Office Tally, brought to you by NBC Universal?
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- April
- 1
I smell an April Fool’s Day joke.
Jennie “tanster” Tan announced at her site a little while ago that OfficeTally.com has been acquired by NBC Universal. I’m not buying it because today is April 1. (UPDATE: Pretty much confirming, for me anyway, that this is all a joke is the fact that NBC’s announcement states that Office Tally is being absorbed by “the Sheinhardt Wig/GE/NBC/Universal family of companies”. 30 Rock fans see right through that.)
The acquisition has allegedly been in negotiation since Tan went to L.A. to picket alongside striking writers and would become official June 1.
Tan, left, with Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski (and below with Steve Carell and Angela Kinsey) during a set visit last spring.
The brief statement includes a short list of changes that immediately began drawing harsh reactions from loyal “Tallyheads.”
- The OfficeTally Chat Room will be integrating two other NBC Thursday night shows — namely, My Name Is Earl and 30 Rock. (Ed. note: Huh?)
- The Season 4 and Season 5 spoiler posts will no longer be updated as spoilers are against our parent company’s policy. (Ed. note: Wha?)
- The OfficeTally Calendar will no longer list cast appearances on ‘Letterman’ or other non-NBC vehicles. (Ed. note: Seriously?)
- Consistent with other NBC.com content, comments about deleted scenes will be geo-filtered so that only U.S. Tallyheads can read them. (Ed. note: Yikes)
- Lastly, and even though this is something I’ve tried to avoid since OfficeTally started, ads will be incorporated into the OfficeTally page design. (Ed. note: Ouch!)
“I seriously feel like I am going to cry,” writes a poster named joy. “OT has always been like the office mothership and now I just feel like it is just a webpage of NBC.”
Adds poster Cousin Mose, “Score another one for the giant networks. Too bad. I’ll miss this place.”
The reaction was not entirely negative, though.
“Like others, I have mixed emotions about this,” Kenna writes. “But I know how much you love this show and this site, so I know you have the best of reasons for making this decision. I’ll still be visiting daily.”Here’s why I don’t buy it, aside from the calendar.
When I interviewed Jennie “tanster” Tan via e-mail a year ago this week about the time-consuming extracurricular passion of hers that is OfficeTally.com, she said she never tired of the access the site gave her to the stars and creative minds behind The Office.
“No, it definitely never gets old,” she said. “It is always a thrill when I get an e-mail from a member of the cast or I see OT mentioned in one of their blogs. I am thrilled that they actually come to OT! Jenna [Fischer] once said to me ‘I get more news and I’m able to be a much better cast member because of OfficeTally.’ Sweet, right? I know she visits OT all the time.â€
And when I asked her what would become of the site when the show eventually went off the air, her answer struck me as heartfelt.
Well, you know that the show will end eventually. I am guessing, maybe a five-year run? When that happens, it will be a sad, heartbreaking day. But whatever the case, OfficeTally will live on as an archive of one of the best TV shows ever in history. And I will finally get to take a long vacation.
There is no questioning the passion or sincerity tanster has brought to The Office fandom. Her readers have considered her one of them from the start because that’s what she has always been. The fact that cast members, including the Web-savvy Fischer, took note of the site and gave it a boost early on (even mentioning it on the Season 2 DVD commentaries) only affirmed her status as a superfan.So the disappointment many express isn’t surprising. Getting swallowed by a giant corporation seldom boosts an independent news outlet’s objectivity. But TelevisionWithoutPity.com offers a decent example of a TV fan site that has survived acquisition (by Bravo, an NBC property, last May) and maintained its own voice. Of course, that example also lends credence to the possibility that this announcement is quite real.
The fact is, OfficeTally has never been a source for even mild criticism of The Office. tanster distinguished herself by being comprehensive, authoritative and up to the minute. But she left the snark to sites like TWOP. Those very qualities that hooked a legion of Office fans are what would attract the network, which may well be seizing upon a chance to monetize a following that it had long encouraged but profited from only indirectly.
Then again, it could all be a joke. We’ll see.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 1:22 pm by Brian Howard.
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Category: Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, Office Tally, The Office
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My money’s on joke. For the reasons you stated.
And then on the other hand, while TWOP has survived, it offers much shorter recaps and it sounds like all the founders just left recently… sinking ship?