Friday 17 April 2009

State of the blog: Easter, Reviews, Twitter, Time & Films

Friday 17 April 2009
A quick update about a few things. Firstly, many thanks to everyone who visited DMD last weekend. The Easter period saw a phenomenal increase in visitors to the blog, clearly because of the Doctor Who and Red Dwarf reviews. The latter reviews also smashed the record for "most comments" posted, which was fantastic to see. Clearly there's a massive Dwarf fan-base out there, so thanks for dropping by.

Also, thanks to everyone who commented about my continuing battle with balancing quality and quantity here at DMD. I have decided to delay Mad Men and Breaking Bad reviews quite considerably, because those reviews are the least popular (according to a recent poll) and don't get many comments. There's no point struggling to write something fewer people care about, so expect those reviews to hit on Fridays/Saturdays from now on. I will reevaluate the depth of other reviews next season (as I'm not going to suddenly cutback on reviews mid-season.) So, largely, things will continue as normal, but I will be a bit briefer in general and not push too hard to get less-popular reviews online so quick.

Twitter continues to bemuse me, really. Its undoubtedly quite addictive to keep updated on everyone's 140-character updates, and it's a handy enough tool to notify people of updates and trivial matters not worth a blog... but, I still find it a bit strange. Still, I'm finally past 30 followers, and nearly got up to 40, but then a few people decide to unsubscribe from me (which is curiously annoying, as I have no idea what I said for people to grow so bored with me.) You can follow me by clicking here.

A few shows are approaching their end now (24, T:tSCC, Lost, Heroes), so things will become a lot more manageable time-wise. I have a lot of movie reviews I've been meaning to get around to, so the summer months will certainly see more film-related stuff. And yes, my long-gestating Star Trek I-VI reviews (to celebrate the release of J.J Abrams' update) is still on the horizon -- currently aiming to release one each day for six days, starting 2 May.

The Wire is moving into season 2 on BBC2 very soon, but I won't be watching. I'm too tired on weeknights to stay up past 11pm, so I will have to stick with a box-set viewing sometime over the summer.

I'm also thinking of resting the Hotlight feature (it's been going a few months now, so time to move on), and have a few ideas for a replacement. One idea's quite quiz-like (but reliant on feedback to make it work), the other is something fun and nostalgic. Maybe the Hotlight will stay, but lose its regular Friday status, though. Admittedly, there's never much you could comment on with the Hotlight, beyond variations on "phwoar".

Good to see the Polls are popular, after returning to semi-regular status a few months back. Some are more popular than others, but there's enough response to make the results demonstrative of general opinion. So that's good. Suggestions for questions always welcome, btw.

Beyond that, I have some "real world" commitments and paid work to be getting on with (another reason it'll be a relief when the TV schedules begin to thin out), so I'd best be getting on with that.