Chronicling those early developments were Jack Gould of the New York Times and John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune, in addition to reviewer-critics of lesser impact in other metropolitan areas. From 1946 to 1972, Gould meticulously and evenhandedly reported technical, structural (networks, stations), legal (Congress and Federal Communications Commission), economic (advertising), financial, and social aspects of TV as well as programming trends. Crosby began reviewing program content and developments in 1946 with stylistic vigor, offering a personalized judgment that could be caustic. As the medium matured in the 1960s and 1970s, Lawrence Laurent of the Washington Post joined the small group of influential media critics writing for major metro newspapers. He explored trends and causal relations and reported interrelations of federal regulatory agencies and broadcast corporations while also appraising major program successes and failures. On the West Coast, where TV entertainment was crafted, the Los Angeles Times’ Hal Humphrey and Cecil Smith covered the creative community’s role in television, emphasizing descriptive reviews of individual programs and series. Other metro dailies and their early, influential program reviewer-critics included the San Francisco Chronicle’s Terrance O’Flaherty, Chicago Sun-Times’ Paul Malloy, and Chicago Tribune’s Larry Wolters.

Meanwhile most newspapers carried popular columns about daily program offerings, reported behind-the-scenes in formation, and relayed tidbits about TV stars. Some referred to this kind of column as “racing along in shorts,” a series of brief items each separated by three dots. Complementing local columns were syndicated wire services, featuring a mix of substantive pieces and celebrity interviews. Among long-time syndicated columnists, in addition to New York Times and Washington Post columnists distributed nationally, were the Associated Press’s Cynthia Lowrey and Jay Sharbut.

Weekly and monthly magazines also published analyses of broader patterns and implications of television’s structure, programming, and social impact. They featured critics such as Saturday Review’s Gilbert Seldes and Robert Lewis Shayon, Time’s “Cyclops” (John McPhee, among others), John Lardner and Jay Cocks in Newsweek, Marya Mannes in The Reporter, and Harlan Ellison’s ideosyncratic but trenchant dissections in Rolling Stone. Merrill Panitt, Sally Bedell Smith, Neil Hickey, and Frank Swertlow offered serious analysis in weekly TV Guide; often multipart investigative reports, those extended pieces appeared alongside pop features and interviews, plus think-pieces by specialists and media practitioners all wrapped around massive TV and cable local listings of regional editions across the country. Reporter-turned-critic Les Brown wrote authoritatively for trade paper Variety, then the New York Times, then as editor of Channels of Communication magazine. Weekly Variety published critical reviews of all new entertainment and documentary or news programs, both one-time-only shows and initial episodes of series; the news-magazine’s staff faithfully analyzed themes, topics, dramatic presentation, acting, sets, and scenery, including complete listings of production personnel and casts. Reflecting shifting perspectives on the significance of modern mass media, Ken Auletta (Wall Street Journal, New Yorker) monitored in exhaustive detail the media megamergers of the 1980s and 1990s.

In the 1950s, TV columnists tended to be reviewers after the fact, offering comments about programs only after they aired, because almost all were “live.” (Comedian Jackie Gleason quipped that TV critics merely reported accidents to eye witnesses.) They could also appraise continuing series, based on previous episodes. As more programs began to be filmed, following I Love Lucy’s innovation, and videotape was introduced in the late 1950s for entertainment and news-related programs alike, critics were able to preview shows. Their critical analyses in advance of broadcast helped viewers select what to watch. Producers and network executives could monitor print reviewers’ evaluations of their product. Those developments increased print critics’ influence, though their authority never approached New York drama critics’ impact on Broadway’s theatrical shows. Typically, many of a season’s critically acclaimed new programs tend to be driven off the schedule by mass audience preferences for other less challenging or subtle programming. Praised, award-winning new series often find themselves canceled for lack of popular ratings. Some might apply to television movie-critic Pauline Kael’s aphorism about films; she cynically described the image industry as “the art of casting sham pearls before real swine.”

