Re-evaluating the role of television criticism in the British press

Abstract

While television criticism is very popular with readers of newspapers, it has attracted little academic interest, whether as a form of journalistic practice or as part of a critical-public discourse on television. One of the most influential articles on television criticism was published by Mike Poole in 1984, in which he lambasted much of the existing television criticism for approaching television from within a literary-based paradigm, one which he thought was unsuitable for such a medium. Since this article was published, apart from a few articles and chapters, there has been little further attempt to analyse television criticism in the British press in any depth. In this article I argue that, at a time of dramatic changes occurring in the newspapers and television industries, there is a need to develop a better understanding of the form and role of television criticism.