“I feel like we’re coming back around to an era where recaps could take off again,” he says. “Because I feel like people find the conversation on social media to be increasingly toxic, and want to just read somebody who’s well informed.
I would say the "The Recap" is still very much alive and thriving. The part of it that has died is it being text based, it's all on video now. Youtube and TikTok are flooded with users doing recaps for tv shows.
“What I realized was, we were covering as much as we always were, but we weren’t covering as much as TV demanded,” he says. “I went into a couple meetings and I was like, we are still covering what we were covering two years ago, when we were the most comprehensive site on the internet, [but] the amount of what’s out there has tripled. And it’s gonna quadruple.”
The rise of streaming platform has made watching and keeping up with tv shows a daunting task. Even the people who just want to watch for entertainment, let alone those whose job it is to cover them.
I honestly feel Mad Men was the last show where everyone immediately got online to talk about it after the episode aired, en masse,
I disagree with this statement. Because I think there are a few shows that have come out recently where we run straight to the internet to engage in discourse about. Game of Thrones (and other related series), Euphoria, Power, etc. There are plenty.
The streaming model, with its seasons designed to be binged on one’s own schedule rather than watched live as a collective, has made the recap less essential as a place to process a show’s events until the next installment airs. Social media has supplanted comments sections as a meeting site for like-minded enthusiasts.
I agree that social media has taken center stage when it comes to media criticism. These days it seems like everyone is a critic.