PVRWire To Shut Down
A bit of shocking news. AOL, the parent company of the Weblogs network, has decided to retire PVRWire on January 31st.
As a relative newcomer to the world of PVR/DVR blogging, I’m a bit shocked and saddened to hear that AOL doesn’t want to keep PVRWire open. I wonder what the “overlords” are thinking. Do they believe PVRs aren’t interesting anymore? Or are they planning on starting a brand new blog that encompasses other technologies along with PVRs/DVRs?
PVRWire has been around a long time and it will be sad to see it shut down.
As usual, I’ll keep you up-to-date not just on PVRWire, but about all things PVR/DVR.
Update: There’s a story at ValleyWag back on January 19th, that says AOL is shutting down a few blogs due to “budget cuts”.
“AOL is closing down a slew of smaller blogs it bought from entrepreneur-provocateur and Valleywag staple, Jason Calacanis, in 2005. The bulk of AOL’s ad revenues from its blog network, running at more than $1m a month according to Calacanis, come from a few star brands such as Engadget, Autoblog and Joystiq. They’re in traditional broad categories: consumer electronics, autos and video games. The Time Warner internet unit has told editors of smaller and unprofitable sites that they will be shuttered at the end of the month. So far, we’re hearing lesser-known titles such as BBHub, Divester, DV Guru and PVR Wire…”
And a comment at ValleyWag by Calacanis says:
“..my plan when running Weblogs Inc. was always to shut down blogs that were not at 1M pages a month (or on their way to 1M pages a month)…My guess is they would consolidate DVGuru and PVRWire into Engadget and EngadgetHD, BBHUB into EngadgetMobile, and Divester into Gadling.”
Apparently AOL is closing them down and merging them into other Weblogs properties.
I’ll keep looking into this story.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:19 am
Hey Jose
PVRWire will be fully closing and not opening anywhere else. I imagine it will be left in place like the other Weblogsinc blogs that closed before.
I imagine PVR coverage will continue on engadget, but just not in as much detail or as frequent.
January 30th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Hi Jose,
At the moment I have the same understanding as Chris in that Engadget will pick up some of the slack, but there will likely still be a bit of a void for PVR related news on the Weblogs Inc. network.
If you would like a bit of background info (including comments from Jason Calacanis), check out http://valleywag.com/tech/aol/a-warning-to-niche-blogs-230122.php
P.S. Thanks for the kind words about PVR Wire.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Well, Jose. I guess you are ultimate ruler of the PVR blogs… for now.