Well, considering that CBS, in it's infinite wisdom, is deleting one more of the things that TvTome/Tv.com had going for it, these blogs, I am re-evaluating my participation in this site, as it get's farther and farther away from that wonderful, original idea of so many years ago: a fan site, run by fans of TV shows, mostly of the past.

When I came on board as an editor at TvTome in 2004, it was a simple fan runned site that had one purpose, to build a database of information about television programs up to that point, mostly with the focus of data of old programs from the 50s and 60s but through the current shows of that day. But the emphasis was to dig out the "data" and archive it, so if someone asked, "..who was the guy who played so and so on Green Acres...?" then TvTome wanted to be the place that had the answer.

It was a lot of fun while it lasted. I can't blame John for selling the site. It made him rich. I would have done the same thing. BUT, in my agreement with cNet/CBS, I would have retained the ability to keep and publish the original information after the standard non-compete clause was fulfilled. TvRage was able to grab all of the original information and they are keeping this going, though the ones in charge are pretty difficult to deal with.

There is a Wiki out there for this data and I've experimented with adding information to it, but the UI is very difficult to use and everything must be added manually, so I've not spent much time there.

All of this said, the appeal of TV.com has been lost to most of us original editors. The focus is what I predicted years ago: money. Tv.com is slowly being turned into a site of commerce and sales. And the "community" aspect of it is being lost to that focus. What we need is someone to resurrect TvTome, at least in spirit, and go back to square one, building a very simple website, run by fans, for the express purpose of archiving information about television shows in a database, without all the fancy flash and without all the commerce. By fans for fans with maybe the little Google ads on the side to help pay for it. And since by our agreement we own our work here, we could then add what we've created here there and start over again.

Whatever we do, it looks like CBS is bent on chasing away the last of Tv.com's original editors. They are doing a good job of that! My time is limited here. It was fun while it lasted...well, in the early days at least!