Friday 30 April 2010

Prepare to get Obsessed With TV

Friday 30 April 2010

It's finally time to let you know the Top Secret News I've been sat on for the past 6 weeks...

To cut to the chase: I've accepted a position with Obsessed With Film (OWF) as their "TV Editor", a new role created as part of their site's evolution. The team there want to expand and build a larger and broader audience, by improving their site and spreading their wings to encompass other forms of entertainment beyond movies. If you visit OWF now, you can see the new-look site in its "Beta Testing" phase.

What does this mean for Dan's Media Digest (DMD)? Well, a few changes -- but nothing radical. I've been in two-minds about joining OWF since I was asked, because it's taken me 4-years to turn DMD into what you see here today. It's a one-man operation that's grown and developed in tandem with myself as a writer/blogger, and I'm proud of what's been achieved from such humble beginnings. I was therefore very nervous about dividing my time with another site, fearing that DMD will be left to dwindle and die. But the arrangement with OWF will enable me to run both sites in tandem (with some help at OWF and no strict "contractual" burdens), so you shouldn't really notice too much of a change here. Well, that's my plan!

But there will be alterations, and the two biggest things that spring to mind are:
  • The majority of TV news will be reported at OWF, as priority.
  • OWF will get exclusive reviews of TV premieres, finales and the occasional "important episode" (specials, mid-season finales, etc), all written by me.
I'll link to any OWF-exclusive reviews from DMD, don't worry, so my writing will only be one click away. I guess this is all similar to how my column at Newslite.tv used to work, just on a bigger scale.

Although some reviews are going to be creamed off to OWF, I'll obviously continue to review the vast majority of TV episodes here at DMD as usual. This blog is still my online "home", so to speak, and I have no intention of giving that up. An Englishman's blog is his castle, isn't that what they say? My film news/reviews also won't be affected and likewise anything of a more personalized nature (polls, competitions, quizzes, lists, talking points, trailer reviews, etc.)

So why am I doing this? Well, it's a combination of things:
  • I feel like a fresh challenge after four years of blogging, to take my writing to new eyes.
  • There are perks to joining OWF, such as easier access to screeners/box-sets and opportunities to interview industry folk perhaps. In some ways, I can relax and get on with writing without having to chase PR people and get bogged down with e-mail correspondence.
I hope everyone reading will bookmark my new section at OWF (known as "OWTV"), because the site's existing readership probably won't be aware of me or DMD, particularly as OWF has been film-centric up until now. For that reason, it would be great to see familiar names from here turning up and leaving a comment or two (or three?), just to help build a sense of community. Hopefully you'll like OWTV enough to make it a regular stopping point, too.

Oh, and if anybody wants to help spread the word about the new-look OWF (however you can), I'm sure they'd be very grateful for any shout-outs on blogs, sites and podcasts. Finally, if you have any questions or thoughts on all this, I'd be glad to hear them in the comments below. The OWTV column will officially launch either today or tomorrow with a big Battlestar Galactica competition and review of ABC's Happy Town.

Site: http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/owfilm