Frame Rated Turns 10

Frame Rated officially hit its 10th anniversary in June 2025. I launched the website partly because my previous blog, Dan’s Media Digest (started on Blogger in 2005), was becoming difficult to update as frequently. So I’ve been writing consistently online for 20 years now! Longer if you count the occasional reviews I’d write for other people’s websites since 1998.

I am old.

Frame Rated was born from a desire for more editorial control and advanced website functionality than Blogger offered back in 2015. The core idea was to create a WordPress-powered platform where I could invite friends to contribute articles. This would free me from the demanding pace of publishing several articles daily, which I had experienced on Blogger.

This collaborative model has largely continued. My daily routine involves receiving submissions, editing them for quality and adherence to our house style, adding engaging visuals, and then publishing them. Naturally, this workflow has evolved over time, and we’ve seen many writers contribute to Frame Rated‘s journey.

Frame Rated’s Evolution with Medium

Frame Rated joined Medium in November 2016. This was a significant step, as Medium offered a built-in community, a brilliant user interface to work on as a writer, and the chance to monetise.

So we began syndicating content to reach Medium‘s vast audience. This also eased concerns about the potential loss of years of work (over 3000 articles) if the FR website ever had to shut down due to financial or personal reasons. While articles could be saved as text files, all embedded imagery would be lost. Medium thus served as both an exciting venture and an informal backup system, ensuring our writers’ work would remain accessible even if FR ceased operations.

Adapting to New Media Trends

The digital landscape has evolved over 10 years, with new media consumption habits not always favouring traditional web publishing. Platforms like Letterboxd (for film reviews), Substack (for newsletter subscriptions—which we’ve recently joined), and paid publication platforms like Medium are more common.

Financial Growth and the ‘Boost’

The Medium side of FR quickly grew in financial importance. Medium’s business model pays writers based on the engagement of members who pay $5/month or $50/year to access its paywalled articles. In 2023, I was also accepted into Medium’s new Boost program. This increases article visibility and readership after the initial two weeks, if suggested articles are granted a Boost by Medium‘s curation team, leading to greater earnings compared to un-Boosted articles.

Also, these days, a single “online home” for your content is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. To reach diverse audiences, Frame Rated publishes content across multiple platforms:

• www.framerated.co.uk: Our original website is where content is first published and always free. True fans bookmark it and visit daily.
• www.medium.com/framerated: The same content is monetised here the following day for a different audience.
• www.framerated.substack.com: A newer addition, this newsletter platform provides a third audience with an exclusive weekly missive and free curated FR articles.

Behind-the-Scenes

As a one-man operation, for the most part, I manually administer all of Frame Rated‘s online presence, from publishing to running the social media, without the assistance of paid automation. However, our many writers are the primary reason for FR‘s continued success and improvement…

Our Talented Team

Our current team consists of 18 contributors from across the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. Over the past decade, 65 individuals have written for us, but a special thanks go to our most dedicated stalwarts who’ve been with us the longest or contribute the most:

• Barney Page: Offers invaluable behind-the-scenes support and acts as a sounding board for my technical frustrations.
• Remy Dean: Expanded FR‘s scope with his expertise in arthouse, older movies, and Asian cinema, allowing us to cover many more niche film releases.
• Jono Simpson: Consistently delivers thorough in-depth disc reviews and is the go-to authority on Wes Anderson.
• Cian McGrath and Conall McManus: Recent additions from Medium, they’ve jointly contributed the majority of FR‘s reviews this past year with impressive speed and quality.
• Amelia Harvey: Reliably covers streaming films and TV shows at short notice, thanks to her early access.
• Devon Elson: Shares his specific interest in slasher horrors and writes unique, often humorous, retrospectives on films you may not always think deserve the effort.
• Alexander Boucher: Provides intelligent insights into a wide range of cinematic offerings, especially Criterion releases, and has been the main person to occasionally take advantage of London press screenings and events.
• Newer writers: I also appreciate the contributions of Billie Gagné-LeBel, Dan Perrin, Evan Sharp, Jack Heslop, James Lee, Lance Li, Marios Papadoniou, Quinn Francis, Rachel Dvorak, and Robert English. Thank you everyone!

Content Evolution & Niche Focus

Our writers’ interests largely shape FR‘s content. While I initially anticipated focusing on mainstream cinema and episodic TV reviews (like my early 2010s TV recaps on Blogger), the site has evolved based on what our contributors most want to write about. This has led us to cover more esoteric films, particularly from boutique Blu-ray distributors, and concentrate on prestige dramas that generate significant buzz rather than the vast array of TV shows covered by other sites.

Why Niche Matters

Finding niches has proven to be the best path for FR. Our in-depth disc reviews and retrospectives set a high bar, especially the releases from Arrow Video, Eureka Entertainment, Radiance Films, and the Criterion Collection.

For example, Remy’s thousands-word review of an Arrow’s box set of Shaw Brothers kung fu films offered far more detail than other sites, appealing to dedicated fans of martial arts cinema. Similarly, Conall McManus’s extensive review of Laurel & Hardy shorts provided a level of depth that other sites chose to gloss over because watching everything was such a tall order. We believe this thoroughness is what true enthusiasts seek in a world now mostly focused on ephemeral coverage aimed at people with short attention spans, all optimised to get clicks.

What Does the Future Hold?

Don’t expect big new projects from FR. Our core mission remains consistent: delivering high-quality film and television reviews almost daily, with minimal distractions.

I have considered moving FR solely to Medium on many occasions over the years. It would simplify management, speed up workflow, and eliminate the expenses and technical headaches of running a WordPress site. Medium are also notorious for changing their business model, or adjusting things to the detriment of some people, or not developing what they’ve built there to keep its users engaged as both readers and writers.

However, we’ll continue with our current model and processes for now.

This allows us to enjoy the benefits of being an independent website with our own domain, while still monetising content on Medium—so it’s the best of both worlds. While WordPress frustrations sometimes make Medium‘s ease of use a tempting prospect for an easy life, we’re sticking to business as usual for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for reading all these years. See you in 2035…?