It’s been a time of professional anniversaries for me of late. Eight years ago this month, I left The Star-Ledger to join what was then HitFix. And two years ago last month, HitFix was acquired by the parent company of Uproxx, though the two sites wouldn’t merge until later in 2016, with What’s Alan Watching sliding from one URL to another.
The jobs haven’t been exactly the same, and I’ve worked with an almost entirely different group of people in the Uproxx days than I did at HitFix. But there’s enough overlap that it feels to me like one continuous and very happy run. It’s been a great eight years, working alongside people like Dan Fienberg, Drew McWeeny, Jen Sargent, Greg Ellwood, Katie Hasty, Richard Rushfield, and more in the HitFix era, and with Brian Grubb, Keith Phipps, Brett Michael Dykes, Mike Ryan, Steven Hyden, Jarret Myer, and more under the Uproxx banner.
But I’ve been in some version of this job for a long time, and in this life, I’ve found it’s important to shake things up now and then. Which is why I have some big news to share with you all:
Tomorrow will be my last day at Uproxx before I begin a new position on Friday as chief TV critic at Rolling Stone.
This is a great job, with people I’ll miss working alongside every day, but I’m also excited to be embarking on a new adventure with the gang at Rolling Stone.
In the meantime, you still have me to kick around these parts for two more days, which will include a couple of Americans series finale posts (recap and showrunner post-mortem) tonight, and my last podcast with Brian on Thursday. We were planning to focus entirely on The Americans finale (and maybe some Killing Eve), but if you had some other question you wanted us to answer while we’re still co-workers, it’s now or never, so send ’em to tvavalanche@uproxx.com. (My Uproxx email should still work for a few more days, at least, if you want to write me there.) And I recorded one last Ask Alan episode, which includes a few more farewell words, embedded at the top of this post.
The plan is to keep all of the combined HitFix/Uproxx archives of What’s Alan Watching live, including the post with links to recaps of the shows I covered most over the years.
It’s been my absolute pleasure writing for you in this space for the last two/eight years. As a wise man once said, see ya in the next life, Jack!