The site began in late 1998 by Sarah Bunting and Tara Ariano, with technical support from David Cole, as an online forum driven by discussion of the show Dawson's Creek, then named DawsonsWrap.

[3] The DawsonsWrap format was popular, and by 1999, they expanded to include other shows with a similar approach, rebranding the site as Mighty Big TV.

[5] Television Without Pity was expected to run independently under this acquisition, with Bunting and Ariano remaining in full editorial control of the site.

[10] However, the relaunch plans were scrapped by Tribune Media April 2017, alongside other cost-cutting measures, including layoffs and shuttering of new editorial content at Screener.

[citation needed] Beginning in 2007, TWoP introduced "weecaps" – initially presented as single-page television series reviews written in real time.

The abbreviated recap style – first used for coverage of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge and Dancing with the Stars during the spring – was later employed for a larger slate of summer replacement series, with eventual reconfiguring into multi-page entries.

The American version of Survivor used weecap coverage for the start of its China season but full recaps returned with that edition's 7th episode and have remained in place since then.

Shows canceled by the network (or deemed to be unpopular with the readers of TWoP) are considered to be in permanent hiatus, a status which is rarely reversed except for reality shows: the U.S. version of Big Brother returned to coverage in June 2006 when its All-Stars season began for the first time since its third season; Real World/Road Rules Challenge also returned to the active list in April 2007, with its recapping format switched to a shorter, real-time commentary; and while the site decided after the sixth edition of The Apprentice to stop recaps, the Celebrity Apprentice edition was brought back for coverage.

The forums are heavily moderated by staff to avoid significant off-topic discussion, unprotected spoiler information, and flame wars.

Television Without Pity was known to have established the use of recapping with commentary as a viable genre of criticism alongside a social space as to talk about shows.

Club grew from this type of approach, and social media is used heavily by television networks and fans alike to discuss shows as they occur in real time.

[3] For the past several years, posters at the site have organized "TARCon" in New York City which is a viewing party for the season finale of The Amazing Race.

The sites' founders started a new website, Previously.tv, that provided a similar style of recapping and forums, as well as writing for various media outlets.