Written By Rick Ellis, Wednesday, January 10th, 2005

As I write this, members of the TCA, or Television Critics Association, are arriving in California for their regular January press gathering. Network publicists, stars and executives will spend a couple of weeks immersed in an endless round of panels. All designed to give TV critics enough quotes to fill their columns until the next TCA meeting takes place in July.

2006 promises to be a harrowing year for media companies--and the TV networks are smack in the middle of the hurricane. VOD, Video iPods, Yahoo, BitTorrent, shorter DVD windows...the business is going to change in ways that we can't yet imagine.

And yet, when next January rolls around, the networks will be trotting out their latest round of stars for another TCA gathering.

When you ask the average TV executive where he thinks he needs to get the message out on that newest show, the first answer isn't a print publication. It's the MySpace's of the media world, the places online where millions of people are spending increasing amounts of time. That's where the TV audience is migrating to, and yet, the world of television criticism is still paneling like it's 1996. Or at least 2002.

This is not to say that I think the members of the TCA are necessarily all out of touch. But I think the process they've set up is flawed, and it's compounded by an institutional reluctance by many network publicists to acknowledge the value of the online media.

I've been writing (in a paid capacity, mind you) online for about a decade. I've worked at several media companies, and created this site back when the tech bust hit about five years ago. AllYourTV is not a fly-by-night operation. We're just about the only remaining independent TV and media news organization left, and we've broken our fair share of national stories.

And yet, too many times, I find myself talking to network publicists who are either being complacent or blind to the realities of the new media world.

We have a readership that equals or exceeds just about every print publication short of TV Guide. We understand the business, we don't do gossip, we cover the industry with the respect and scrutiny it deserves.

Given all that, and the pressure to get out the word on shows that might be in some trouble, you would think that network flacks would be pursuing online markets, particularly those who have a track record.

Alas, you would be mistaken.

I'm going to pick on ABC now, although they certainly aren't the only network that has been difficult to work with in the past. But overall, our contacts with the ABC communications and media departments have been about as frustrating an experience as can be had from someone you're not related to.

While every major (and most minor) networks have a press-only web site, ABC is the only one which we haven't been able to get full access to. The reason? Well, they don't grant access to "online publications." And it's certainly not any easier to contact individual publicists, since the site only lists their phone numbers and not email address. Even when we get someone on the phone, the call is most likely to end with a hurried, "Oh yeah, I'll get back to you on that."

While ABC's treatment is exceptionally lackluster, it is a symptom of a greater issue. Overall, many network publicists--and many TV writers--still see the process in the same way as they did a decade ago. The networks often don't want to deal with a group of online journalists that they are unfamiliar with and frankly don't trust. And the TCA, a group of primarily print journalists, don't have much of a reason to change either.

So while the television business continues to evolve, January is going to be a same-old, same old month for our TV critic brethren.

And ultimately, we can live with that. Because at the end of the day, our audience is growing, it's younger and makes more money than the average print reader. So like it or not, at some point, we're going to be invited into the process.