Television critics often use a program or series as the concrete basis for examining broader trends in the industry. Analyzing a new situation comedy or action-adventure drama or documentary-like news magazine is more than an exercise in scrutinizing a 30- or 60- minute program; it serves as a paradigm representing larger patterns in media and society. The critical review traces forces that shape not only programming but media structures, processes, and public perceptions. Often reviewers not only lament failures but question factors influencing success and quality. They challenge audiences to support superior programming by selective viewing just as they challenge producers to create sensitive, authentic depictions of deeper human values. Yet Gilbert Seldes cautioned as early as 1956 that the critic must propose changes that are feasible in the cost-intensive mass media system; this would be “more intellectually honest and also save a lot of time” while avoiding pointless hostility and futility.

Over the decades studies of audiences and program patterns, and surveys of media executives, have generally discounted print media criticism as a major factor in program decision making, particularly regarding any specific program content or scheduling. But critics are not wholly disregarded. Those published in media centers and Washington, D.C., serve as reminders to media managers of criteria beyond ratings and revenues. Critics in trade and metropolitan press are read by government agency personnel as well, to track reaction to pending policy moves. The insightful comments of critics have come in many forms: courteous and cerebral (veteran John O’Connor and Walter Goodman, longtime columnists at the New York Times), stylistically sophisticated and witty (Tom Shales, still the lead critic at the Washington Post), sometimes abrasive (Ron Powers, formerly of the Chicago Sun-Times), even cynical (Howard Rosenberg, who recently left the Los Angeles Times). Each of these may have illuminated lapses in artistic integrity or “good taste” and prod TV’s creators and distributors to reflect on larger aesthetic and social implications of their lucrative, but ephemeral, occupations. Those published goadings enlighten readers, serve as a burr under the saddle of broadcasters and creators, and provide an informal barometer to federal lawmakers and regulators.

At the same time television criticism published in print media serves the publisher’s primary purpose of gaining readership among a wide and diverse circulation. That goal puts a premium on relevance, clarity, brevity, cleverness, and attractive style. The TV column is meant to attract readers primarily by entertaining them, while also informing them about how the system works. And at times columns can inspire readers to reflect on their use of television and how they might selectively respond to the medium’s showcases of excellence, plateaus of mediocrity, and pits of meretricious exploitation and excess. Balanced criticism avoids blatant appeals and gratuitous savaging of media people and projects. The critic serves as a guide, offering standards or criteria for judgment along with factual data, so readers can make up their own minds. A test of successful television criticism is whether readers enjoy reading the articles as they grow to trust the critic’s judgment because they respect his or her perspective. The critic-reviewer’s role grows in usefulness as video channels proliferate; viewers inundated by dozens of cable and over-air channels can ensure optimum use of leisure viewing time by following critics’ tips about what is worth tuning in and what to avoid.

Reflecting the quality of published television criticism in recent years, distinguished Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded to Ron Powers (1973), William Henry III (1980, Boston Globe), Howard Rosenberg (1985), and Tom Shales (1988). Early on, influential Times critic Jack Gould set the standard when in 1957 he won a special George Foster Peabody Award for his “fairness, objectivity and authority.” Prerequisites for proper critical perspective outlined by Lawrence Laurent three decades ago remain apt today: sensitivity and reasoned judgment, a renaissance knowledge, coupled with exposure to a broad range of art, culture, technology, business, law, economics, ethics, and social studies all fused with an incisive writing style causing commentary to leap off the page into the reader’s consciousness, possibly in fluencing their TV behavior as viewers or as professional practitioners.

In the late 1970s, the Television Critics Association (TCA) was formed in the United States to represent professional critics in relations with the television industry. In part the association was formed to offset criticism that critics could be swayed by favors—travel, meetings, interviews—provided by the television industry. The TCA now coordinates annual visits by members to Los Angeles and other industry sites. There they have access to network programmers and other executives, to producers, and to stars of television programs, all seeking publicity and commentary from the critics. Press tours are scheduled for two and a half weeks in July, when networks and studios present new programs for review prior to placement on the regular television schedules. A second tour is arranged in January to review “midseason” alterations in the schedule. In addition to attending presentations in major hotel settings, the TCA tours now include visits to sets and discussions with businesses ancillary to the primary television providers. The association has also established the TCA Awards and recognizes television programs and personalities in a variety of categories.