Are
Local Newspaper Television Critics Still Needed?
The
newspaper TV critic is under siege these days. The television industry
is changing, and many of them have not kept up with those changes. Newspapers
have cut their jobs in cost-saving measures. A younger audience has
dried up, disinterested in their views. And the rise of the Internet,
with independent web sites and bloggers, means there are more “voices”
they have to compete against.
“Newspaper
critics are a dying breed, in large part due to the fact that they seem
less relevant to a younger audience,” Rick Ellis, co-founder of
AllYourTV.com, recently wrote in his “Does
the TCA still matter?”
commentary. (TCA stands for the Television Critics Association.) “The
critics aren’t reflecting the changes in the industry, they’re
not writing frequently enough, or about a wide enough range of programming.”
Earlier
this month, USA Today critic Robert Bianco addressed the Press
Club of Western Pennsylvania, and likewise spoke about problems within
the field. “Many newspapers have started to cut back, first on
their arts coverage and now including their TV coverage,” he commented.
“In
Dallas, the Dallas Morning News dropped a well-respected, and
very good TV critic, Ed Bark,” Bianco continued, “because
they felt they didn’t need local coverage of TV and they could
find someone to write about the comings-and-goings of the local station
and then just pick up a national voice for the criticism.”
All of
which raises an interesting question: do we still need newspaper TV
critics, or can they still serve a relevant role in this modern-day
media era? Ellis clearly has his doubts, but Bianco obviously disagrees.
Before becoming the television critic for USA Today, he served
a similar role for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and spoke about
that experience.
“The
one thing I was always sure of in Pittsburgh was that, yeah, people
could read the New York Times and did, but they wanted to hear
from us,” he observed. “They wanted to hear from the Post-Gazette,
they wanted to hear a voice that reflected themselves.”
The current
critic for the Post-Gazette, Rob Owen, has a like-minded attitude.
Although his coverage is broad-based, as it should be, he puts an emphasis
on news and commentaries relevant to the local Pittsburgh community.
For instance, the recent Spike TV miniseries The Kill Pit was
filmed in the area. The Pittsburgh region has also produced a number
of reality-TV participants, including Survivor winners Jenna
Morasca and Amber Brkich, and many television actors are graduates of
Carnegie-Mellon University, including Zach Quinto of Heroes.
Owen’s coverage of the above has been extensive.
But Owen
also has a “national” voice that one would not expect from
someone who works for a Pittsburgh newspaper. One of Ellis’ key
arguments revolves around the TCA’s twice-a-year press gatherings,
when critics from across the country meet in Los Angeles and attend
panels hosted by the mainstream US networks.
“Ten
years ago, giving a TV Critic in Cleveland access to quotes from Steven
Bochco was great for both the critic and his newspaper,” Ellis
wrote. “The readers didn’t realize he had the same quotes
as the critic from Des Moines or Birmingham. Most people only were able
to read the local coverage. But with the everyday use of the Internet,
that lack of original coverage is noticeable both to readers and to
the management at the respective newspaper.”
While this
may indeed be true, Owen has proven a knack for acquiring quotes and
information that others somehow missed, tidbits that are pertinent to
the rabid (and often younger) Internet-based fan community. For instance,
when newspaper critics across the country began writing in 2003 about
the upcoming fifth season of Joss Whedon’s Angel, the
coverage was pretty much the same. Except for Owen's, that is, as the
online Spoiler Slayer web site noted: “The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette TV Editor, Rob Owen, also interviewed Joss during
the WB Press Tour, and managed to get information that neither Kristin
(of E!) or The Futon Critic turned up.”
And when
Battlestar Galactica ended its third season back in March,
it was Owen and the Post-Gazette that had the Monday morning
wrap-up interview with series mastermind Ron Moore, as Herc at Aint-It-Cool
News (another younger-oriented web site) both pointed out and commented
on.
Owen also
demonstrates the “tech-savvy” that Ellis believes a number
of current newspaper critics lack; when Apple first began offering episodes
of television shows on iTunes, Owen wrote a very informative piece on
the effects the Internet would have on the future of television. He
also has his own “Tuned
In Journal”
blog available on the Post-Gazette web site.
But although
Owen is the type of TV critic that Bianco believes is still needed,
as well as the overlooked missing-link of Ellis’s argument, he
is not without his faults.
“Given
all the industry changes, you would expect the TCA to work hard to remain
relevant to both readers and the industry,” Ellis also writes.
“But they seem genetically incapable of doing so, adopting an
odd arrogance for an organization whose members are frequently seen
as less important to a newspaper’s success than the local home
and garden editor.”
Unfortunately,
Owen at times exhibits that aforementioned “arrogance.”
The most blatant example occurred during the July 2007 “Summer
Press Tour.” During one of the discussions, ABC Entertainment
president Stephen McPherson commented that there would be a major announcement
regarding the hit-series Lost at that weekend’s Comic-Con
panel in San Diego. This did not sit well with the TV critics in attendance,
and they pressured McPherson to make the revelation to them instead,
namely that former cast member Harold Perrineau would be returning for
season four.
“Clearly
the dynamic is changing when people who have to pay to get into a fan
convention are given a higher priority than journalists who reach millions
of readers online and in print,” Owen wrote at the time. “Even
if all the fanboys attending Comic-Con blog about news released there,
it wouldn't have the reach of press tour.”
What Owen
seems to forget is that San Diego’s Comic-Con has evolved into
a major entertainment industry event, with extensive coverage from the
likes of Entertainment Weekly and CNN. Producers and
actors of television series like Heroes and Lost even
point out that the panel discussions at Comic-Con before their shows
premiered helped build a “buzz” that had a direct, positive
impact on their initial ratings. In fact, the DVDs for the first season
of both those shows have bonus features saying as much. Instead of being
abrasive, critics should be more willing to embrace the new landscape
and acknowledge that the times have indeed changed.
Because
they have. Journalism is not the same as it was pre-Internet. A.J. Leibling’s
axiom that “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one”
no longer applies, even in regards to the coverage of television. Independent
web sites like Buddy
TV, Television
Without Pity and TV
Squad are challenging the mainstream media. Reporters
like Kristen
from E! and Herc from Aint-It-Cool-News
are just as important sources of information as Jeff Jensen from Entertainment
Weekly or Michael
Ausiello of TV Guide.
But that
does not mean that the local newspaper TV critic has become irrelevant;
they do, after all, have the knowledge and connections to keep us informed.
They just need to take a page from Rob Owen and stay focused on both
the small picture as well as the large; or, as the saying goes, “think
global, act local.” And if they could simply learn to bend with
the times instead of fighting it, the “arrogance” that sometimes
comes across could even turn into a genuine asset.
“Last
I looked, we’re charging people,” Bianco said at the Press
Club of Western Pennsylvania, referring to the newspaper industry. “Even
on the Internet we only exist if people think there’s some reason
to come to us, to come to usatoday.com, or come to the Tribune Review
or come to the Post Gazette other than Joe-and-His-Pajamas-dot-com.
And personally I think our attitude has to be a lot more that we are
talking at you because we know more than you do. Politely put. Nicely
put.”
And as
with many things that Robert Bianco has to say, one could even argue
“well-put.”
September
17, 2007
