Farewell for now, CSTonline - by Kim Akass | CST Online

I am writing this blog with a heavy heart.  After 21 years and 2,000 blogs I have taken the decision to ‘rest’ the website after Easter.  My reasons are varied.  Since we started this iteration of CSTonline, with my gripe about Sky Exclusivity and John Ellis’s letter from America, we have had a steady stream of blogs.   Some weeks we were inundated and other weeks not so, but we have always received something from someone.

The idea of the website was to provide a public, open access forum, for the dissemination of writing about TV, reports from funded projects and just general ‘this is what I saw this week’.  We always said that TV demanded instant responses, we couldn’t always wait for publishers to print our thoughts – the promise of the internet meant that we could receive a blog and have it out there for reading within a week.  Heady days.

The problem is that, over the past few years, Higher Education has been undergoing some pretty seismic changes.  Redundancies (voluntary or otherwise), lack of funding, heavier workloads for remaining staff and increased demands from students have meant that everyone has less and less time to devote to writing that doesn’t bring some kind of institutional reward.  It makes sense that, in this case, with families to attend, books to write and students to teach, coupled with the demands of REF (or the tenure track) and a general sense of overwhelm has resulted in no blogs.

Thanks to stalwart bloggers, and a team of committed volunteers, we have managed to keep the website alive but, it has become clear that something has to change.  Podcasts are the new (old) blogs and, despite our attempts to keep everyone interested, it is time to admit that we can no longer proceed without regular content.

We re-launched CSTonline in its present state on 19 February 2011.  Early days were exciting and busy.  My re-launch blog announced that ‘We are retaining David Lavery’s column Telegenic, with his insightful and humorous look at all things televisual.  In Primetime stays and so do the regularly updated sections – Calls For Papers, upcoming conferences, workshops and study days (listed monthly), postgraduate funding the (very) occasional job vacancy and my favourite TV story of the week (or sometimes day) complete with moving pictures.’

Even someone as prolific as David Lavery, however, found it difficult to keep up with blogging demands and called ‘Telegenic’ quits after his blog on Modern Family.  He continued to blog for us until he sadly died on 30 August 2016.  Andrew Pixley has been one of our more prolific bloggers as has Melissa Beattie.  I have written a few over the years as has the aforementioned John Ellis.  Elke Weissmann has been prolific as well as editing and managing ECREA’s contributions (for which I am grateful).  We have featured blogs from all over the world about subjects relevant to TV from Public Service Broadcasting to commercial dramas, streaming, cable, networks, social media … the list goes on.

I am sure that the community has much more to say about the state of television.  Streaming has up-ended the industry, as has the introduction of AI, the writer’s strikes and the continued (and continual) attack on the BBC. There is always something to say but, unfortunately, not always the time to say it.

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