Bravo announced today the purchase of TelevisionWithoutPity.com, an Internet site for the television “junkie”. The site features episode recaps and fan forums for televisions most popular drama and reality shows. Details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“TelevisionWithoutPity is an online brand destination for the impassioned and opinionated television viewer, which mirrors the exact attributes of Bravo’s core audience,” said Zalaznick. “This will broaden the scope of our sites to create a community where smart people with something to say about their favorite shows, past and present, can get together under the umbrella of Bravo’s pop sensibility.”
TelevisionWithoutPity summarizes over 40 TV shows into weekly “recaps” featuring witty commentary on what took place on each show. Later this month “Brothers & Sisters,” “Men in Trees,” “Drive” and “The Wire” will be added to the existing recaps.
The site has a good selection of program recaps and a sizeable variety of forums covering areas such as news shows, game shows and reality shows. The recaps are reminiscent of the cable program The Soup that does a weekly review of the happenings in pop culture.
TelevisionWithoutPity has one million unique monthly visitors who spend an average of 12.9 minutes on the site during a visit and receive about 30 million page views a month, according to comScore Mediametrix.
Founders of the site Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting originally met in a chat room and bonded over their love hate-relationship with bad TV. The two collaborated to create DawsonsWrap.com in the fall of 1998, a site focused on Dawson’s Creek. Because of a good response from that site the two created MightyBigTV.com in 1999, which changed its name to TelevisionWithoutPity.com in 2002.
“We only did this to make our ongoing project of stalking Tim Gunn a bit easier,” joked Bunting and Ariano. “Actually, it’s long been our dream to turn Television Without Pity into the fullest, richest, raddest, all-round best TV site on the internet, and with Bravo’s commitment and creativity behind us, we’re thrilled to start making that happen.”
