3.24.2013

I'm Still Mad At You, Variety

Remember when I told you how your new site sucks?

Your response has been two-fold. (1) You've opted to cease publishing the daily paper version of your magazine. (2) In your final print edition you put in a little how-to for your new site.

Guess what? That didn't make things any better.

You wrote about how your redesign makes things easier. For whom? What your redesign does is make things busier and uglier. You've got three columns of varying sizes going down the page, and then those are sometimes cut across by horizontal columns . . . It's a basket-weave mishmash of information.

Oh! But I'm supposed to use these little navigation buttons at the top of the screen. Considering there's so little organization to the content of the "front page" of your site, one would think clicking over to the section one wants to read about would make things easier. But if I click on the + one thing happens, and if I double click on the text something else happens. How fun. By which I mean "obnoxious."

What about VScore? So, you know, I can get that data I used to be able to get right on the front page when I came to the site? Your how-to tells me this is where to go for ratings and such. Except when I click on it, all I get is "Coming Soon . . ." How soon is soon? Things move fast in Hollywood, and numbers are key, but apparently VScore is still waiting for a greenlight. I give it a MeScore of F.

Yes, yes, I do realize that the far right of the front page has some box office info. Some being the key qualifier here.

I'd say I'm averse to change except I'm usually quite adaptable. It's when the changes are for the worse that I get grumpy. And if I, a 30-some-year-old, finds navigating your site to be the online equivalent of hacking through a jungle with a blunt machete, I'm pretty sure the old guys in the executive suites hate it just as much if not more.

Except they probably have interns to find that info for them.

So hey, Variety: I and the interns all hate you right now. Just sayin'.

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