Pres Cafe Watch News and Information Board

[jsm]

Not writing this to belabor the point about the decision to block non UK folks from Pres Cafe, it is what it is.

That being said, it does give me a twinge of sadness...For reasons that I myself cannot comprehend as a 11 year old New Yorker in the mid 2000s, I began checking in on TVForum, and consistently began following all the way through whatever that second place was, and then to PresCafe. Visiting these pres forums almost became a bit of muscle memory of daily life, like when you find yourself tuning a radio dial by hand or absentmindedly typing Google into Google. While I was mostly a lurker, I osmotically learned about the pips and Big Moira and Eurovision et al (even getting a random Puffin's Plaice shout out in 2006), all that muscle memory giving me background into a cultural world very much beyond my frame of reference, but one I still felt compelled to dive into, for reasons that still escape me. I think in some ways my interest was more about the comfort of this odd routine, like walking by a neighbor day after day, rather than sustained investment in the actual subject matter?

I'm 31 now. The internet I knew used to feel like such a place of possibility and niche connection, but now paywalls and firewalls are popping up more and more, and every day I feel my world getting just a little bit smaller. All's to say, it's just a forum, this smaller world will continue to spin, I can follow pres news in other ways. But I can't help but feel a twinge of loss, of confronting the sudden end of a random, certainly irrational twenty year habit that I don't really think I've really ever confronted as a habit until right now.

[cdd]

I am not sure the changing Internet is the cause, since other forums are still alive and well. TVF didn't close for no reason, and the trends that led to its closure are increasing.

[JetixFann450]

I'm not entirely surprised by the move made by Pres Cafe to lock people outside of the UK to visit their forum. It is a slight annoyance to me, as in many cases I often have a US VPN on to combat the fact that Twitter still doesn't have an actual valid age verification method, and I've had muscle memory moments where I click pres.cafe and been prompted with the CloudFlare blocked screen.

Though I worry if with laws like the OSA, they were pressured to stick to the UK than to try and target other countries, who may be enacting similar laws.

Not surprising, but ideally it sounds like it was out of their hands. There will always be a place to discuss TV presentation outside of Pres Cafe, but it does seem increasingly likely that this will dwindle in years to come.

I do hope they remove the "Your posts are being moderated" on my account though. It's been long enough.

[Martin Phillp]

The French tv threads have been dead since the block of international users. It was nice to discuss with other English speakers about the weird and wonderful world of French television.

So it's back to Lenodal to read about French presentation.

[bilky asko]

Russell T. Davies = RTD
Gary Lineker = MTD

It seems RTD as stated he is not in any of the meeting linked to the future of the series, including who is the next doctor.... which seems a bit odd..

There alot of rumours saying RTD has been kicked out as the showrunner, He has done a interview with the Big Issues. Within that RTD has made comments that are worse than anything Gary MTD Lineker.

[all new Phil]

I thought MTD was Midlands Today? Seriously, this is changing everything I knew about initials.

[WillPS]

The spirit of DVB Cornwall lives on.

[Charles]

Sad to hear that everyone out of the UK has been blocked. I thought it was initially just me, and I spent about half an hour searching to try to find a way to get myself unblocked. I really hope they sort out their Cloudflare problem, as pres.cafe (and TVForum) were my favorite pres sites, even though I'm in the US.

[coldiceattk]

Sad to hear that everyone out of the UK has been blocked. I thought it was initially just me, and I spent about half an hour searching to try to find a way to get myself unblocked. I really hope they sort out their Cloudflare problem, as pres.cafe (and TVForum) were my favorite pres sites, even though I'm in the US.

It's not a "Cloudflare problem". It is the Pres Café admins who imposed the block using Cloudflare.

[Martin Phillp]

While there's one US contributor I won't miss, the other international members have been excellent and brought their own perspective to changes in presentation which is missing since they decided to block everyone outside the UK.

I also use a VPN, but use split tunnelling so I can use my UK ISP to access pres.cafe.

[GhostFromTVF]

Just spotted that the GB News thread is no longer being “proactively moderated” as of now. The Talk TV thread remains the same.