Ed Martin Live from TCA - TCA Today: How Comic-Con Has Changed the Game

There's something different about the annual Television Critics Association summer tour this year. It begins today, approximately three weeks later than usual.

There are two significant reasons for this: Digital technology and the media monster that is Comic-Con.

To begin with the larger issue, the TCA tour in recent years has been dramatically altered by technology, resulting in huge changes in the quantity and characteristics of the content produced during it. I attended my first TCA in January 1990, and for at least 15 years thereafter it was literally a two or three week marathon of press conferences at various hotels in the Los Angeles area (broken up by off-site set visits, dinners, networking parties and other events). Reporters dutifully attended sessions and gave panelists their undivided attention, took copious notes, and then raced off to put their own spin on the day's information output and produce columns that would run in print, via fax or, later, online, usually the following morning.

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