(from The New Yorker)

Nancy Franklin announced that she is stepping down from her position as New Yorker television critic on Twitter today.

"I've been a critic for 18 years, and a TV critic for 13 of them. That's a lot of sitting alone indoors playing with one's equipment," Ms. Franklin wrote the Observer in an e-mail.

"I wanted to get out of the routine of writing a regular column and to get away from writing itself, at least for a while. It's a good move,and I'm just stupid enough not to be worried that I don't know what I'm going to do next," she added.

Despite the bittersweet tone, New Yorker editor David Remnick is confident she'll be back.

"I fully expect she’ll be back, but not about television," Mr. Remnick, a television fan himself, told the Observer. "There is no law that says once you're a television critic you must be one forever."

As for who will take over the On Television column, he had fewer expectations.

"We'll look around," he said. "Who knows? I'm doing what you do. I'm reading."

Ms. Franklin will do two more columns, he added. (Please, Ms. Franklin, do New Girl!)

She joined the New Yorker typing pool in 1978 and over the next decade climbed the ranks to nonfiction editor. She became a theater critic under Tina Brown and has been television critic since 1998.