CliqueClackWelcome to the new CliqueClack
Those of you who visit our front page regularly — whether it be for TV or Flicks — are seeing quite a change around here today. This is the new now. This is the future. This is a good thing.
Take a look around. If you’re new here, you can safely disregard what I’m about to say below and just go on enjoying our great new content here at CliqueClack. You old regulars: come with me. You’re about to read about some very good and much-needed changes happening around here!
When CliqueClack started four years ago — almost to the day — our first priority was to give readers episode reviews of TV shows that were no longer being offered at TV Squad. Sadly, everything that remotely resembles the TV Squad of old has been completely obliterated, so some of you may have no idea what I’m talking about. What was TV Squad became AOL TV, and what was AOL TV became part of Huffington Post. But I’m getting off track here. Let me start with the TV side of things, because that is where we started out here at CliqueClack.
I agree with fellow TV Squadder — and sometimes CliqueClacker — Bob Sassone, who wrote that episode reviews just aren’t cutting it anymore. Weekly recaps are a dime a dozen. If that’s what you’re looking for, there’s no shortage of sites offering them. For writing about TV shows, we want to work smarter. Writing at 10 or 11 PM on a weeknight isn’t going to get you the best of what a writer has to give; it’s going to give you a comatose piece of crap.
We want to regain the spirit upon which we were founded, which was not to write show reviews but to write ANYTHING that TV Squad would no longer allow, because their deep budget cuts meant articles with voice got cut first. And, more than anything else, that’s what the writers wanted to write. Most writers don’t want to write innane recaps weekly; they want to be smart, they want to stand out, they want to shine amidst a sea of mediocre TV writing, movie writing and pop culture writing. It’s time we get back to a place for them to do that again, which means better content for YOU.
What you’ve seen here for the past four years in terms of episode reviews is changing. In fact, it’s pretty much going away. Gone are hastily-done articles about a TV show, talking about nothing happening. Do you really want to read about someone nitpicking on tiny details of one episode? We need to deeply analyze these shows we love; revel in them. Rather than take a show and write about its episode in bits and pieces, we’ll have columns about the shows that might cover a particular theme of the episode, the season or the series as a whole. And those articles might be posted days after the episode aired … and it likely won’t cover every bloody detail, like how good “Character A” looked in a hat that night. A show might see weekly coverage, but it’s not something to necessarily count on, and they’re not going to be without soul.
The other exciting change here at CliqueClack is unity. We’re a “clique,” so it’s time we act like one. We’re taking CliqueClack Flicks and TV and merging them together as one. But it doesn’t end there — we’re bringing more subject matter into the fold. We’re talking books, music, technology, pop culture and more. Basically a bunch of cool stuff with well thought-out pieces that weren’t written at the witching hour or under pressure of deadline.
We’re also going with a more simplified format, with less front page clutter and way too many categories to confuse the hell out of you. If you want to find articles about a specific topic, you’ll be able to find them, but there’s no sense in making things more complicated than that.
This is CliqueClack now. This is the future. This is GOOD. I firmly believe this new focus on more thought-out, quality content is what our site needs to breath fresh air into it. We hope you’ll stick around and see what we’re up to and what new content we’ll be able to deliver in the coming years, because I’m feeling pretty damned reinvigorated about it.
26 Comments on “Welcome to the new CliqueClack”
Lots of nice little details in the Redesign. My compliments to the designer and the coder. I really like the shadow on the quote bubble, nice.
Shall be interesting.
Well … granted, it looks nice & clean. You guessed it, there is a “but” coming: The old design was easier to read imho.
Just hoping your redesign isnt finished yet
I’m willing to be patient and see how it grows on me, but I’ve had a lot of trouble finding anything other than the first page of posts. And I really dislike that there are now advertisements in the middle of a piece.
Well I have been with you since the beginning when I realized that my favorite TV squad writers were disappearing. I have been here for the whole 4 years and look forward to the future!
You were my go-to place for tv when you were the squad. Can’t stand what huffpo has done to that. I look forward to your new design. One suggestion – I love the virgin diaries. It would be great if there was a virgin section done chronologically by show by cliquer. I often want to go back and read Debbie supernatural virgin series and it is hard doing that on google.
i HATE the new version of Clickclack’s what’s on tv guide for the week….i LOVE LOVE LOVED the old version that came daily. It was much easier to read & see what was on & what needed to be dvr.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE…..go back to the old version.
