Variety columnist Brian Lowry is now blogging about television at the trade's new BLTv — "Good TV; reasonable prices." He posts that the current TV critics tour feels more pointless than usual.

For long-time TV critics as well as network PR types, there's a kind of malaise hanging over the current TV Critics Assn. tour. Staff cutbacks at newspapers, coupled with a generally grim economy, have made the winter tour feel especially useless, inviting questions as to whether networks will seek to reduce costs by retrenching to a single summer session.

[skip]

As for the journalists sequestered in Universal City, the room remains full for the question-and-answer sessions, but a lot of us who have attended for years (myself sparingly, inasmuch as I'm based in Los Angeles) are looking around the room with quizzical expressions. We don't recognize half the people there, or who (usually as in what web site) they write for.

He also asks what's with MSNBC and its inauguration anchors?