Jessica, I don't want to eclipse your point, but here's some additional thoughts.

So, in an attempt to support the concept of bucket threads better, I've wasted a lot of my "very important" work hours going through the list of currently-airing shows at epguides.com to try and cobble together some idea of what bucket threads could be like. For ease and to keep me from going nuts, I've only included the shows that are on right now, and not shows that have aired in the past; I suspect that, should bucket threads be established, the threads will be self-regulating with regards to both cancelled television and new television. (Maybe that's asking too much, but we've done it before, so here's hoping.) This is a very imperfect design, and it's likely that I've not only left out something, but that we might want something different, or not want something, or whatever.

Procedurals Thread - House, The Unit, Without a Trace, CSI(s), Numb3rs, jericho (?), Bones, The Closer, Cold Case, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Law and Order(s)

Dramedies - Ugly Betty, The Office, Studio 60, Monk, Psych, Grey's, Gilmore Girls, The Boondocks, others(?)

Serious Drama - 24, Friday Night Lights, Prison Break, others(?)

UK TV - Spooks, Hustle, Robin Hood, maybe Doctor Who as it airs in the UK, and keep Doctor Who as it airs in the US in Boxed Set?

caveats: I have almost certainly left out shows people are watching; lines on these shows can be somewhat unclear, ie what I would call a dramedy others would call a sitcom; the same audience isn't there for both FNL and 24 (for example) (though that might not be a problem, really, because we have identified cross-germination as a positive and not something that would hold us back); Procedurals is kind of big and we might want to break it down in some other way; I didn't include sitcom comedies, because I don't think they sustain the kind of focused discussion we are talking about here; and I still want the FX shows in Premium.

er, a lot of caveats. imperfection abounds.

Jessica, I don't want to eclipse your point, but here's some additional thoughts.

Eclipse away! I'm so sick of the sound of my own voice right now it's not funny.

Studio 60

Not strictly relevant, but it's pretty likely that this has been canceled. (Coming up on sweeps in less than a month and no new eps announced.)

I know--I actually meant to put in parentheses "cancelled?" but I figured it supported the Dramedies thing, and might have a spittin' chance of being renewed.

(Even Minearverse, which is sort of a serial single-show thread, frequently becomes the "crafts & soaps" thread when Tim doesn't have a show on the air for a while.)

For the most part, the single show threads seem to die down (even the natter) if there aren't new episodes. Show news and reruns prompt mild discussion in the other threads, which then tapers to natter and then to pretty much nothing. Minearverse isn't a show thread. It's a personality thread, which I think is part of the difference.

Firefly is probably the biggest exception to what I've said above, and even then, the volume is pretty low unless something is happening in the fandom and one of us imports it to the thread. Heroes, VM, Lost -- there's little activity there during hiatus.

(Hustle, anyone? Starting in April!),

SO EXCITED. NEXT WEEK!!!!!!! Umm, sorry, got distracted. Anyway, I support the bucket "genre" idea. I think that it will introduce new shows to people, people who like one procedural probably watch others, and it won't take up too much bandwith.

SA's proposal seems reasonable to me. I am interested in how this will play out with the Premium shows, though, because many are not easily classifiable and have more in common with each other than with the bucket connections. The Wire, for instance, isn't as much a procedural as it is a portrait of modern America in crisis. As such, it has a lot in common with Deadwood (a portrait of frontier America in crisis) and The Sopranos (a portrait of family in crisis, which puts it in a bucket with what? Six Feet Under? Family dramas? It's about to end, so point is moot, I guess). I'm very excited about the upcoming John From Cincinatti series, but have no idea how to classify it, either (philosophical surfers?).

I guess the point to all that is that however we end up creating the buckets, I think it would be best if we allow for periodic cross-pollination of conversation.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here but with all the love fest of bucket threads and how much good they do, keep in mind that a segment of the board has quite the opposite opinion of them.

There are even still those who don't want to see us going to general tv. It seemed like that used to be a value of ours.

Well, I still don't think that every show we watch needs a dedicated home. But there are clearly some shows that need a little more than what they have now. A bucket thread or two, on a provisional basis, doesn't seem like that huge a leap for us.

Some people don't like that, I know. And as I said above, there are shows that are currently bucketed that I personally might prefer to see in their own threads. So it's not like bucket or nothing, from my perspective. But if you don't like the buckets, and you don't like the Natter - maybe some shows do need their own threads. But unless people are willing to specify what shows those might be, there's not a lot there to discuss.