Thanks
The daily version was a lot of work to do every morning for the small subscriber base, but I can better organize the weekly one of that will help!
Just curious, how long every day did it take you to do those?
At least a half hour every morning, but it the biggest downer was we did not have enough subscribers to make it worthwhile. Time was better spent elsewhere.
ah ok. Well I would like to tell you that I appreciated those emails. As someone who doesn’t have cable, it came in handy to see what was on each night so I knew when to get it online.
It’s true that the new ideas sound interesting…but I’ll admit that what brought me back day after day were the recaps and analyses of the latest episodes of my favorite shows. Many of my friends don’t watch the same shows I do, and it felt great to see others’ opinions (and give mine!) after a new episode. In fact, I came here this morning hoping someone had written about last night’s Leverage! Oh well, I’m hopeful that the new site will still be great, but I’ll miss those recaps!
And you would have read about Leverage if I weren’t 4 episodes behind!
Stay tuned, it’s likely I’ll have something to say once I catch up … it’s been a long summer! 
I’m perfectly happy to be patient!
Thanks Bill
Well they were never “recaps” as definitions go.
But we should have some good related stuff to many shows going forward in any case.
In other words, just like TVSquad has been obliterated, you’re now in the process of getting rid of many things that I liked here, like timely descriptions and analysis of the shows I watched last night. If I can’t count on finding here the things I want, why should I make a habit of visiting? Because you MIGHT talk about this weeks “Doctor Who”… if you happen to feel like it this week?
Oh by the way… do you think you can make things just a LITTLE BIT LARGER???? Most of the time sites use ginormous fonts and tons of white space so they don’t have to produce as much real content.
Sorry you feel that way. Hopefully you’ll stick around to see that the lack of content isn’t the case. Hopefully you’ll check in at least from time to time to see what we’re up to.
I have to agree with Alex99a especially as I’ve seen less content lately. What are those other sites you were talking about? I’ll have to check them out. I was also one of those daily subscribers like TwoDiffSocks.
Love the cleaner look. I’d lost track of CC. Good to be back.
Glad you like it!
Wow… I really like the look of the new site, I am hoping however that you do keep some of the old things like the Virgin Diaries… loved those. I am also hoping that the same clackers will be posting.
I’m out,
As much as I like a cleaner look, you’ve increased the size so much all I see on a screen is a headline, a picture, and a paragraph, yes I can see you’re apparently targeting mobile devices, but it comes at the expense of desktop users. I’m not using a small screen either, it’s 1920×1200
You can also visit the individual categories (across the top of the page) where the list of posts’ titles aren’t as large: https://cliqueclack.com/p/category/tv/
There’s a home page? I never knew. I follow Michael Noble and Tara Shrodes. So, that means the new truly is new to me. The old would have been new to me if I had ever bothered with it.
Facebook proves that people do not like change in the least bit. Embrace it, yo’.
I do like the new, clean look, but the body text color being gray instead of black causes me a great deal of eyestrain almost immediately. I would suggest changing that and that alone back to the old black. The main header and quote capsules look fine.
I was disturbed to see that the TV section only goes to page 3, but I assume you’re transitioning from the old server, and that as new articles are posted, the page count will be allowed to increase. However, I would like to have the author’s name credited on each article on the main page once again. I have many times in the past clicked on a post whose subject matter did not appeal to me just because I liked the author’s writing. Adding back the comment count per post doesn’t really matter to me, though.
On each individual post itself, it would be good to see the author’s avatar back, as it’s a Pavlovian association with his or her writing style. As it is now, it only appears if the author actually comments on their own post later.
[Well, the prior two paragraphs are irrelevant, as they seem only to apply to the mobile version of the site, as I discovered when looking for archived posts. However, clicking on the weekly email on my PC brought me to the /p mobile version, and even when in desktop mode, clicking on the category links puts me back in mobile mode. That should be made consistent.]
I’ve been missing Ratings Clack for the last month; sad to see it did not return with the site revamp, but I understand the need for a narrower focus.