Your guide to the TV critics press tour

As mentioned in today's column (which partly repeats sentiments from this post, but also includes a list of notable premiere dates over the next few weeks), I'm flying off to LA to cover the Television Critics Association winter press tour. You can read my traditional press tour primer, where I explain concepts like the scrum (like the one pictured above, featuring a very miserable Jamie Tarses repeatedly explaining that she wasn't about to be fired), the non-party party and the Rule of Jay, here.

If you've been hanging around here a while, you know that the tour consumes virtually every waking moment while I'm there, plus I'll need to carve out some time to write column reviews of all the new and returning shows of note. So I have to dial back some of the regular episode-by-episode blogging for a bit. The good news is that I've seen a lot of stuff in advance, and whenever possible -- the last two "Friday Night Lights" episodes, the "Lost" and "Battlestar Galactica" premieres, etc. -- I'll have some kind of review ready to post as soon as the episode finishes airing on the East Coast. (I have the outline for tonight's "FNL" post already written, and hope to get it done on the flight, laptop battery permitting.) But in other cases, particularly with new shows, there may be a lot of "So, what did everybody think of 'United States of Tara'?" posts.

To pre-empt the "Are you going to Twitter the tour this time?" questions, the answer is no. I'm distracted enough as it is writing tour blog entries during sessions; if I had a Twitter feed at my disposal, I'd feel compelled to fill it, and then I'd basically stop paying attention altogether to what's happening in the room. As you can see from a skim of some of my July tour entries, I'm not exactly a slacker when it comes to blogging the more interesting moments. And if you somehow need a real-time, Twitter-tastic take on the tour (say that five times fast), there's always Dan Fienberg, whom I'll be sitting next to and kibbitzing with during most sessions.