Lots of popular shows don't have their own threads or even agitation for their own threads. I'm reasonably confident that the next five years will be kinda like that.

Agreed, and I don't know why I'm beating this horse, but looking at the thread list, we have the following creation dates:

2002 Firefly
2003 LOTR
2004 Lost
2005 Veronica Mars
2006 Premium Cable

Just pointing out and giving everyone some perspective that at least one new thread gets created a year.

To follow-up, rather than spawning a new thread for each show that comes along that garners interest, it seems to me that the best course of action would be to retire the current television-related threads and replace them with a framework that allows for some separation of show discussion while at the same time limiting the possibility of thread proliferation. I suggested networks, but I'm sure there are other ways of creating the groups -- you could have the Red Thread with shows beginning A-M and Blue Thread with shows N-Z.

Eddie, that would be more organized than useful. I think we're going for a useful sort of organization.

I'm willing to compromise and throw my support behind a SciFi channel thread and a non-cable genre thread (Lost, VM, Heroes, SPN, and the ilk). General TV talk should stay in Natter.

I would support this. Although, isn't there some non-network stuff that isn't on SciFi that probably should stay in Boxed Set?

isn't there some non-network stuff that isn't on SciFi that probably should stay in Boxed Set?

Doctor Who, for one. Airs on both Sci Fi (so far) and BBCAmerica. And BBCAmerica will air other stuff like Hex which falls into the genre description. And no reason for other stations to not do so either.

So Boxed Set would stay pretty much as-is with "cable" thrown into the description while the network shows get a spin-off thread.

It makes sense for a network genre thread to absorb Lost, but is VM genre? I don't watch that one so I couldn't say.

VM is noir, not fantasy/sci-fi/spec fic. Noir is a genre, but not the genre we generally mean when we talk about Boxed Set.

A given episode can generate between 50 and 150 (it varies) posts over the course of a week. We'd lose that in Natter.

I'd like to request we hold our breaths on VM for a while. The odds are the show is going to die at the end of this season. If it does die, I can't imagine much objection to shuttering the thread. If it doesn't die, it's likely going to change significantly (no more long mysteries) next season, which may well kill off (or increase, but I think kill off) much of the discussion.

I'd like us to see what happens before we make a decision that's going to push it to white font in Natter. That said, if it could be included in a (hypothetical) broadcast network thread, I wouldn't mind as much. I just think sending it back to Natter will kill off what's generally good (if not terribly high volume) discussion.

I'd like to see us do something (but I'm not sure what would be most useful, which as amych notes, is important) with our TV stuff. I think I missed out on Eureka, because at the time, I wasn't watching anything on Sci-Fi, and I'd just forget to tune in. It seems to me that I didn't know Heroes was discussed in Boxed Set for a while, either.

Java, there's generally a little talk about The Office, in Natter, on Friday mornings. I usually post something, but it doesn't usually find its wings. A handful of us watch it, though.

Okay, I'm going to throw this out there having no idea if it's possible or how much work it would be, but would it be possible to make posts in the Boxed Set thread taggable by show, so that those afraid of being spoied for BSG, but want to read about Heroes could either click a link or use search to find the Heroes related posts? And if that was possible and acheivable, would this work for people?

Sue, I was thinking along those same lines, though I have no idea if it would be possible or workable. But I like the idea of tags a lot. I'd also be in favor of a network/basic cable split for discussion of genre shows.

I do have to say that the current Boxed Set setup works pretty well for me, because I watch most of the shows in there, pretty close to when they air. But I appreciate that it doesn't seem to be working for some people, and I wouldn't be at all opposed to coming up with a better solution that allows more people to join in the discussions they want to join and skip over the ones they want to avoid.

I have to run for work right now, but thanks, Eddie, for the analysis. If we cut out the common words (the, it, is, et cetera) plus the poster names, it actually is kind of revealing. Especially "Jack" being so very very common!

I think Eddie's raised a valid point. Is there a way to organize the TV threads to be flexible enough to cover all of TV within a handful of (non-proliferating) threads? It's a useful question.

Unfortunately, I don't see an answer. There's just so much stuff out there that I don't see any logical way to organize it all into, say, 4 or 5 threads. I don't see channel/network organization working because we could probably justify 8-10 threads just on current viewing habits (the 5 Eddie mentions in #6317, plus maybe BBCAmerica, Cartoon Network, HBO, and that's just off the top of my head).

Genre might be an option -- SF, reality, noir, comedy, drama.

Except that there's another concern. If I'm reading ita's posts correctly (and apologies if I'm not), we're near capacity already. We really can't afford to do anything that would attract significant new traffic. New blood is always good, but not at the expense of overloading our infrastructure.

Which is all to say that I'm skeptical about a Heroes thread. I think there's enough interest to justify a show-specific thread. But would it bring in additional traffic that we can't afford.