Don't stop believing

Hi, everybody. Today was going to be the second installment of the What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier. I had everything set up: a video Q&A, some quick discussion of the Emmys (Yay, Pitt! Boo, Nate Bargatze!), a link to The Sopranos trivia quiz I wrote that Rolling Stone published over the weekend, etc. But men plan newsletters, and the newsletter gods laugh, and here we are.

You may have heard that things are tough in media right now. The Grim Reaper has come for a lot of my friends over the last few years, and this week, he came for me. I've been informed that my time at Rolling Stone is over, effective immediately. I have one online story still to be published, plus a small feature in the November print issue of the magazine, but that's unfortunately the end of my affiliation with a place I've really enjoyed working at for the last seven and a half years.

What's next? I'm still figuring that out, as the news is fresh. For now, though, this newsletter you're reading has turned from a supplement to my regular writing into the primary home of my regular writing. I'll be reviewing things (like this week's debut of Netflix's Black Rabbit, with Jude Law and Jason Bateman), recapping things, etc., here at What's Alan Watching?(*) In addition to next week's Alien: Earth finale, I'll be writing a lot about FX's The Lowdown and Vince Gilligan's new Apple show, Pluribus. And there's plenty of good and bad TV still to come this year for me to review and discuss.

(*) Related: If you're an TV industry professional reading this and want to reach out about me covering things, make sure I'm still on distro lists, etc., feel free to email me.

The vast majority of that writing will be behind the paywall, in what will now be two tiers:

• Tier 1: What's Alan Writing? This is the renamed version of the What Else Is Alan Watching? tier, so if you already subscribed to that, you're still on the list. This will basically be me doing what I'd been doing for Rolling Stone: reviews, recaps, analysis of big industry news, tributes, maybe some interviews. Because this is now substantially more content than I was originally going to do for this tier, I've raised the price slightly, from $5 per month/$50 per year to $7 per month/$70 per year. If you signed up for the annual plan before today, congratulations: you've got that discount for the rest of your initial year's subscription!
• Tier 2: What Else Is Alan Watching? This will feature the kind of bonus content that I was initially planning to have at the $5 tier: Ask Alan videos, looks back at old shows, etc. These will not necessarily be every week, depending on how much I'm writing for Tier 1, but I'll try to do at least a couple a month. This is now also the only tier with access to the newly-launched What's Alan Watching? Discord, if you want to chat with me or each other(*). Tier 2 will be $10 per month/$100 per year.

(*) If you already subscribed to the $5 tier in part for the Discord access, email me and I'll grandfather you in.

There will continue to be a free Friday newsletter, where I'll link to other things I've done, and offer briefer thoughts on some of the things that are in the paid tiers. But so long as this place is my primary writing outlet, I need to be paid for that writing. Which makes now an excellent time to consider becoming a paid subscriber:

I'm still working on my Rod Serling biography, and I have another book project to announce, hopefully soon. I'm also continuing to explore launching a weekly TV discussion podcast, and other projects. But it's early days. You'll know the additional things as soon as I can tell you about them, and those kinds of announcements will always be included in the free Friday newsletter.

Thank you all for reading me over the years. Thank you for continuing to read me now. As my old pal Anthony Soprano would say, it's been