.S. broadcasts, and the guide populated with information copied wholesale from what we must now call Secret Diary of a Call Girl (UK). (The data on the duplicate guide have been submitted by a relatively new contributor, who may not be familiar with our rules on plagiarism, but they were approved by staff, who should be.)

danmod hasn't responded to an intemperate PM I sent, but in UK shows on TV.com danbambridge reports this message from a staff member:

"I asked the data team about the duplicate SJA guide (and about the duplicate guides in general) and I did get an answer. We're a US-based site, and all of our dealings with the networks have to be with the American side of things. We need to reflect that SJA airs on the Sci-fi Channel, and not on CBBC. Yes, having CBBC listed is just as accurate, but when TV.com needs things like pictures and video clips for shows, we always deal with the American networks.

By the same note, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (which also has two guides on TV.com) will air on HBO here. Therefore, HBO is entitled to have a guide created specifically for when Call Girl airs on that network. You can see that the guide that has an associated image is the one created for the HBO airing because HBO (not the BBC) gave TV.com the right to store & display that picture (and I assume more images will come as the airdate gets closer)."

So there we have it. I had thought that this was a guide to English-language shows the world over. I thought that the site was about comprehensiveness and accuracy. Apparently I was wrong. The site is U.S.-based, and only needs to give the U.S. networks and U.S. visitors what they want.

Now, the site already provides a TV listings service for U.S. visitors, so they aren't liable to miss the show, if properly publicised on site. If having a U.S. spin on a show is so important, why not start to address some of the many requests users have made own the years for a facility to reflect, separately, original and rebroadcast information within a single guide?

And what kind of line is that about the provision of publicity stills and videos? As ever, a staff member opens her mouth and puts her foot in it. A single guide sufficed for the C4/HBO broadcasts of Elizabeth I and the HBO/BBC broadcasts of Rome. Many of the UK guides to UK shows have publicity stills and video clips attached, without the guide being hijacked or duplicated. Most of the stills in the three duplicate guides come from the original production company, while half of the Piper pictures are non-show related and labelled (c) Jemal Countess/WireImage.com. What have HBO/BBC to do with this show anyway? It is broadcast on ITV2/Showtime!

This may not seem that big a deal to the majority of users and contributors, seeing the world from a U.S. perspective as you all apparently do. But consider this.

What kind of message does the new approach, one that encourages duplication, and entertains plagiarism, send out? What about the hard work put in by the original contributors to the original guides? What sense of community do we foster, when there are separate forums for discussion of these shows?

The new policy isn't even consistent. At this stage it's only those imported shows that get a big publicity push from a relevant network that suffer the indignity of duplication. Those guides to shows that have already aired in the U.S. won't be affected. Those guides to shows that end up on BBC America won't be affected. Those guides to shows that are carried on strands in PBS and elsewhere will only see duplication of individual episodes, as now. Personally, I hope that the U.S. will tire of these British accents, and opt to go down the Red Dwarf/The Office/Life on Mars route of Americanised remakes.

Anyways, I'm not based in the U.S., and I'm feeling really really sick about all this. Once upon a time, someone thought it would be a good idea to set up a single comprehensive guide to TV shows, where fans could collect and post information about their favourite shows, so we would have a one-stop resource for all the information we required, instead of trawling the web looking for individually commissioned fan sites. And then CNET bought TVTome. After three years of pushing a ball uphill, overcoming every technical impediment and community issue that the site could throw at us, TV.com has decided to kick us, and UK-based viewers and contributors in particular, in the teeth.

I really don't know whether I want to continue playing in this new environment.