The only rule I've seen in the experimentals is "all yur TV talk belong to us"--for a given set of TV talk, that is. We can discuss the entire Mike Rowe ouvre in Non Fiction, bounce around to the haircut and fashion reality shows, then come back to some strange thing someone saw that no else knew about. The broader genre discussion invites mentions of obscure shows that only two or three people may have seen, and that kind of discussion probably wouldn't come up in Natter because of all the varying streams of conversation.

In Network Drama, it may not get the kind of indepth philosophical analysis I see people doing with Supernatural, but it's easier to discuss the whole broad spectrum of drama as shown on TV. That's hard to do in Natter as well, without getting diverted into work or dry cleaning discussions.

all of them have different whitefont policies

Lee, for what it's worth (I don't expect this to make you like the threads any better, just want you to have the information if you can use it)

NAFDA:
Network Drama thread
Comedy thread
Non-Fiction TV

WHITE FONT FOR 24 HOURS
Cable Drama thread

I don't think you opened a can of worms, either. Personally, I was never trying to establish these threads for their own sakes. I wanted to see what people talked about, what worked together, what didn't.

People redirecting TV talk out of Natter are absolutely wrong to be doing so. They need to be told when they do that. It seems to me that if all the people who have expressed missing TV talk in Natter today, would start talking about TV in Natter again, there would be plenty of TV talk left in Natter, but that could just be an impression.

Personally, I missed TV talk when I was in Natter, because I'm almost never at the computer when I'm watching TV.

Ah, there's nothing like editing for format and making it all uglier! My work here is done.

It seems to me that if all the people who have expressed missing TV talk in Natter today, would start talking about TV in Natter again, there would be plenty of TV talk left in Natter, but that could just be an impression.

Well, it used to work better when I brought up GA than it does now. I can't say why, but I still brought up GA anyway, and it failed to catch.

I missed TV talk when I was in Natter, because I'm almost never at the computer when I'm watching TV.

Neither am I--how was it a problem for you?

It didn't catch. It was also just hard to find it if I was looking for it. It always seemed to happen when I wasn't around. I also don't watch a lot of the stuff that had a sizable Natter audience.

I don't mean to argue this point too much, but has that really been happening? I haven't picked up on it, if so.

yes. I can think of several times when people have been pointed towards the experimental threads when they bring up TV shows, and I am pretty sure this happened with ita and GA once even after she had expressly said "those don't work for me".

(unless I am making that last part up, and if I am, it's the allergy meds' fault, but I am pretty sure I remember seeing that.)

Do you think a reminder in Press might help -- something about the proposal specifically stating TV talk was welcome in Natter during the experiment (as always)?

Even without strict thread-nannying, I don't think it's practical to have parallel TV-talk in multiple threads. If there's already a conversation in progress over in Network Drama, bringing up the same show in Natter isn't going to have much traction unless people want to cross-post and repeat themselves.

So while I appreciate the spirit of "these threads weren't meant to take anything away from Natter," I don't think it's ever going to work out that way, no matter how nice we all are about it. Having a thread dedicated to Topic X will inevitably move most Topic X talk out of Natter.

I'll chime in as liking the new TV threads, and liking that this discussion is NOT in Natter any more, because I never kept up with it, or sometimes never even saw discussion on some shows, because of the speed at which said discussion flew by, and it was too diluted by everything else.

That being said, I'd say the most successful is a tie between Network Drama and Non-Fiction. Network Drama has the most posts, but Non-Fiction seems to have caused the most cross-pollination discussion.

Comedy is doing well, but about 200 posts behind the other.

Cable Drama is doing quite poorly, but it's hard to say if that's because of the whitefont thing (I don't think so), or if it's because the only show we're actually discussing right now in there is The Riches, and not everybody's catching it on first broadcast.

It didn't catch. It was also just hard to find it if I was looking for it. It always seemed to happen when I wasn't around. I also don't watch a lot of the stuff that had a sizable Natter audience.

I don't think that has much to do with you not being at your computer while watching it, though. Not only am I on Pacific delay, I TiVo a bunch of stuff and don't have a computer in the room with the TV.